I would like to report on some recent archival findings that relate to the University of Michigan Press edition of Doctor Zhivago in Russian. Given that my engagement with the history of the publication of Doctor Zhivago begins with a serendipitous encounter with the Michigan edition (see my post clicking here), I was thrilled to find out more about the history of this edition.

The story of the Michigan edition’s entanglement with the production of the CIA pirated edition printed by Mouton in August 1958 had already been chronicled in my Inside the Zhivago Storm (2013). Further details became available with the documents released by the CIA in 2014 (see also Finn and Couvée 2014). All the CIA documents I will refer to (with one exception) are to be found here. However, recently I became aware of new archival documents that add additional elements to the picture. This realization came about reading James Tobin’s article “Doctor Zhivago comes to Michigan” published in 2020 and available online here.

While reading the article, I noticed that Tobin was using some sources that I had never seen. In particular, I was struck by a number of new details concerning the contacts between Felix Morrow and Fred Wieck, both of whom were familiar to me as they were central to my recounting of the events in Mancosu 2013. The former was the New York publisher to whom the CIA had entrusted the preparation of the composition of Doctor Zhivago that was eventually published in August 1958 by Mouton in Holland. The second was the director of the University of Michigan Press. The new details found in Tobin’s article piqued my curiosity and I got in touch with James Tobin who answered my questions as to the sources he had used. His helpful answers to my questions led me to order the reproduction of a folder of documents on the Michigan edition of Doctor Zhivago preserved at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan. More specifically, the folder in question is “Press, University of Michigan (1958-1959)” in Box 8 of the Marvin Niehuss Papers.

Marvin Lemmon Niehuss (1903-2003) had played an important role in the administrative and legal negotiations surrounding the publication of Doctor Zhivago by Michigan. He was Vice-President and Dean of Faculties at the University of Michigan and he was in constant contact on this matter with the Chancellor of the University of Michigan, Harlan Hatcher, and with Fred Wieck, director of the University of Michigan Press.

Nieuhuss’ involvement in the history of the publication of the Michigan edition of Doctor Zhivago had been clearly established already using the set of documents preserved at the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (Pasternak files), which I had exploited in Mancosu 2013 (pp. 119, 151) to recount the history of the Michigan edition (for basic information about Niehuss and the inventory of the Niehuss papers held at the Bentley library see here). However, only less than about half the pages (out of 77 pages in total) of the documents contained in the Niehuss folder at the Bentley Library mentioned above, find a corresponding duplicate in the Pasternak files at the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan or in other sources (Kurt Wolff archive, Feltrinelli archives etc.). Hence, a significant part of the documents found in the Marvin Niehuss Papers have not been previously used by researchers working on the history of the publication of Doctor Zhivago. Tobin is the exception but he makes very limited use of them (he uses [1] extensively and [2] and [5] only in passing; the numbering corresponds to the full list of documents contained in the folder, which I provide at the end of this post).

Reading these documents removes, at least in part, the “uncanny feeling that whatever correspondence there was between Wieck, Morrow, and Hatcher on the matter that concerns us [the Michigan edition of Doctor Zhivago in Russian] was carefully removed [from the Pasternak files at Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan]” (Mancosu 2013, p. 119).

Caveat lector: because I am taking for granted what has already been written in Mancosu 2013, in Finn and Couvée 2014, and (at least in part) in Tobin 2020, a full appreciation of the novelty of the information contained in the new documents can only be grasped by referring to the previous treatments. I will do my best to emphasize what new knowledge the Marvin Niehuss Papers add to what we previously new.

First a list of the cast of characters and some dates concerning the events surrounding the Michigan edition of Doctor Zhivago that had been established in previous publications.

The Michigan edition of Doctor Zhivago.

Cast of characters:

Felix Morrow (1906-1988), an American political activist, writer, newspaper editor, and book publisher.

Fred Dernburg Wieck (1911-1973), at the time director of the University of Michigan Press (a position he held since 1954).

Edwin Watkins, at the time associate director of the University of Michigan Press.

Marvin Lemmon Niehuss (1903-2003), at the time Vice-President and Dean of Faculties at the University of Michigan.

Harlan Henthorne Hatcher (1898-1998), president of the University of Michigan from 1951 to 1967.

William E. A. Cummiskey, at the time a lawyer for the University of Michigan.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (1926-1972), the publisher of the first worldwide edition of Doctor Zhivago.

Edmund Wilson (1895-1972), a prominent American literary critic. He is the author of To the Finland Station (1940). In 1958, he wrote two important critical articles on Doctor Zhivago.

Lazar (1883-1960) and Israel (1892-1977) Rausen, owners of Rausen Bros., a typesetting/printing business in New York specializing in Russian publications.

Chronology of events.

January 2, 1958. A CIA memo mentions the forwarding of two rolls of film reproducing a copy of the typescript of Doctor Zhivago that reached the CIA at the end of December 1957.

Late Spring 1958. The CIA puts Felix Morrow, a New York publisher, in charge of arranging for a composition of Doctor Zhivago with Cyrillic fonts unusual for American publications in view of a printing in Europe to be distributed at the Brussels Universal Fair in summer 1958. Felix Morrow works on the project with the printers Rausen Brothers in New York.

Late Spring 1958. Felix Morrow proposes to his friend Fred Wieck, director of the University of Michigan Press, to publish a Russian edition of Doctor Zhivago.

July 1958. The CIA opposes the project of a Michigan publication and sends representatives to Ann Arbor to stop the project.

August 1958. The CIA pirate edition is printed by Mouton in The Hague.

September 1958. Distribution of the “Mouton” edition at the Brussels Universal Fair. Edmund Wilson receives the page proofs of Doctor Zhivago sent to him by the University of Michigan Press.

October 1958. Feltrinelli is informed of the Michigan project to publish Doctor Zhivago and threatens a lawsuit.

Summer/Fall 1958. The University of Michigan consults several legal firms to find out whether they can proceed with the publication of Doctor Zhivago.

November 1958. Pantheon Press (through Kurt Wolff) attacks the morality of the University of Michigan Press. President Hatcher replies to Kurt Wolff.

November 1958. Doctor Zhivago is serialized in Russian by the New York Daily Novoe Russkoe Slovo.

December 1958. An agreement is reached between Feltrinelli and the University of Michigan Press.

February 2, 1959. The first authorized edition of Doctor Zhivago in Russian is published by the University of Michigan Press. It originated from the text composed for the CIA edition but the text was reset, again by Rausen Brothers, with different Cyrillic fonts than those used for the CIA edition published by Mouton. Israel Rausen in 1967 reminisced that it took four typesetters “working day and night” to produce the Michigan edition (Alliluyeva Book in Russian, too; 21 June 1967, NY Times)

A full list of the documents from the Niehuss folder is given at the end of the post and I have numbered them chronologically for ease of reference. Items accompanied by a * indicate that a copy of the same document is also found in the Pasternak files at the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan or is available in other archives (Kurt Wolff, Feltrinelli etc.)

Let’s proceed chronologically with the earliest dated item in the folder.

1. Morrow, Wieck and Watkins

The first item to be discussed ([1]) is a letter from Morrow to Wieck dated July 14, 1958. The date seems however wrong and a penciled correction writes “June” in place of “July”.

The letter is obviously a reply to a set of questions posed by Wieck in a previous, now unavailable, letter. It is also clear that this set of questions followed Morrow’s proposal of publication made to Wieck as director of the University of Michigan Press.

Morrow informs Wieck that the photocopy of Doctor Zhivago reached him by US mail, just like the photocopy for a previous book by Djilas he had been involved with. Legal problems of copyright had emerged also for the Djilas’ book and Morrow declares that he had been unable to satisfy the Harcourt lawyers so that its publication was overruled by Jovanovich of Harcourt, Brace & Co. Then he gives the following advice to Wieck, who had probably raised concerns about the copyright issue:

If you have to reassure the University’s attorneys, please tell them that a Soviet citizen’s book or manuscript has no standing under U.S. copyright law. (Which should not, of course, stop you from putting the usual copyright notice on the book.)

