Seeking Boris Pasternak in Putin Country

Abstract

It was a sunny morning in the month of May in Peredelkino, a sleepy Stalin era writer’s colony in the suburbs of Moscow. The year was 1956. Boris Pasternak walked out of his dacha clutching a thick packet. “This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world,” he said nervously, while handing over the packet to his guest Sergio D’Angelo, who was waiting for him at his garden. Sergio D’Angelo, an Italian Communist was on a secondment with Radio Moscow when he came visiting Pasternak that day. He was hunting for promising manuscripts for a Milan- based publishing house run by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a senior member of the Italian Communist Party. The packet that Pasternak handed over to D’Angelo carried a touching revelation of the raw face of the Russia’s October Revolution. For the Soviet leaders, Dr Zhivago was an act of literary subversion. For D’Angelo, it was the catch of the century. Read more at: https://openthemagazine.com/lounge/books/seeking-boris-pasternak-in-putin-country/