Subject
Pasternak's "Lara" and KGB
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Date
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There is a long article on the front page of today's New York Times
about Pasternak's mistress, Olga Ivinskaya, the author of "A Captive of
Time," and her apparent cooperation with KGB in their efforts to
prevent Pasternak from publishing *Doctor Zhivago* abroad. The letter that
she wrote to Khrushchev in 1961 from prison, where she had been sent (for
the second time) because of her association with Pasternak, was published
in extracts by *Moskovskii Komsomolets* earlier this month. Here is one of
the quotes from it: "I did everything in my power to avoid a misfortune
[i.e. the publication of *Doctor Zhivago* abroad], but it was beyond my
capacity to neutralize everything at once. I would like to make it clear
that it was Pasternak himself who wrote the novel, it was he himself who
received fees by a method he chose. One should not portray him as an
innocent lamb." She also assured Khrushchev that she had done everything
she could to help KGB silence Pasternak, cancel his meetings with
foreigners, and dissuade him from leaving the SU after he was forced
to turn down the Nobel Prize in 1958.
In this particular instance, VN would have probably been sympathetic (even
though if KGB and Ivinskaya had been successful in preventing *Doctor
Zhivago* from being published abroad the same year as *Lolita,* VN's novel
would have been #1 on the NYT Bestsellers' list for more consecutive
weeks): His own "Tamara," after all, had links with KGB, having married
its officer after VN left the country, as VN probably discovered in Paris
in 1930s when he met with Valentina Shulgina's sister there.
GD
about Pasternak's mistress, Olga Ivinskaya, the author of "A Captive of
Time," and her apparent cooperation with KGB in their efforts to
prevent Pasternak from publishing *Doctor Zhivago* abroad. The letter that
she wrote to Khrushchev in 1961 from prison, where she had been sent (for
the second time) because of her association with Pasternak, was published
in extracts by *Moskovskii Komsomolets* earlier this month. Here is one of
the quotes from it: "I did everything in my power to avoid a misfortune
[i.e. the publication of *Doctor Zhivago* abroad], but it was beyond my
capacity to neutralize everything at once. I would like to make it clear
that it was Pasternak himself who wrote the novel, it was he himself who
received fees by a method he chose. One should not portray him as an
innocent lamb." She also assured Khrushchev that she had done everything
she could to help KGB silence Pasternak, cancel his meetings with
foreigners, and dissuade him from leaving the SU after he was forced
to turn down the Nobel Prize in 1958.
In this particular instance, VN would have probably been sympathetic (even
though if KGB and Ivinskaya had been successful in preventing *Doctor
Zhivago* from being published abroad the same year as *Lolita,* VN's novel
would have been #1 on the NYT Bestsellers' list for more consecutive
weeks): His own "Tamara," after all, had links with KGB, having married
its officer after VN left the country, as VN probably discovered in Paris
in 1930s when he met with Valentina Shulgina's sister there.
GD