Wieck had apparently asked whether a publication of the Russian original of Doctor Zhivago would hurt the “liberal” underground in the USSR. Morrow in his letter to Wieck says that publication of the Russian original would be a “dramatic blow on their behalf” and that this will lead to more manuscripts coming out of the USSR.

Mention was also made of a new collection of Slavic texts proposed by Michael Ginzburg (died 1982), a professor of Slavic at Indiana University (see a short biography here). Morrow stated that Ginszburg knew nothing about the Zhivago typescript and told Wieck: “I must remind you that this must remain between ourselves as long as possible”. In the final part of the letter Morrow puts pressure on Wieck to take on the project of publication, for “otherwise it goes to Ginzburg”.

Before continuing with the contents of this letter, I will make some comments on the part we just discussed.

From this letter, one can obtain a fairly precise date as to when Morrow proposed the project to Wieck. This contact took place much later than previously thought, namely towards the very end of Spring (if 14 June is correct, as I will argue later) or even in summer (if 14 July is correct, which I do not believe it is). Morrow says to Wieck that he had received the typescript by US mail but the CIA documents do not support Morrow’s claim. A CIA document dated June 28, 1958 indicates that the very first meeting between the CIA and Morrow took place on June 9 in New York. At this stage, Morrow did not have yet have a copy of the typescript. The same document indicates the intention to meet again on June 12 at which time the Russian manuscript would be turned over to Morrow (whose name is redacted in the CIA documents). A later document, dated June 30 gives a report of meetings in New York on June 11-12 and from it, the precise date and time of the handing to Morrow of a copy of the Russian typescript of Doctor Zhivago appears: 11 a.m. on June 12. A contract was signed on June 19 between a lawyer in New York “acting as agent for certain undisclosed principals” [i.e. the CIA] and Felix Morrow. The first clause of the contract says: “1. You hereby acknowledge receipt from the undersigned of a manuscript copy of a literary work entitled “Dr. Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak”.

Thus, from the CIA documents it appears that Morrow was given the photocopy of the typescript of Doctor Zhivago in person in New York on June 12. I am uncertain as to why Morrow told Wieck that he had gotten it by US mail but it is quite possible that at this stage of the negotiations Morrow did not want to disclose all the details of the operation with Wieck.

A CIA document dated June 20, 1958, also clarifies that Morrow had by that date already been in touch with the University of Michigan Press (redacted in the document but easily recognizable). The CIA agents were annoyed at Morrow and reminded him that “he was under no authority” to make such contacts and to even have checked with the University of Michigan Press. This is very strong evidence for dating the letter from Morrow to Wieck to June 14 and I will take this as the date of the letter. Details about typesetting the book are included in the contract between the CIA and Morrow dated June 19. They coincide with the description of the typesetting discussed next in the letter to Wieck.

On June 14, Morrow informs Wieck that the typesetting of Pasternak’s book has begun. He provides specific details about the typesetting (10 on 12 23 picas wide, 40 lines to a page including folio) and estimates that the book should be about 560 pages when printed. We are also informed that the presswork and binding would be done by the McKibben [sic for McKibbin] bindery from where they would issue about August 7. These are very interesting details about the production of the CIA edition and its timeline that were unknown before. We know of course that the printing was not done in the United States but in Europe. However, printed page proofs were prepared in the United States, as we shall see.

Morrow continued his letter by explaining that his interest in seeing the book published by a University Press was that “it throws the spotlight on U.S. education in contrast to Soviet education, on American freedom in contrast to Soviet totalitarism.”

Then the typesetters, already known to us from previous investigations, are named: The Rausen Brothers (see Mancosu 2013, p. 115). Their “self-sacrifice” and other “very close figuring”, Morrow continued, will allow the price of book to be kept at $5.00. The Rausen Brothers are also described by Morrow as those who were in charge of all the United Nations work in Russian.

Finally, Morrow concludes his letter to Wieck with a specific business offer for the production of the book (number of copies, royalties etc.) with the University of Michigan Press. He concluded by saying:

“I think this answers all your questions. Please let me know immediately whether you can accept. Otherwise it goes to Ginzburg”.

All in all, this is a very remarkable document. With the exception of a very short letter dated October 26, 1958, this is the only letter we have from Morrow to Wieck and a central one as it clarifies much about the early stages of the project of the Michigan edition and the concurrent project of production for the CIA edition. In particular, it also shows that Morrow’s retrospective account of his role in the story is at times misleading. For instance, Morrow wrote to Proffer in 1980 (see Mancosu 2013, p. 116) that he had contacted his friend Wieck after months of frustration because the CIA would not move on the project. It was hardly so: his first meeting with the CIA took place on June 9 and by June 14 he was already replying to Wieck’s queries on the project. Another example of Morrow’s misrepresentation of the facts is that he told Proffer that one of his conditions for accepting the task of producing Doctor Zhivago for the CIA was that he would not receive any money for it. Hardly so: the CIA documents show that he played hard ball on the financial arrangements.

The second item ([2]) in chronological order also involves Felix Morrow. Edwin Watkins, then associate director of the University of Michigan Press, received a phone call from an alarmed Felix Morrow on June 24. Morrow said that the secrecy of the project of the typesetting of Doctor Zhivago (and, we could add, the entire secrecy of the CIA project) had been compromised. Morrow had discovered that Professor Ernest J. Simmons (Columbia University) knew that the typesetting firm in charge of typesetting Doctor Zhivago was Rausen Brothers. The source of the leak, Morrow added, was a telephone conversation between the University of Michigan Press and Prof. Simmons on June 20. (Incidentally, this provides further evidence that the letter discussed above from Morrow to Wieck is indeed to be dated June 14.) Morrow gave possible scenarios that could have emerged as a consequence of the failure of secrecy: Perhaps Pasternak’s book would now be published by the Russians, or perhaps some magazines would go ahead and serialize Doctor Zhivago before the Michigan edition could be produced. He thus decided that given the uncertainties of the case, he could no longer enter into a legal binding agreement for publication with University of Michigan Press “so as not to involve The University of Michigan Press in the possible unpleasant consequences”. But once again, Morrow’s behavior is not transparent. On June 19 (see the CIA document dated June 20) he had been chastised by the CIA for having been in contact with the University of Michigan Press without having had any authorization to do so. Perhaps it dawned on him that he could not sign a contract with the University of Michigan Press and got out of the predicament using the leak as an excuse.

Watkins replied that they would still go ahead with the preparation of an introduction by Professor Deming Brown (see section 2) and with the preparation of dust jackets for the book. But he added that obviously “no further step could be taken toward incorporating either Professor Brown’s preface or our imprint in the text – or using our jackets on the book – until we were able to determine the authenticity of the text and had a contractual agreement for publication of the book under our imprint.”

This text also adds remarkable information. No other source had indicated that the production of the typesetting of the (CIA) book had been discovered by Prof. Simmons nor that this had led Morrow to back off from the project of signing a publication contract with The University of Michigan Press. Also unknown was the fact that Deming Brown had been approached to write an introduction for the volume (the printed edition by University of Michigan Press published in 1959 does not contain an introduction). The issue about the dust jackets is unfortunately too vague to allow any definite inference. In Mancosu 2013, I have observed that dust jackets (such as the one represented in the first picture occurring in this post) were added to later reprints of the Michigan edition but in any case no earlier than the middle of 1960. It is however possible, that at this early stage the plan was to have dust jackets for the book.

2. July 1958: The receipt of the page proofs and Deming Brown

The next three items ([3]-[5]) date from July 1958. They show that University of Michigan Press had lost no time in working on the project.

