![]() The torments of modern history convinced the younger Pasternak that total assimilation was the only sure survival strategy for himself and his fellow Jews. Pasternak was born to an assimilated Russian Jewish family - his father was the noted post-impressionist painter Leonid Pasternak (born Yitzhok-Leib Pasternak 1862-1945). ![]() Some readers were even more concerned by “the estrangement of “Zhivago” from Jewish life. One KGB file from 1956, quoted by Finn and Couvée, identified Pasternak as a “Jew did not have a party card, and said his work was typified by ‘estrangement from Soviet life.’” It was intended as a propagandistic response to the Soviet Union for banning “Zhivago” due to its disillusioned view of post-revolutionary Russia. ![]() This might seem like an odd choice of location for handing out the work of a Russian Jewish author. “The Zhivago Affair” by Peter Finn, national security correspondent for The Washington Post, and Petra Couvée, a teacher at Saint Petersburg State University, explains that during the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, the CIA published a Russian-language edition of Pasternak’s novel and had it distributed to Soviet visitors at the Vatican pavilion. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |