RUSSIA: Lost Like a Beast

The laughter of his guests had suddenly died away, and Boris Pasternak sat disconsolately at his own 69th birthday party listening to the angry words of his wife. "How many times have I told you not to trust journalists?" she shrilled. "They are only exploiting you for personal gain. If this continues, I'll leave you." Sadly the old poet murmured, "I promise you, Zinochka"—but nothing could change the fact that just as the ugly furor over Doctor Zhivago and the Nobel Prize seemed to be fading away, something new had happened to stir things up again.

Pasternak insisted that he had...

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