A document ([3]) dated July 25, 1958 informs us that Reproduction Page Proofs were at the University of Michigan Press on that date. The proofs are described as follows:

MS pages 1-634 plus contents (1 pg)

(FM: halftitle, title, “Book One”, “Book Two”, 2 pp. Preface (pp. 5&6); incl. in numbering.)

These proofs correspond in numbering to those found in the Edmund Wilson’s Papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale. The latter are our only remaining copy of a Michigan set of proofs before the resetting with change of Cyrillic fonts that was carried out in December 1958 (see Mancosu 2013, p. 122). They are also in agreement with the “Mouton” edition although they are obviously not the final version (see section 4). Of interest is the reference to the two-page preface. In the Mouton edition it is dated August 2, 1958. But its presence here on July 25 shows that it was written earlier. Indeed, a CIA document (dated July 8 1958) shows that the two-page preface was ready on July 8.

On the very same day (July 25; see [4]), Wieck wrote to a certain Mr. David Miller in New York “to acknowledge receipt, today, of one set of reproduction pageproofs of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternak”. The address for Mr. Miller is given as 147 West 15^th Street, New York 11, New York. This could simply be Mr Miller’s personal address, as it does not correspond to the 1958 address of Rausen Bros. (142E 32 St. NY 16) or of George McKibbin and Son bookbinders (87 34^th, Brooklyn, NY). But the sending of reproduction pageproofs had no doubt been arranged by Morrow and I conjecture that Mr Miller worked for Rausen Bros. (or McKibbin).

Professor Deming Brown (1919-1999), Chair of the department of Slavic languages and literature, University of Michigan, 1957-1961, wrote to Wieck (see [5]) on July 28 that he had “read through and compared, paragraph for paragraph, the page proofs of the Russian edition of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and the galley proofs of the English edition by Pantheon.” The Pantheon edition of Doctor Zhivago in English came out in September 1958. The University of Michigan Press was of course worried about the quality of the typescript that Morrow had been able to furnish them. Was it the integral text? Were there differences from the one that had been used by Feltrinelli to publish his Italian edition? Wieck consulted Brown and the latter’s expertise removed any doubts as to the quality of the Russian text.

Brown stated that there was no doubt in his mind that “they [the Pantheon text and the Russian typescript] are one and the same article”. Assuming that the Pantheon edition was a faithful reproduction of the typescript that Pasternak had sent to Italy, Brown concluded that the University of Michigan “can publish this Russian edition with complete assurance of its authenticity”. Brown had been able to present the University of Michigan Press with his expertise quite rapidly. I conjecture that he returned the page proofs to Wieck because soon after Wieck sent page proofs to Edmund Wilson (see section 4).

3. The contacts between the CIA and the University of Michigan Press

The next set of items ([6], [8], [9], [11]) concerns the contacts between the University of Michigan Press and a representative of the CIA, Edwin E. Meader. We know from later testimony by Morrow (see Mancosu 2013, p. 116) that “the CIA sent one emissary after another to Wieck and Hatcher, who stood their ground and refused to agree to the urging of the CIA that we not publish the book”. In “The Zhivago Affair” (2014, p. 135), P. Finn and P. Couvée cite a document of the CIA dated September 2, 1958, and titled “Report of Trip to [the University of Michigan] Regarding Publication of Doctor Zhivago” indicating that “an officer from the Soviet Russia Division and a second CIA official flew to Michigan to meet with Harlan Hatcher, the President of the University of Michigan”. The date of the trip is indicated as August 25. The whereabouts of this document remain mysterious. Finn and Couvée cite it in the same way as all the other documents released and posted on line by the CIA in 2014. But I searched in vain for it in the CIA documents posted on line. [Added on 8/21/2023: I had requested the document from the Information and Privacy Coordinator of the CIA on April 13, 2023; it arrived today, August 21. I see no need to change the post except for adding the document. The reader can have fun trying to fill out the censored parts. The document is actually dated September 3]

In any case, there are two further documents that contain approximately the same information. The first is dated November 25 1958 and the second 3 February 1959. I will report the text from the first, filling out in square brackets information that is censored in the original document.

7. In June 1958, discussions were held with [Morrow] and the latter stated that he could arrange to have the typesetting completed by 1 August 1958. Representatives of the Commercial Division and the Legal Counselors Office assisted SR in drawing up a contract and in providing us with a New York laywer, xxxx, who was to represent the agency in this project. According to the final contract which was signed by xxx and [Morrow] the latter was to arrange for the typesetting and manufacture of reproduction proofs and to find and designate a European publisher.

8. [Morrow] completed his first two tasks, but he did not find a European publisher. Contrary to instructions given to him, he contacted [xxx xxx] copy of our reproduction proofs to [University of Michigan Press]. Upon learning of this, [Morrow] was told that we were deeply concerned about his breach of contract and unethical conduct. He was asked to get the set of reproduction proofs back xxx as soon as possible.

9. Efforts were made to prevent [Un. of Mich. Press] from using our reproduction proofs, and if possible, to prevent or delay any publication of Dr. Zhivago in Russian language. In August 1958, a representative of SR went out [to University of Michigan] and held discussions with [Harlan Hatcher]. In these discussions, the following reasons were given for not wanting [Michigan] to publish the book:

a. Publication of the Russian edition of Dr. Zhivago in the U.S. would lessen the effectiveness of the book and would seriously harm relations of the U.S. with other governments involved in this operation.

b. The author, Pasternak, specifically requested that the book not be published in the United States for his personal safety and other reasons.

c. If the book were published by [University of Michigan] the Italian publisher, Feltrinelli, who holds all publishing rights, could bring suit. Lawyers in the publishing business had advised us that Feltrinelli would have good grounds to bring suit against xxx.

d. We had reason to believe that [University of Michigan] was given reproduction proofs in an unorthodox manner and that these proofs are in fact the property of the U.S. Government.

Finn and Couvée (2014, pp. 170-171) summarized the CIA document dated September 3, 1958, 3 as follows:

“On August 25, an officer from the Soviet Russia Division and a second CIA official flew to Michigan to meet with Harlan Hatcher, the president of the University of Michigan. The Soviet Russia Division officer had been given a series of talking points prepared at headquarters in Washington, a series of temporary buildings on the south side of the reflecting pool on the National Mall.

The CIA officer told Hatcher that the U.S. government had been “instrumental” in arranging the publication of Doctor Zhivago in Russian. “It is felt,” the CIA officer told Hatcher, “that to have the greatest psychological impact upon Soviet readers the Russian edition of this book should be published in Europe and not in the United States. To accomplish this, the U.S. government has made certain commitments to foreign governments. “The CIA officer also emphasized that “Pasternak specifically requested that the book not be published in the United States for his personal safety and other reasons. We have made every effort to honor the author’s petition.” The officer said that the CIA believed the University of Michigan Press got the proofs in “an unorthodox manner” and that they were, in fact, “the property of the U.S. government.”

Hatcher was sympathetic and saw no reason why the publication of Doctor Zhivago couldn’t be delayed at least until after it was published in Europe. The two officers met Wieck, the editorial director, the following day. They asked if they could examine the Michigan copy of Doctor Zhivago to compare it against the CIA’s page proofs they had brought with them. The comparison was made with a magnifying glass and there was no dispute: they were identical. After some negotiation, the University of Michigan Press agreed to hold off on any announcement of its plans to publish Doctor Zhivago until the agency’s edition appeared in Europe.”

The documents in the Niehuss folder provide further details. They date from after the trip of the CIA officials to discuss the matter with the representatives of the University of Michigan.

