by Peter Finn
The diplomatic note from Rome came just a day after several hundred thousand people flowed onto the streets of Budapest to demand reform, and the Hungarian Revolution began. The popular revolt was eventually crushed by a large Soviet invasion force and some twenty thousand Hungarians lost their lives in often brutal street fighting—as the West, impotent and paralyzed, watched helplessly. The Kremlin and the conservative bureaucracy seized on the events in Budapest to reverse the “thaw” in Moscow. The liberal Literaturnaya Moskva (Literary Moscow), which had only recently published Pasternak’s “Notes on Translations of Shakespeare’s Dramas,” was closed; editors were fired across the major literary journals; and young, daring poets such as Andrei Voznesensky and Yevgeni Yevtushenko came under attack. Khrushchev would eventually argue that “bourgeois” tendencies among Hungarian intellectuals had sparked insurrection.
The bloody suppression of the Hungarian revolution was also deeply traumatic for many Italian Communists. Most of the leadership of the party supported the Soviet invasion, but a quarter of a million rank-and-file members abandoned the movement, including significant numbers of artists, academics, and journalists. Even before the worst of the bloodshed in Budapest, Feltrinelli, along with a number of his colleagues at the Feltrinelli library and institute in Milan, signed a letter to the party leadership asserting that in the “fundamental nature of the Hungarian movement” there is “a strong plea for socialist democracy.” Feltrinelli watched with dismay the exodus of intellectuals from the party and bristled at the leadership’s attempt to argue that “the loss of small fringe groups of intellectuals is not an important phenomenon.”
“These comrades,” Feltrinelli replied, “have not only brought luster to the party, the working class and the socialist movement but they have enabled us, since the fall of Fascism, to undertake a wealth of politico-cultural projects.” Feltrinelli did not immediately turn in his party card, but his willingness to act as a financier began to fade. His desire to proceed with Pasternak’s book was only strengthened.
By January 1957, officials in the Central Committee’s departments on culture and relations with foreign Communist parties were wringing their hands. Despite the promise of the Italian comrades back in October, there was still no sign of the manuscript. Instead of hoping that Feltrinelli would bow to instructions from his party leadership, it was decided to use Pasternak himself to get the novel back. First, though, such a tactic had to be credible. On January 7, 1957, Pasternak signed a contract with Goslitizdat, the state literary publishing house. “I shall make this into something that will reflect the glory on the Russian people,” said his editor, Anatoli Starostin. He was a genuine admirer of Pasternak, but Starostin was no more than a pawn, and the contract a ruse. The document would simply give greater legal weight to the effort to compel Feltrinelli to return the novel.
The following month, Feltrinelli received a telegram from Pasternak. It was in Italian: “Per request from goslitizdat … please hold Italian publication of Doctor Zhivago for half year until September 1957 and the coming out of Soviet edition of novel send reply telegram to Goslitizdat—Pasternak.” But before he sent the telegram, Pasternak wrote a letter—in French—to his publisher in Milan. He explained that he sent the telegram under pressure and that the state was planning a modified version of Doctor Zhivago. He suggested that Feltrinelli agree to a six-month delay of the Italian edition. And then he pleaded with his publisher: “But the sorrow that, naturally, is caused me by the imminent alteration of my text would be far greater if I thought that you intended to base the Italian translation on it, despite my enduring desire that your edition be strictly faithful to the authentic manuscript.”
Feltrinelli, at this point, had no reason to doubt a Soviet edition was coming in September. He wrote to Pasternak to say he would agree to the delay and he urged Zveteremich, his translator, to hurry up so an Italian edition could go on sale immediately afterward. Under international publishing law, Feltrinelli needed to publish within thirty days after the appearance of the Soviet edition to establish his rights in the West.
In April, in a letter to one of his Soviet editors, Pasternak asked for an advance against an upcoming volume of his poetry, his translation of Faust, or even Doctor Zhivago—although he admitted he was unlikely to get any money for the novel, since everything surrounding it was pure “phantasmagoria.”
