Open Password – Friday April 8, 2022
#1052
War of the Media – Ingrida Symonite – Putin’s Politics – Russia: People and Country – Natascha Magyar
Erdmute Lapp – Doctor Zivago – Boris Pasternak – Film adaptation – Government of the Soviet Union – Soviet Union of Writers – Right Ideology – Novyi Mir – Underground readings of a counter-revolutionary novel – Aleksej Surkov – Kultura i zizn’, – Olga Ivinskaja – Maurice Bowra – Anna Akhmatovq – Josef Stalin – Sergio D’Angelo – Berlin – Pietro Zveteremic – Giangiacomo Feltrinelli – KGB – Ivan Serov – Konstantin Simonov – Rejection of the Socialist Revolution – Civil War – Intelligencija – Lenin and Stalin – Chruscev – Hungarian Uprising – Andrei Voznesenskij – Evgeny Evtushenko – Goslitizdat Publishing House – Opinie – Literaturnaya Gazeta – Omar Sharif – Julie Chrstie – CIA – Mouton Publishing House – Nobel Prize for Literature – Olga Invisnkaja
War of aggression against Ukraine
Don’t equate Putin’s politics with people and country
In: Russia’s War against Ukraine: Beyond Civilizations, in: Open Passsword, April 6, 2022, #1051
Dear editorial team,
In this media war, it is certainly important to pay attention to precision: Ingrida Symonite is Lithuanian Prime Minister. I also don’t want to be seen as a partisan of the Russian side if I consider the quote to be uninformative. In my opinion, this polemic does not benefit either side.
A deeply shocked Slavic woman is writing to you. I can’t believe it either, but I want to make sure that people don’t automatically equate Putin’s policies with the people and the country. As is well known, bandwagonism with the most horrific consequences is by no means a Russian phenomenon.
Kind regards, Natascha Magyar (SULB Uni Saarland)
PS: I always enjoy reading your newsletter, hence this comment.
Homage to the book (X)
An initiative by Open Password
and the Simon Verlag für Bibliothekswissen
Written with heart, passion and deep knowledge about books “that moved us”
Now that the book is threatened by short attention spans, lack of reading pleasure and electronic formats, it is time for a tribute to the book. Open Password and the Simon Verlag für Bibliothekswissen have teamed up on the project “Books that moved us” and have recruited 41 authors who report with passion, passion and deep knowledge how they were influenced by a particular book.
In our tenth homage to the book In our ninth homage to the book, Erdmute Lapp follows the life and main work of Boris Pasternak and describes how a piece of enduring world literature gained world publicity against all the efforts of the KGB and the Soviet government.
Erdmute Lapp reads the book of her life:
“Doctor Zivago” by Boris Pasternak
A book takes hold worldwide against the KGB
and the Soviet Union government
Second part
After World War II, Pasternak began working on his first novel. On September 9, 1946, the Soviet Writers’ Union passed a resolution saying that Pasternak was an « author who lacked proper ideology and was far removed from Soviet reality. » For the evening of the same day, Pasternak had organized one of his first readings of the first part of his novel at his dacha in Peredelkino. He did not read newspapers and his wife had not informed him about the attack. Pasternak continued to read drafts to small groups in Moscow apartments. These readings formed a kind of dialogue with his audience and led him to make adjustments to his text. In 1948, after completing four chapters, he decided on the title “Doctor Zivago”. Zivago sounds like a Siberian name, but the word is from a Russian Orthodox prayer. Pasternak told Varlam Salamov that as a child he always paused after Boga when he said Christos, syn Boga zivago in prayer. “I imagined God as someone who was only accessible to me through the name Zivago. It took me my whole life to make that idea real by giving that name to the hero of my novel.”
The readings also attracted unwelcome attention. The deputy director of the literary magazine Novyj Mir described the gatherings as “underground readings of a counter-revolutionary novel.” The attacks on Pasternak continued, reaching a climax in Aleksej Surkov’s signed article in the newspaper Kultura i zizn’, a tool for enforcing Zdanov’s line and called a mass grave by some members of the intelligentsia. Surkov wrote that Pasternak was “reactionary and backward-looking,” that he “speaks of the Soviet Union with open hostility, even hatred,” and that his poetry is an “insult” to Soviet reality. Afterwards, the magazine Novyj Mir rejected a number of Pasternak’s poems and the publication of a volume of translations of Shakespeare was put on hold. Thereafter there were no further readings.