First we have a short letter [6] (sent to a P.O. Box address in Detroit) from Wieck to Edwin E. Meader dated September 5. Wieck sends Meader a copy of a press release they have in mind for the Michigan edition of Doctor Zhivago. In the folder there is only the cover letter but not the copy of the press release. Then on October 3 (document [8]), Wieck writes to Niehuss informing him that he has received the bound copy of Doctor Zhivago with the imprint “Feltrinelli”. This was the “Mouton” edition fabricated by the CIA. Wieck wrote to Niehuss: “This edition, reproduced by offset, is a very unattractive piece of bookmaking, and I should not wish to photograph it even if everyone concerned were to encourage me to do so.” He also told Niehuss that the text was being checked for typos and other alterations. The goal was to establish a “flawless” text and reset the entire book so as to produce a proper book. He concluded that he would keep Mr Meader informed. Incidentally, Tobin 2000, p. 13, mixes up the arrival of the Mouton edition with the “page proofs”. But as we have seen the page proofs had arrived on July 25.

On the same day, October 3, Wieck wrote to Meader (letter sent to a P.O. Box address in Detroit; document [9]) informing him that he had received the copy of Doctor Zhivago with the Feltrinelli imprint (what we call the “Mouton edition”): “If you forgive me for saying so, the edition before me is not handsome”. Wieck informed Meader that “within a day or two we shall have completed arrangements for having the text checked in detail for typographical errors and other flaws that require correction and to have fresh type set. I should like our edition to be in a different typeface from that of Feltrinelli, to differ from it in page size and the like, and to be more handsome.” He concluded by saying: “I shall always be happy to keep you informed of our progress.”.

Mr Meader was representing the CIA in the interactions with the University of Michigan Press.

In order to clarify Edwin Meader’s role we need to move to the next document ([11]), an internal memo from Wieck to Niehuss, dated October 13, urging Niehuss to talk to President Hatcher and to obtain approval for the publication plan. The most important part of this memo is the first part, which summarizes the contacts with Mr. Meader. It shows that that it was at the insistence of the CIA that the book was reset and that the CIA had agreed to a publication by University of Michigan Press only after the appearance of the (CIA) edition in Europe.

Relations with Mr. Meader. In mid-September, the University agreed at Mr. Meader’s request, first, that it would delay publication of its edition of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO until the European edition sponsored by Mr. Meader’s principals had appeared, and second, that it would not reproduce the typography of that edition. On October 3, I received from the managing editor of Novoe Russkoe Slovo [Mark Weinbaum, P.M.], Russian language newspaper published in New York, a printed and bound copy of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO in Russian [the Mouton edition orchestrated by the CIA, P.M.], showing as publisher G. Feltrinelli, Milan, as date the year 1958. The copy contains no copyright notice, and no notice of the country of manufacture. Close inspection by Mr. Rausen, in whose print shop Mr. Meader’s edition has been set, shows it to have been reproduced by photo-offset from the type set by Mr. Rausen.

The appearance of this copy would seem conclusive evidence that the first concession made to Mr. Meader has been met. To meet the second, I have made arrangements to reset our edition in a style signally different from that of Mr. Meader’s edition.

I have informed Mr. Meader of this situation in a letter dated October 3, 1958, so far unanswered.

Who was Edwin E. Meader who has hitherto escaped detection in any of the writings related to the saga of the publication of Doctor Zhivago? Although tentatively, I think he could be identified with a professor of geography at Western Michigan University. See here for a biography. He was the brother of the Michigan congressman George Meader. Both had done intelligence work for the State Department. However, this is only conjectural and more work would need to be done to make a compelling case for the identification and to exclude that we might not be just dealing with a homonym.

Although not so important, the letter leaves unclear whether Rausen had checked the Mouton edition before it was sent to Wieck or whether Wieck had occasion to go to New York between October 3 and October 13 to check with Mr. Rausen that the Mouton edition was in fact that typeset by Rausen Brothers in New York.

We can thus set to mid-September/early October 1958 the decision on the part of the University of Michigan Press to go ahead with a resetting of the text. Contrary to what Morrow said in later remarks to Ellendea Proffer, it was not for “moral” reasons that Wieck had decided to reset the work entirely. The CIA had put pressure on the University of Michigan Press to that effect. Of course, after he saw the printed copy of the “Mouton” edition, Wieck might have also had aesthetic reasons to reset the work.

The editor of Novoe Russkoe Slovo was Mark Weinbaum (1890-1972), an American journalist of Ukrainian descent. In 1925, he became editor and co-owner of the influential daily Novoe russkoe slovo. The Mark Weinbaum papers are kept at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. His report on receiving the hard copies of the “Mouton” edition is published in Mancosu 2013, p. 121.

The remaining part of the memo has a section on legal issues concerning the copyright and Feltrinelli’s claim to control the copyright that I will not discuss because they are covered quite extensively in Mancosu 2013. An important bit of information however is that Wieck described Kyrill Schabert, president of Pantheon Press, as his personal friend. This is quite interesting in light of the exchange between Wolff and the University of Michigan Press to which I will return later. Finally, the third part of the memo concerned the need for a Michigan edition of Doctor Zhivago. In this section mention is made of the fact that Novoe Russkoe Slovo would like to acquire 200 copies of the books for distribution to its subscribers.

On October 23, 1958, Morrow wrote to Wieck ([14]) to request the return of a reproduction copy of Doctor Zhivago that he had left in Wieck’s possession. This letter was not in the Pasternak files at Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan but it is luckily preserved here in the Niehuss folder. Wieck’s letter to Cumminskey ([*15]) clarifies that the item had been sent (“it was he [Morrow] who sent us the material mentioned in the letter”) and the item in question was without doubt the reproduction of the page proofs sent in July to Wieck by Mr. Miller in New York. This information is reported at the end of [*17] and in Mancosu 2013 this was an essential piece of the evidence that was used to establish the connection between the CIA edition and the Michigan edition.

I will skip the starred documents ([*12], [*13], [*16], [*18] [*19]), involving the legal issues concerning copyright as they are extensively discussed in Mancosu 2013.

The next item of interest [20] is a statement by Novoe Russkoe Slovo written in connection to Kurt Wolff’s accusations of immorality against the University of Michigan Press. I have recounted the episode in Mancosu 2013, pp. 147-152. Wolff had accused the University of Michigan Press to have licenced Novoe Russkoe Slovo’s publication of the novel in serialized form. Harlan Hatcher in his reply to Wolff (see Mancosu 2013, pp. 150-151; Wolff’s press release is dated October 29, 1958) denied that the University of Michigan Press had licensed any newspaper to serialize the work. The memo by Novoe Russkoe Slovo is a three-page memo dated November 3, 1958, that I believe was never published. It was certainly written by Mark Weinbaum. The most important aspect of it is that it clarifies a matter on which Hatcher’s reply to Wolff remains unclear. The statement by Novoe Russkoe Slovo clarifies that they had “secured” the text from the University of Michigan Press but that no licence had been granted because the Press made it clear to them that “it had no property rights in it, was in no way in a position to give us permission to publish it, would of course take no payment for it, but would be glad to make it available to Novoe Russkoe Slovo and other responsible newspapers or public information agencies”. The rest of the document contained sustained polemic against Feltrinelli’s (alleged) resistance to the publication of the Russian text.

4. Edmund Wilson.

It is virtually certain that the reproduction page proofs discussed in section 2 is the same set of reproduction page proofs that Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) states (see [7]) were sent to him by Wieck on September 4, 1958. On September 12, 1958, Wilson wrote to Helen Muchnic: “I have the Russian text of the Pasternak novel.” (Collection Edmund Wilson letters to Helen Muchnic, Box 1, folder 10, Princeton). I wrote extensively on Wilson’s engagement with Doctor Zhivago (see Mancosu 2013 and 2016). In Mancosu 2013 (footnote 40, p. 122), I had conjectured, that Wilson had received the reproduction proofs from Wieck and the conjecture is now confirmed by the card from Wilson to Wieck ([7]), posted on October 2, 1958:

From Edmund Wilson

Wellfleet

Cape Cod, Massachussetts

Dear Mr Wieck,

I have been correcting the errors in the page proofs of Pasternak. Would you like me

I have received the pageproofs mailed by you on September 4, 1958.