Feltrinelli met D’Angelo in Milan in May. Feltrinelli told him that Zveteremich was almost finished, and the poet Mario Socrate was polishing the last of the verse at the end of Doctor Zhivago. It seemed to D’Angelo that Feltrinelli was both satisfied and relieved. “He assures me that while he is still a man of the left, he will always fight for freedom and as a publisher, he will fight for freedom of thought and culture.”
In June, Feltrinelli wrote to Goslitizdat. He agreed not to publish Doctor Zhivago until September. He also offered his “dear comrades” his opinion of Pasternak’s novel, an assessment that while it invoked Soviet aesthetics no doubt caused some heartburn in Moscow. “His is a perfect portrayal of the nature, soul and history of Russia: characters, objects and events are rendered clearly and concretely in the finest spirit of realism, a realism that ceases to be merely fashion, and becomes art.” Feltrinelli noted that the book might give rise to some controversy, but that after the Twentieth Congress, and the exposure of Stalin’s crimes, “the revealing of certain facts no longer surprises or perturbs.
“Besides, Western readers will for the first time hear the voice of a great artist, a great poet who has made, in an artistic form, a detailed analysis of the October Revolution, the harbinger of a new epoch in which socialism became the only natural form of social life. For the Western public, the fact that this is a voice of a man alien to all political activity is a guarantee of the sincerity of his discourse, thus making him worthy of trust. Our readers cannot fail to appreciate this magnificent panorama of events from the history of the Russian people which transcends all ideological dogmatism, nor will they overlook its importance, or the positive outlook deriving from it. The conviction will thus grow that the path taken by your people has been for them a progressive one, that the history of capitalism is coming to an end, and that a new era has begun.”
Feltrinelli concluded by saying whatever suspicions might exist in Moscow, it was never his intention “to lend this publication a sensational character.”
Pasternak thanked Feltrinelli for agreeing to the delay but let him know that September publication in Moscow was a lie: “Here in Russia, the novel will never appear,” he wrote in a letter to Feltrinelli at the end of June. “The troubles and misfortunes that will perhaps befall me in the event of foreign publication, that is to say without an analogous publication in the Soviet Union, are matters that must not concern us, either me or you. The important thing is that the work sees the light of day. Do not withhold your help from me.”
Pasternak also wrote to Andrei Sinyavsky, another writer who was part of his trusted circle, that although others believed the “thaw” under Khrushchev would lead to more books being published, he “seldom, periodically and only faintly shared that belief.” The publication of Doctor Zhivago, he added, was “out of the question.”
The atmosphere in Moscow was becoming more hostile for writers and other artists. In May 1957, the party leadership, including Khrushchev, met with the board of the Union of Soviet Writers. Khrushchev spoke for nearly two hours. He described Vladimir Dudintsev’s recently published novel, Not by Bread Alone, as “false at its base.” The novel, which castigated the bureaucracy, had been read by its admirers as an audacious break with the past. The journal Literaturnaya Moskva was full of “ideologically fallacious” work, Khrushchev said. And the general secretary said that some writers seemed to have adopted an “indiscriminate rejection of the positive role of J. V. Stalin in the life of our party and country.”
In June, the state literary publishing house announced that the publication of the volume of Pasternak’s collecte
d poems had been cancelled. That summer, the new Polish journal Opinie (Opinions) printed a thirty-five-page excerpt from Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak had given the manuscript to a Polish friend and translator shortly after D’Angelo had visited him in Peredelkino. The July/September issue of Opinie, which was devoted to Polish-Soviet friendship, introduced the excerpt with a note that said the novel was “a broad intricate story about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia and their ideological transformation which was frequently accompanied by tragic conflicts.”
A note on the magazine that was prepared for the Central Committee in Moscow said the “choice of stories in the first issue shows that this magazine has a hostile attitude towards us.” The Central Committee’s culture department said it was “necessary to authorize the Soviet ambassador to draw the attention of Polish comrades to the unfriendly character of the magazine.” The Soviet weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta was also instructed to attack the Polish magazine, but not in a manner that would “arouse an unhealthy interest abroad in Pasternak’s evil plot.” The Polish translators were summoned to Moscow and reprimanded. Opinie never appeared again. The authorities were also infuriated by the printing of some of Pasternak’s more spiritual Zhivago poems in the émigré magazine Grani (Borders), an organ of the militant National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS), which was published in West Germany. Pasternak had not sanctioned this publication, and his name was not attached to the poems, but it was clear that they were his work.
Officials complained in memos that Pasternak had agreed to revise Doctor Zhivago based on the Novy Mir critique of the novel, but, one of the bureaucrats wrote, he “has done nothing in terms of editing his novel or making proper changes.” For much of the spring and early summer of 1957, Pasternak was hospitalized and in great pain with an inflamed meniscus in his right knee. (Zinaida visited him every day but was upset on one occasion when asked who she was. When she produced her identification, a hospital employee said there was a blonde in an hour before who had said she was the wife.)
The Central Committee official suggested another effort should be made to obtain the manuscript through the Italian Communists, since a delegation was in town for a World Youth Festival. The Italians were berated. Khrushchev himself complained to Velio Spano, the head of the Italian Communist Party’s foreign affairs section, that D’Angelo, supposedly a friend and guest, had created all this turmoil over Pasternak’s novel. Khrushchev had apparently been shown “a selection of the most unacceptable parts of the novel.”
Pasternak was also sending messages to Italy. In July, he wrote to Pietro Zveteremich, the Italian translator, to tell him that he wanted all the Western publishers to proceed regardless of “the consequences it could have on me.
“I wrote the novel to be published and read, and that remains my only wish.”
By August, Pasternak was under close watch. Letters to his sister Lydia in England were intercepted by the KGB and never reached her. That month, Pasternak was summoned to a meeting with the writers’ union leadership. Pasternak gave Ivinskaya a note to represent him at the meeting. She was accompanied by Starostin, the editor handling the purported Soviet edition of Doctor Zhivago. The meeting was chaired by Surkov, who had risen to become first secretary of the writers’ union. Surkov first met privately with Ivinskaya and asked her politely how the novel had ended up abroad. Ivinskaya said that Pasternak genuinely thought “with the spontaneity of a child” and he believed that in the case of art, borders were irrelevant.
“Yes, yes,” said Surkov. “It was quite in character. But it was so untimely. You should have prevented him—he does, after all, have a good angel like you.”
When the open session began, Surkov’s placid demeanor vanished as he became more and more worked up about Pasternak’s “treachery.” He accused Pasternak of being driven by greed, and said he was negotiating to get money from abroad. Ivinskaya tried to speak but was rudely told not to interrupt. The novelist and member of the board Valentin Katayev shouted at her: “There really is no point in your being here. Who do you think you’re representing? A poet or a traitor? Or doesn’t it bother you that he’s a traitor to his country?” When Starostin was introduced as the editor of the novel, Katayev continued, “Just fancy that—the editor, if you please. How can something like this be edited!”
Starostin was dejected and under no illusion about what the tongue-lashing augured for the novel. “We all left beaten, knowing that the road to publication of Doctor Zhivago was closed.”
Pasternak later described the event as a “ ’37 type of meeting, with infuriated yelling about this being an unprecedented occurrence, and demands for retribution.” The following day, Ivinskaya arranged for Pasternak to meet Polikarpov from the Central Committee. In advance of the meeting, Pasternak had Ivinskaya give him a letter. It seemed scripted to infuriate the bureaucrat: “People who are morally scrupulous are never happy with themselves; there are a lot of things they regret, a lot of things of which they repent. The only thing in my life for which I have no cause for repentance is the novel. I wrote what I think and to this day my thoughts remain the same. It may be a mistake not to have concealed it from others. I assure you I would have hidden it away had it been feebly written. But it proved to have more strength to it than I had dreamed possible—strength comes from on high, and thus its further fate was out of my hands.”