In October 1946, Pasternak met Olga Ivinskaja, who inspired the character of Lara in Doctor Zivago.
By 1949, Pasternak was an internationally known writer, although he had been relegated to the margins of literary life in Moscow. Cecil Maurice Bowra, who held the chair of poetry at Oxford University, nominated Pasternak for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946; Pasternak was nominated again in 1947 and 1949.
In the late 1940s, the Russian government waged an increasingly sinister campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans,” and there were rumors that Pasternak was about to be arrested by the secret police. However, in 1950, authorities used Olga Ivinskaya to meet Pasternak. Ivinskaya was sentenced to five years in a camp on charges of supporting cosmopolitans. (The same logic was applied in the case of Anna Akhmatova; Akhmatova’s husband and son had been arrested in 1949, while she herself remained physically untouched.) Stalin died on March 5, 1953, and on March 27 the new leadership announced a broad Amnesty for political prisoners. Olga Ivinskja was released after three years in prison.
In 1953, Pasternak’s dacha in Peredelkino was winterized, Olga Ivinskaya rented a room in a house in the neighborhood and began working as Pasternak’s agent. She took care of his obligations in Moscow so that he rarely had to travel into the city. He spent the winter of 1954 almost entirely in Peredelkino, working on Doctor Zivago. He corrected the manuscript in the summer of 1955, completed a final revision in November 1955, and work on the novel was completed on December 10, 1955. Pasternak was convinced that Doctor Zivago represented the pinnacle of his work: “My last happiness and my madness.” When Sergio D’Angelo came to Pasternak, the manuscript had already been at the Goslitizdat publishing house for five months, and Pasternak had heard nothing from the publisher.
_____________________________________________________
A book takes hold worldwide against the KGB and the Soviet Union government.
_____________________________________________________________________
And now come the events after meeting D’Angelo in Peredelkino:
The week after meeting Pasternak in Peredelkino, D’Angelo flew to Berlin. He wasn’t searched and didn’t feel like he was doing anything illegal. He called Milano and Feltrinelli flew to Berlin to receive the manuscript. The next day the manuscript was moved from one suitcase to the other; Doctor Zivago had found a publisher. Feltrinelli didn’t understand Russian; In Milan he sent the manuscript to the Italian Slavist Pietro Zveteremic asking for his opinion. The answer came quickly: not publishing a novel like this would be a crime against culture.
Feltrinelli now acted quickly to secure his rights. He sent Pasternak two copies of the contract through a trusted courier. Nevertheless, the Kremlin quickly learned of Pasternak’s contract with Feltrinelli. On August 24, 1956, the head of the secret police, KGB General Ivan Serov, wrote to the Politburo. Olga Ivinskaya, who had been in Moscow on the day of D’Angelo’s visit, was summoned to see Dmitry Polikarpov, head of the Central Committee’s cultural department. He ordered her to recall the manuscript. Ivinskaya suggested publishing Doctor Zivago in the Soviet Union before the book appeared in any foreign publisher. But Polikarpov was convinced that it was an anti-Soviet novel and demanded a thorough revision.
In mid-September 1956, Noviy Mir’s editorial board finally rejected Doctor Zivago in a long and detailed report. The report was mainly written by Konstantin Simonov, who was one of Pasternak’s neighbors in Peredelkino. Konstantin Fedin was also a member of the editorial board and also signed. “… the spirit of the novel is rejection of the socialist revolution. The general tenor of the novel is that the October Revolution, the Civil War and the Transformation brought nothing but suffering to the people and physically and morally destroyed the Russian intelligentsia. » The authors continue with a detailed dissection of the ideological errors in the novel, which Wickedness of the conclusions drawn by the hero from the revolution and his “exorbitant individualism”. The most heretical suggestion, however, they either overlooked or deliberately failed to address: Pasternak suggests that the tyranny of the past 25 years was a direct result of Bolshevism. Stalinism and the purges were not a terrible aberration – the accepted Soviet explanation under Khruscev – but the consequence of the system Lenin established. The Soviet authorities did not want this novel published – anywhere.
The Kremlin and the conservative bureaucracy used the events in Budapest in 1956 as an opportunity to end the thaw. Editors in the major literary magazines were fired, and young poets like Andrei Voznesenskij and Evgeniy Evtushenko came under fire. The bloody suppression of the Hungarian Revolution was traumatic for many Italian communists, and Feltrinelli’s desire to publish Pasternak’s novel was only confirmed.
Then the Soviet authorities tried to force Pasternak to demand his manuscript back from Feltrinelli. Pasternak sent an official telegram to this effect to Feltrinelli, but at the same time he sent a letter informing Feltrinelli that the telegram was sent under pressure. (There was an agreement that only news in French would be relevant.) He suggested that Feltrinelli agree to a six-month postponement of publication and expressed the wish that the edition corresponds to the original text and that no changes are acceptable. Feltrinelli informed Goslitizdat that he would delay publication until September 1956; He also sent “his esteemed comrades” his opinion on the novel, which almost certainly caused irritation in Moscow.
In 1957, the situation for writers in Russia worsened. In the summer of 1957, the Polish magazine Opinie printed a 35-page excerpt from Doctor Zivago after Pasternak gave the manuscript to a Polish friend. The issue of the magazine was dedicated to Polish-Soviet friendship. Literaturnaya Gazeta was ordered to attack the Polish magazine, and the Polish translators were summoned to Moscow and reprimanded. Opinie never appeared again.
Pasternak spent most of the spring and early summer of 1957 in the hospital, unable to make any changes that the authorities wanted. In August 1957, Pasternak was summoned to a meeting with the top officials of the Writers’ Union; he sent Olga Ivinskja. It was chaired by A. Surkov, who had since been appointed First Secretary of the Association. He grew increasingly angry at Pasternak’s betrayal and went so far as to accuse Pasternak of greed. Furthermore, he stated that he could not imagine how something like this novel could be revised. The path to publishing the novel Doctor Zivago in Russia was therefore closed.
In October 1957, Surkov traveled to Milano as part of a Soviet writers’ delegation, but his real mission was to confront Feltrinelli. With an interpreter in tow, he stormed the publishing offices on Via Andegari. His shouting in Russian could be heard on the street below. He argued unsuccessfully for three hours. Feltrinelli simply said he was a free publisher in a free country. After Surko’s performance, Feltrinelli said it was an encounter with a « hyena in syrup. » (Hyenas hunt in packs and only attack weak prey. The syrup probably refers to the fact that Surkov’s appearance makes a more pleasant impression than his demeanor.)
At the end of October, Pasternak had to send another telegram to Feltrinelli. And again he sent a private message that contradicted the content of the telegram.
The first edition of Doctor Zivago was published in Italian on November 15, 1957, followed by a second edition of 3,000 copies after five days. The novel was published in bookstores on November 23rd and was an instant bestseller. Doctor Zivago also became an international success: the book was translated into 18 languages. In 1965, the famous film Doctor Zivago, directed by David Lean and starring Omar Sharif as Jurij Zivago and Julie Christie as Lara, won five Academy Awards (Oscar).
In 1958, the CIA financed the publication of a Russian edition of the novel Doctor Zivago by the Dutch publisher Mouton. Publication in the original language is a prerequisite for an author to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In October 1958, the Swedish Academy awarded Boris Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature for his poetry and his novel Doctor Zivago. Pasternak initially gratefully accepted the prize, but under great pressure and after his expulsion from the Writers’ Union, he decided to withdraw his acceptance. The authorities had also forced him to refuse any money from his royalties in Western banks. Pasternak died on May 30, 1960 in Peredelkino. The first Russian-language edition printed in Russia appeared in 1987 during Gorbacev’s Perestroika. In 1989, Boris Pasternak’s son Evgenij accepted the award in a special ceremony in Stockholm for his father.
(Olga Ivinskaya was arrested again soon after Pasternak’s death and convicted of foreign exchange crimes. D’Angelo had illegally converted money from Pasternak’s assets in Italy into rubles and sent it to her.
Feltrinelli became increasingly radicalized at the end of the 1960s, went underground and died in an assassination attempt under unclear circumstances in 1972.)
Attending the summer school in Peredelkino was the highlight of my life with Doctor Zivago so far.
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