The Story of Dr Zhivago
How Boris Pasternak's great novel Dr Zhivago came to be published in the West .
Witness History: Archive 2014 · BBC World Service
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Show Notes
In September 1958 the first Russian-language edition of Boris Pasternak's famous novel Dr Zhivago was published - not in the Soviet Union, but in Europe. Pasternak had entrusted his novel to a handful of foreigners, after it became clear the Soviet authorities would refuse to publish it. We talk to the Italian journalist Sergio d'Angelo who first smuggled out the manuscript of Pasternak's last masterpiece and tells us how the Soviet authorities tried to get it back.
Photo: Boris Pasternak, the Russian poet and novelist, in 1946, Credit: Keystone/Getty Images