Polikarpov was so incensed he demanded that Ivinskaya tear up the note in front of him. He insisted on seeing Pasternak. Both Polikarpov and Surkov met with Pasternak in the following days. The conversations were strained but civil, and both men told Pasternak that he had to send a telegram to Feltrinelli demanding the return of the book. Pasternak was warned that failure to act could lead to “very unpleasant consequences.” The two men drew up a telegram for Feltrinelli and Pasternak was expected to send it: “I have started rewriting the manuscript of my novel Doctor Zhivago, and I am now convinced that the extant version can in no way be considered a finished work. The copy of the manuscript in your possession is a preliminary draft requiring thorough revision. In my view it is not possible to publish the book in its current form. This would go against my rule, which is that only the definitive draft of my work may be published. Please be so kind as to return, to my Moscow address, the manuscript of my novel Doctor Zhivago, which is indispensable for my work.”
Pasternak refused to send it. Ivinskaya asked D’Angelo to speak to Pasternak and persuade him otherwise. The Italian was unable to get a word out before an angry Pasternak spoke. “If you’re here to advise me to capitulate you should know that your charitable mission shows a lack of respect for me personally. You’re treating me like a man who has no dignity. The publication of Doctor Zhivago has become the most important thing in my life, and I don’t intend to do anything to prevent it. What would Feltrinelli think if he received a telegram that contradicted everything I have written and rewritten to him up to now? Would he take me for a crazy man, or a coward?”
D’Angelo recounted for Pasternak his conversation with Feltrinelli in Milan. Publication was inevitable. Moreover, numerous other Western publishers already had the manuscript and would go ahead on their own even if Feltrinelli were to follow the instructions in an obviously extorted telegram. D’Angelo told Pasternak there was no reason to resist this useless gesture, and it could save Pasternak and his loved ones. The Italian declared that the Soviet state had lost its ridiculous war against Doctor Zhivago.
The telegram—in Russian—was sent on August 21, 1957. Immediately, Polikarpov informed the Central Committee and suggested that they arm the Italian Communist Party with a copy so they could use it to add to the pressure on Feltrinelli. Mario Alicata, a literary critic and a senior figure in the party, was assigned to meet with Feltrinelli at the Milan office of the Communist Party. He angrily waved Pasternak’s telegram in Feltrinelli’s face, but the publisher would not relent.
Pasternak, meanwhile, was attempting to get messages to Feltrinelli and others lest the teleg
ram be taken seriously. He told the Harvard scholar Miriam Berlin and her husband, who came to visit him in Peredelkino, that he certainly wanted the novel published outside the Soviet Union. Berlin had been asked by Pasternak’s sister Josephine to confirm his intentions. Pasternak told Berlin that he had been forced to write the telegram and it should be ignored. “It does not matter what might happen to me. My life is finished. The book is my last word to the civilized world.” When the Italian scholar Vittorio Strada came to see him, he whispered to him as he left, “Vittorio, tell Feltrinelli that I want my book to come out at all costs.”
Despite all the intrigue and intimidation, Pasternak appeared remarkably unruffled to his visitors. Yevgeni Yevtushenko saw Pasternak that September when he brought yet another Italian professor, Angelo Rippelino, to visit him. “I’m very fond of Italians,” said Pasternak. He invited them in for dinner. Yevtushenko remarked: “To look at him, Pasternak might have been forty-seven or forty-eight. His whole appearance had an amazing, sparkling freshness like a newly cut bunch of lilacs with the morning dew still on their leaves. It seemed as if there was a play of light all over him, from the flashing gestures of hands to the surprisingly childlike smile which constantly lit up his mobile face.” Pasternak and Yevtushenko drank and talked late into the night long after Rippelino had left. Zinaida admonished the twenty-three-year-old Yevtushenko. “You’re killing my husband,” she said.