Signed

to send you a list? There seem to be also a few mistakes in the typewritten text which I suppose you are now checking the proofs. Please let me know whether and when you plan to bring the book out. I want to mention it in my review.”

Sincerely, Edmund Wilson

During the early part of summer 1958, Wilson had been able to work with a photocopy of the Russian text of Feltrinelli’s manuscript, which Kurt Wolff at Pantheon Press had lent him in June 1958 (letter from Wolff to Wilson dated June 23, 1958, kept in the Edmund Wilson papers at Beinecke Library, Yale) and after he had sent back that copy he was able to get a copy of the typescript from Wieck in September. As I pointed out in Zhivago’s Secret Journey, Felix Morrow was trying to get, in June 1958, the copy of the Russian text that was in Wilson’s hands (i.e. the one sent him by Pantheon) in order to compare it to the version he had been given by the CIA. In a letter to Isaiah Berlin, dated December 29, 1958, Wilson quite amusingly complained about Morrow pestering him: “At the time I had the photostats of the Russian text [i.e. those sent him by Pantheon in June 1958], I used to get nocturnal GPU- type calls from an old Trotskyist now employed by the University of Michigan Press trying to make me give it up to them so that they could check by it a version that they had and that they wanted to bring out” (Mancosu 2016, p. 130, footnote 8; original in Bodleian Library, MS. Berlin 155, fol. 300).

Wieck replied on October 7 [document 10] saying that he could not offer a precise date of publication but added that saying that the book would appear “shortly” would do.

The remaining documents ([21] to [32]) are in one way or another already covered in Mancosu 2013 or add nothing of great relevance to the story.

Conclusion.

The Niehuss folder on Doctor Zhivago greatly increases our understanding of the events surrounding the publication by the University of Michigan Press of Pasternak’s epic novel.

Acknowledgments. I am grateful to James Tobin for his informative article and for his helpfulness in email correspondence. Many thanks also to the archivists of the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan for reproducing the Niehuss folder and for further help with my research.

Bibliography.

Unpublished sources

CIA documents on Doctor Zhivago, FOIA, available here.

Edmund Wilson to Elen Muchnic, Collection Edmund Wilson letters to Helen Muchnic, Box 1, folder 10, Princeton

Marvin Niehuss Papers, folder “Press, University of Michigan (1958-1959)”, Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan. (For a full list of the documents see below)

Pasternak files, Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor

Published sources

Finn, P., and Couvée, P., 2014, The Zhivago Affair, Pantheon, NY.

Mancosu, P., 2013, Inside the Zhivago Storm, Feltrinelli, Milan.

Mancosu, P., 2016, Zhivago’s Secret Journey, Hoover Press, Stanford.

Tobin, J., 2020, “Doctor Zhivago comes to Michigan”, The Connector [University of Michigan Library], available online here.

Full list of the documents contained in the Niehuss folder.

[1] Felix Morrow to Fred Wieck, [Penciled: June] July 14, 1958. [2 pages]

[2] Edwin Watkins, Transcript of a telephone conversation with Felix Morrow on the Russian language edition of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, June 24, 1958. [2 pages]

[3] Document dated July 25, 1958 concerning Reproduction Page Proofs of Doctor Zhivago. [1 page]

[4] Fred Wieck to David Miller, July 25, 1958. [1 page]

[5] Deming Brown to Fred Wieck, July 28, 1958. [1 page]

[6] Fred Wieck to Edwin Meader, September 5, 1958. [1 page]

[7] Edmund Wilson to Fred Wieck, October 2, 1958. [1 page]

[8] Fred Wieck to Marvin Niehuss, October 3, 1958. [1 page; 2 copies]

[9] Fred Wieck to Edwin Meader, October 3, 1958. [1 page]

[10] Fred Wieck to Edmund Wilson, October 7 [1 page]

[11] Fred Wieck to Marvin Niehuss, October 13, 1958. [1 page cover letter + 3 page report re “Russian language edition of Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago; 2 copies: total 8 pages]

*[12]Weil, Gosthal and Manges to Fred Wieck, July 18, 1958. [1 page]

*[13]Weil, Gosthal and Manges to Fred Wieck, July 28, 1958. [1 page; 2 copies]

[14] Felix Morrow to Fred Wieck, October 23, 1958. [1 page]

*[15] Fred Wieck to Edmund Cummiskey, October 28, 1958. [1 page]

*[16]Weil, Gosthal and Manges to Fred Wieck, October 29, 1958. [1 page; 3 copies]

*[17] Pantheon Books, Press Release, October 29, 1958. [1 page; 2 copies]

*[18] E. A. Cummiskey to M. L. Niehuss, Memo on legal issues related to Doctor Zhivago, October 30, 1958. [2 pages]

*[19] Giangiacomo Feltrinelli to Fred Wieck, October 30, 1959. [2 pages, in Italian; + translation into English (received at the University of Michigan Press on November 21, 1958), 2 pages]

[20] Statement of Novoe Russkoe Slovo answering Pantheon Books, November 3, 1958. [3 pages]

*[21] Memo received from Professor Deming Brown, November 4, 1958. [1 page]

*[22] Kurt Wolff to Harlan Thatcher [sic for Hatcher], November 12, 1958. [2 pages]

*[23] Announcement and articles from Publishers’ Weekly, November 10, 1958, pp. 11-12; 19-20; 29-30; 41-42. [8 pages]

[24] Fred Wieck to Marvin Niehuss, November 12, 1958. [1 page cover letter accompanying the enclosures in the previous entry]

[25] Statement of University of Michigan Press in reply to Pantheon Press. [undated draft; 1 page]

*[26] Butzel, Eaman, Long, Gust and Kennedy to Edmund Cummiskey, November 13, 1958, [2 pages]

[27] Meg Greenfield to the Director of Public Relations at University of Michigan, November 16, 1958. [1 page]

[28] Fred Wieck to Meg Greenfield, November 20, 1958. [1 page]

[29] Harlan Hatcher to Kurt Wolff, November 20, 1958. [draft; 1 page; 2 copies]

[30] John Lewis to Harlan Hatcher, December 1, 1958. [2 pages]

[31] Legal agreement between Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and the Regents of the University of Michigan, [Received by Marvin Niehuss on December 5, 1958]. [6 pages]

[32] Fred Wieck to Harlan Hatcher, January 19, 1959. [1 page]

In Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates (Hoover Press, 2015), pp. 48-65, and in a previous post in 2016 (click here), I chronicled the legal battle that opposed the Editorial Noguer of Barcelona, which had obtained from the Italian publisher Feltrinelli the rights for publishing Doctor Zhivago in Spanish, and a number of publishers and distributors in South America, which had published translations or digests of Doctor Zhivago without acquiring the rights. In those contributions, I also remarked that one of the publishers in question was “Ediciones Graphos” about which I had been unable to find out anything (see Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates, p. 62).

Recently I came into possession a copy of a digest of Doctor Zhivago that bears the imprint “Ediciones Graphos” and in this note I would like to provide some information about it and how it relates to the digest published by “Editora Quetzal”, which I had already discussed in the aforementioned publications.

Despite the fact that one digest carries no indication of place of publication and the other states to have been published in Guatemala, all the evidence points to publications printed in Argentina. For this reason I will speak of two Argentinian digests.

            The digest published by “Ediciones Graphos” (this is the name used in the cover page) with the title “Boris Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago” seems to be exceedingly rare. In ten years of bibliographical searches of publications of Doctor Zhivago, I have only encountered a single copy of it, which I bought through mercadolibre.com.ar in Argentina (see acknowledgements below). Moreover, I found no trace of it in the catalogues of any libraries and even worldcat.org does not know of its existence. The title page says “Boris Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago. Novela” and gives the publisher as “Editorial Graphos” and 1958 as date of publication. The copyright page claims copyright for “Editorial Graphos”. There is no indication of where the book was printed. The back cover gives the price of the edition as $25 (25 Argentinian pesos). What follows is a lengthy introductory section structured as follows:

Prólogo (pp. 5-7) signed by “El traductor” (but no name is given).

La obra (pp. 9-11), unsigned

El autor (pp. 13-16), unsigned

El escándalo (pp. 17-24), unsigned

Then we have the digest of Doctor Zhivago structured in eleven small chapters:

Jura; Lara; Pasa; La caída; Rodja; El árbol de Navidad; A Varykino; Los guerrilleros del bosque; El regreso; Adiós!; La muerte

The digest starts at page 27 and ends at page 93 (the total number of pages is 95). There are no poems at the end.

The copy I own has the owner’s name and the date of acquisition: “16.12.58”. This gives us an upper bound for the publication. Since the introductory material discusses the Nobel scandal and an article published in Time on November 10, 1958, it is safe to assume that it was not printed earlier than mid-November 1958.

“Editorial Graphos” seems to be a pirate publisher with only this publication to its credit. The side of the book carries the number “1” as if this is the first publication of some prospected collection that in all likelihood never had a number “2” following it. While the preface mentions translations of Doctor Zhivago into Italian, English, French and German it also claims that at the time of writing, the Spanish version was only at the stage of preparation (however the Noguer edition came out at some point in November 1958). No claim is made anywhere that the translation was made from the Russian.

            The second digest was published by “Editora Quetzal” (also a publisher which seems to have only one publication to its credit!). It is a booklet of 95 pages. According to the book’s colophone, it was printed on November 20, 1958, by Hartug Bros. in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. It was obviously distributed in Argentina and perhaps other Latin American countries. The back cover lists prices for most South American countries and a price of $30 (30 Argentinian pesos) for Argentina. It claimed to be a digest carried out on the original Russian by Gabriel Jimenez Correa. I will provide evidence below to show that the digest published by “Editora Quetzal” is a revised edition of the one published by “Editorial Graphos”. Thus, I will speak of a first and a second edition of the same digest.

            Despite the alleged difference in the publisher’s name, the contents of the two digests are very similar, indeed almost identical. The second edition adds “Premio Nobel 1958” in the cover page. Let us now look at the major differences between the two editions. The covers differ in graphic work, as the reader can see from the two pictures I am posting. The edition by “Editora Quetzal” has flaps for the main cover which provide some bibliographical information on Pasternak. This explains why the section “El autor”, present in the “Graphos” edition and based on lengthy excerpts from articles by Moravia (named) and Gerd Ruge (unnamed), is no longer contained in the introductory material.

            The copyright page of the Quetzal edition explicitly mentions the translator whereas the “Graphos” edition makes no mention of it. Moreover, the “Graphos” edition did not claim that the work was translated directly from the Russian whereas the “Quetzal” edition does. It says: “Traducción directa del ruso: Licenciado Gabriel Jimenez Correa”. The latter change might have been made to try to forestall legal problems with the publishers that had acquired rights of translation for other European languages (such as Feltrinelli and Noguer). The copyright in the “Graphos” edition is claimed by “Editorial Graphos” and the copyright in the“Quetzal” edition is claimed by “Editora Quetzal”. The title page of the “Quetzal” edition, unlike the “Graphos” edition, says “(Versión compendiada)” i.e. it makes explicit that what it presents is a digest and adds “(Premio Nobel 1958)”.

            Concerning the introductory material, two things are immediately obvious. First, the “Quetzal” edition cuts the section “El autor” and the introductory material is as follows:

Prólogo (pp. 7-9) signed by “El editor” (in the Graphos edition it said “El traductor”).

La Obra (pp. 11-13), unsigned

El escándalo (pp. 15-20), unsigned.

Second, there are major cuts to the sections “Prólogo”, “La Obra” and “El escándalo”. In the part dedicated to the Nobel Prize scandal, lengthy citations by José Maria Velasco Ibarra and by Pablo Neruda are removed.

In a few cases, an additional paragraph is found in the “Quetzal edition” (see for instance the very end of the digest, p. 89 of the “Quetzal” edition).

The list of chapters summarizing Doctor Zhivago is the same in the two digests but the “Quetzal edition” adds a chapter with poems (“Hospital”, “Hamlet”, “I would like”). Also in this case we occasionally find a new paragraph in the Quetzal edition.

Finally, several typos present in the “Graphos” edition have been corrected in the “Quetzal” edition (see for instance the title of chapter 3 that changes from “Pasa” to “Pasha”) and small corrections to the text have been made and new paragraph breaks have been introduced.

We now have to look into the sources of the two digests. First of all, the problem of which language they were translated from. The Quetzal edition claims the book to be a translation from the Russian. But this sounds like a fishy claim for a digest. At best one could state that the summary was carried out on the original Russian text of the novel. However, one possibility is that the Argentinian digests were based on a digest in Russian that was published in the journal Posev (published in Frankfurt) in four installments (numbers 46, 47, 48, 49) between November 16 and December 7, 1958. The journal Posev was published by the anti-bolshevik group NTS. The four installments were also collected into a booklet published in 1958 with a cover page containing the name “B. Pasternak”, followed by “Doktor Zhivago” with a subtitle referring to the summary given in Posev (see picture). Could this have been the source of the summary and hence the original Russian text from which the Argentinian digests were translated? A careful comparison of the Russian digest with the Argentinian ones leads me to exclude this to be the case. However, I do not mean to exclude the possibility that the Russian digest (even before its publication in Frankfurt) might have been known to those who published the Argentinian digests and might have given them inspiration for doing the same. But the divergences between them is too obvious to speak of the Spanish texts as deriving from the Russian text. Not only the titles of the chapters are different (those in the Russian digest follow the original titles in Doctor Zhivago whereas the Argentinian digests do not and they are fewer in number, 11 vs. 14) but the contents are visibly different. The only exception is the lengthy quotation of the first page of Doctor Zhivago in all of these digests but that is not enough to claim that the Argentinian digests originated from the Russian one. Indeed, a simple comparison of the first page of the Spanish texts, i.e. the one that contains a full translation of the first page of the novel, shows without a shadow of a doubt that the translation of the Argentinian digests was carried out not on a Russian source but on the Italian translation of the novel that had appeared in 1957.

            The “Ediciones Graphos” digest does not contain any poems (whereas the Russian digest contains the entire cycle of the Zhivago poems). By contrast, the “Quetzal” digest includes three poems only one of which, Hamlet, stems from the Zhivago poems. The other two “Hospital” and “I would like” are plagiarized from previous translations by Susana Soca, a Uruguayan poetess. Indeed, “Hospital” (with the title “Casa de Salud”) and “I would like” (“Yo quisiera”) were published in the issues 10-11 of Susana Soca’s journal “Entregas de la Licorne” in 1957 (for the relation between Susana Soca and Boris Pasternak click here). The “Quetzal” edition reproduces the translation verbatim without acknowledging the source or the translators. For the translations by Soca see here.

            That is how much I have been able to establish concerning these two pirate Argentinian digests. One could of course speculate as to whether these pirate publications were the result of covert aid by entities interested in using Doctor Zhivago in the cultural cold war (Posev and NTS certainly did receive such help!; see Tromly 2019) or whether they were the fruit of attempts at obtaining financial gain from the international visibility enjoyed by Doctor Zhivago on account of the award of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak. As we know nothing about the people who were behind these publications, the matter must rest until new documents become available.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank Lazar Fleishman for insightful conversations on the digests and for drawing my attention to the Posev publication. Many thanks also to Gabriela Fulugonio (Buenos Aires) who, upon my request, promptly bought on mercadolibre.com.ar what turned out to be the “Editorial Graphos” digest.

Bibliography.

Entregas de la Licorne, 1957, vols. 9-10, Montevideo, Uruguay.

Mancosu, P., 2015, Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates, Hoover Press, Stanford. (Published also in Russian and Chinese translations.)

Pasternak, B., 1958a, Doctor Zhivago, Ediciones Graphos, [no city of publication]. (95 pp.)

Pasternak, B., 1958b, Doctor Zhivago, Editora Quetzal, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. (95 pp.)

Pasternak, B., 1958c, Doktor Zhivago v vyderzhkakh i poiasneniiakh, opublikovannykh v ezhenedel’nike Posev, No.no. 46, 47, 48, i 49 1958 g., Posev, [Frankfurt am M.]. (86 pp.)

Tromly, B., 2019. Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia, New York [NY], Oxford University Press.

I spent the academic year 2021-2022 in Paris as Chaire d’Excellence Internationale Blaise Pascal. While my major research project was on the history and philosophy of mathematical infinity, I still found time to pursue my work on Doctor Zhivago. It just so happened that one of the other Chaire Pascal (four in total for the year) was Leonid Livak who arranged for me to give a talk on my work on Doctor Zhivago on November 17, 2021 (“Zhivago’s Secret Journey: from typescript to book”; Université Paris-Sorbonne, Eur’ORBEM). Meanwhile, the Russian translation of my Zhivago’s Secret Journey came out in November 2021 and copies reached me in Paris in February 2022. The book was published by Azbukovnik. It was translated by Paul Borokhov under the editorial revision of Lazar Fleishman and Elena Vladimirovna Pasternak. A presentation of the book (with the participation of myself and Lazar Fleishman) took place in Moscow on December 5, 2021. The event can be seen here. In November 2021 I was also asked to participate in the program Atlantide directed by Andrea Purgatori for the Italian TV channel La7 in connection to the presentation of the book by Ezio Mauro “Lo scrittore senza nome: Mosca 1966: processo alla letteratura” (Feltrinelli 2021). The program can be seen here. My contribution starts around the 18th minute of the program.

During the year, I was lucky to have been welcome once again to the Maison Suger for my stay in Paris. I had spent shorter and longer periods at the Maison Suger since the early 2000 and I knew the director, Jean-Luc Lory, but only at a distance. However, this year something special happened. I mentioned my work on Doctor Zhivago and Jean-Luc  got excited about it. He generously suggested to the director of the Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Pascal Rouleau, that we should organize something. This led to a meeting on Pasternak and Doctor Zhivago at the Maison Suger that I organized on February 28, 2022, with talks by Georges Nivat, Luba Jurgenson and myself. Maurice Aymard introduced the meeting and acted as “modérateur”. You can listen to the three talks here.

In addition, we prepared a translation of a volume which I put together combining parts of my books “Inside the Zhivago Storm” (Feltrinelli 2013) and “Zhivago’s Secret Journey” (Hoover Press, 2016). A video interview with the author on the project, dated June 10, 2022, is found here.

These efforts resulted in the book “Le Voyage Secret du Docteur Jivago. Le Roman du Roman” which came out on November 17, 2022. Taking advantage of my return to Paris in December for closing the activities of the Chaire Pascal, the volume was presented at the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme on December 20.

The format was that of a conversation between Paolo Mancosu and Marjorie Bertin, a journalist at Radio France Internationale (rfi). After the conversation, there was an opportunity for the public to ask some questions and the event was followed by a convivial reception. You can see the video of the event by clicking here.

I would like to thank Jean-Luc Lory, Pascal Rouleau, Laura Olbert and Charlotte Solnitzki for their invaluable role in the production of the book. And Marjorie Bertin for her pleasant and insightful style during the interview.

I am pleased to announce the publication of my essay “Pasternak and Costello: What We Know and What We (Still) Don’t” published in Yasha Klots (ed.): Tamizdat: Publishing Russian Literature Across Borders. Peter Lang Verlag, 2021 (in print). (= Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Band 86), pp. 227-295.

The article details the relationship between Desmond Patrick Costello and Boris Pasternak. Costello was a diplomat who worked for the New Zealand Legation in Moscow from 1944 to 1950. During that period he befriended Boris Pasternak whose advice he solicited for the second edition of the Oxford Book of Russian Verse (first edition 1924; second edition 1948). In 1947, Pasternak asked Costello to translate the first version of Doctor Zhivago (an offer Costello declined) and in December 1948 he entrusted Costello (and his colleagues Doug and Ruth Lake at the New Zealand Legation in Moscow) with the typescript of the first four chapters of Doctor Zhivago for delivery to Pasternak’s sisters in Oxford. This was the first typescript of (the first four chapters of) Doctor Zhivago that left the USSR, the first step in the smuggling of several typescripts of the full version of Doctor Zhivago that followed in 1956-1957. Costello’s work in editing the Oxford Book of Russian Verse and in enabling the arrival of the first four chapters of Doctor Zhivago in Oxford in January 1949 is an important part of the history of tamizdat.

While referring to the article for more details, I would like to alert the reader that due to the complications arising from the closure of the OUP archives in Oxford on account of the COVID-19 crisis, it took until 24 August 2021 for me to receive a set of documents I had requested in August 2020. For my paper I had access to only a selection of the relevant documents that I had received from OUP in January 2020. Since it was too late to make changes to my paper, which had already gone through the proof stage, I will use this post to provide some additional information. Indeed, consultation of the full set of OUP files (OP702/4936 and OP2057/15512) allows me now to sharpen, and in some cases improve, some of the claims made in the paper. The information below should thus be seen as an addendum to the publication. I would like to thank Martin Maw, archivist at OUP, for his invaluable help in reproducing the documents.

The first additional information should be placed on p. 252 after the sentence “Towards the end of the year or at the very beginning of 1947, Costello sent the work to Davin.” The new documents allow me to add Pasternak’s reaction to Costello’s second edition of the Oxford Book of Russian Verse, whose final draft Costello had shown Pasternak in December 1946. In a letter to Dan Davin, his friend and editor at OUP, dated December 26, 1946, Costello wrote:

I have shown my selection of poems to Boris Pasternak and Nikolai Tikhonov. Tikhonov would have liked me to include more of the younger poets; but his reasons were, I feel more political than literary. Pasternak, whose opinion is worth vastly more, thinks my collection is a good one (he was kind enough, incidentally, to give me an improved version of one of his poems which I had already selected.) It does, I think, achieve its purpose of giving as good a representation as possible of the best Russian poetry, of whatever political tendency, that has been written since 1914. As for the traditional poetry which will occupy the first 32 pages, I am happy to say that both Tikhonov and Pasternak were delighted with it. (OP 702/4936)

The second change should be made in note 41 (p. 255) where it says:

The documents in the OUP archive (OP 702/4936) indicate that Davin had made a request for copies of these books. Whether they were sent and reached Pasternak is not known.

The new documents from OUP confirm that some of these books for Pasternak were actually sent to Costello but whether they reached Pasternak is still unclear.

The third change concerns note 62 on p. 269 where it says:

It remains unclear how Mary Holdsworth was connected to The Oxford Book of Russian Verse.

The new documents I received fully chronicle how Mary Holdsworth was involved in the production of the Oxford Book of Russian Verse. She was approached by Dan Davin, who was an old friend of hers, on February 21, 1947. Her role was to change the old Russian orthography used by the editor of the first edition (1924) of the Oxford Book of Russian Verse, Maurice Baring, to match the more modern one used by Costello in his supplement. In the process, Mary Holdsworth also raised with Davin a number of issues concerning Mandelstam, Bunin, Mirsky, Mayakovsky, and others that were discussed in the correspondence between Costello and Davin.

The most important change affects the following passage on p. 273, which concerns the alleged role by Costello in the delivery of a collection of Pasternak’s poems to Maurice Bowra. After discussing the available evidence I concluded:

It could still be claimed, lacking any alternative account of the delivery, that Costello was nonetheless instrumental in arranging the delivery some way or other. If this is what he did the envelope does not seem to have gone through Davin’s hands (Davin’s diary records no such event nor a meeting with Bowra for the period April 10–May 10, 1948). Perhaps Costello only had the envelope for Bowra already fully addressed sent to New Zealand
House (the New Zealand High Commission) in London via diplomatic pouch from where it could have been sent directly to Bowra in Oxford. But lacking any supporting evidence this hypothesis is just as good as any other plausible scenario. Anne Holdcroft could have done the same. Thus I think that the burden of proof here rests with those who want to attribute Costello a role in the delivery of poems to Bowra in April 1948. So far that burden has not been met.

I am delighted to report that the burden can finally be met with the documents from OUP I have recently received. The material did go through Davin’s hands. In a letter from Costello to Davin dated April 16, 1948, Costello wrote:

I wish to ask you please to fill in the address on the enclosed envelope and to drop it in a letter-box. It contains some recent poems which Pasternak has given me for transmission to Bowra – and I have gone and forgotten what college Bowra is Warden of.

In his reply dated April 20, 1948, Davin wrote:

I have sent on the envelope for Bowra as you ask.

This is a pleasing confirmation of Costello’s role as courier between Pasternak and his relatives and friends in Oxford.

Moving on now to p. 281, the following passage refers to Ruth Lake:

Whether Ruth was at the dinner is unclear, perhaps not, for their daughter, Sarah, was hospitalized in Paris with pneumonia and Ruth might have stayed in Paris to take care of her.

Indeed, a letter from Davin to Costello dated January 10, 1949 confirms that Ruth had not been at the dinner although she might have stayed in London with the baby (and no longer in Paris as I had conjectured). The text of the letter says:

Doug Lake came down for a day and we had some good talk. Unfortunately, Ruth could not come because the baby had taken ill in Paris and had not yet recovered. But Ruth had told Doug what he was to say about the book of Russian Short Stories and we managed to get fairly clear on that.

This completes the set of corrections.

The last post concerning my activities (excluding research posts) on the Zhivago front dates from March 2019 so it is time to bring my readers up to date.

First of all, I would like to mention that Smugglers, Rebels and Pirates (Hoover Press, 2015) is now available in an elegant Chinese translation that appeared in 2018: Ri wa ge yi sheng chu ban ji, Guangxi Normal University Press, Nanning. The graphic work is excellent.

The text also contains an appendix on first editions of Doctor Zhivago in Chinese. As these editions are not often to be seen by Western readers, I add pictures of the covers below.

           

In fall 2019 the Franco-German TV channel ARTE showed the documentary by the gifted Georgian director Nino Kirtadze titled Je vous invite à mon exécution: Dossier Docteur Jivago.

It was also shown at the Leipzig Film Festival. The documentary was produced by Pumpernickel films.

I think the outcome is splendid. It is evocative, informative, and rich in texture. I reported in a previous post on working with Nino for this documentary. For more information on Nino and the documentary see here.

           

On March 19, 2020, the Italian translation of Zhivago’s Secret Journey (Hoover Press, Stanford, 2016) and Moscow has Ears Everywhere (Hoover Press, Stanford, 2019) will be out in a single volume titled Pasternak e Ivinskaja. Il viaggio segreto di Zivago. The publisher is Feltrinelli, Milan.

The volume also includes a translation of the article “The hunt for the seventh typescript” that was described in a previous post. So, all my work on Doctor Zhivago is now available also in Italian language.

            I would like to take this opportunity to mention two more publications that might be of interest to Pasternak aficionados.

The first is a book that came out in 2016 in Moscow titled Moskva Borisa Pasternaka v sobytiyah i litsah: Albom-katalog (Москва Бориса Пастернака в событиях и лицах. Альбом-каталог). It is the catalogue of an exhibit on Pasternak and it is beautifully illustrated. The editors are N.A. Gromova and A.E. Rudnik.

The book is on sale at  ozon.ru.

Finally, last but not least,

I have been in touch with the talented French graphic designer, Michel Montheillet. Michel contacted me a few weeks ago and sent me 8 beautiful pages retelling Pasternak’s struggle over the publication of Doctor Zhivago that will appear at the end of May/beginning of June in the graphic novel volume Projet Bermuda 12 by Expé Éditions. I like his work very much and I encourage you to keep an eye out for the publication of this new number of Projet Bermuda.

With Michel’s permission, I include the above two drawings.

One third of my book Moscow has Ears Everywhere. New Investigations on Pasternak and Ivinskaya (Hoover Press, Stanford, 2019) is devoted to one episode of the Cultural Cold War that followed on the heels of the Pasternak case and is intimately related to it. I am referring to the “Ivinskaya case” (the account in my book originates from the article Mancosu 2018). One can trace the roots of the Ivinskaya case to 1946, when Olga Ivinskaya and Boris Pasternak started their love affair and to Ivinskaya’s first labor camp experience between 1950 and 1953. The passionate story between Ivinkskaya and Pasternak encompassed Ivinskaya’s first conviction in 1950, her liberation in 1953, the crisis surrounding the publication of Doctor Zhivago in 1957, and Pasternak’s persecution by the Soviets, on account of the Nobel Prize, from 1958 till his death. Olga Ivinskaya was always at Pasternak’s side and, at times, personally shielded him from the pressure exercised by the Soviets. After Pasternak died in May 1960, Ivinskaya and her daughter, Irina Emelianova, were sentenced and sent to labor camps. Olga was sentenced to eight years and Irina to three years. The charge brought against them was of having received money from abroad originating from Pasternak’s royalties in the West. This led to international outrage and to the Ivinskaya case. In my book, I describe the campaign that was carried out in the West in order to persuade the Soviet authorities to revoke or soften the labor camp sentences for Ivinskaya and Emelianova. Intellectuals in the United Kingdom were especially active in the campaign and a special committee was formed in Oxford. Moreover, P.E.N. International, through its General Secretary David Carver (General Secretary of P.E.N. International from 1951 to 1974; for more biographical information on Carver click here), also pressured the Soviets for a reversal of the “savage” sentences. While I recounted these events in detail in my book, recent documents have emerged concerning the activities of P.E.N. and contacts between Isaiah Berlin (who had joined P.E.N. in 1961) and David Carver that, while not altering the general picture, complement it in interesting ways. In this post, I would like to present these new documents with some commentary to explain the background to the events. It is my hope that this post might be useful to future historians interested in the activities of P.E.N. International on behalf of persecuted writers and intellectuals.

The documents to be presented originate from the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, The Isaiah Berlin Manuscripts Collection (IBMC) at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) at Austin. I am extremely grateful to Henry Hardy for having brought the Carver-Berlin correspondence to my attention and to the curators of the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, and the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, for permission to publish (for the holdings of P.E.N. at the University of Tulsa click here; for the holdings of P.E.N. at the Harry Ransom Center click here). Despite my attempts, it has not been possible to determine who owns the rights for Carver’s letters. Finally, I thank the trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust (Wolfson College, Oxford) for permission to cite the Berlin letters.

Olga Ivinskaya was arrested on August 16, 1960 and her daughter, Irina Emelianova, on September 5, 1960.

They were sentenced in December 1960 and news of the sentencing arrived to private individuals in the West only on January 1^st. The first to receive the news was Georges Nivat, Irina’s fiancé, who had been forced to leave the USSR just before the planned wedding with Irina (Nivat left the USSR on June 10, 1960). The detailed reconstruction of the turbulent period going from Pasternak’s death to the arrests of Olga and Irina constitutes the first two-thirds of Mancosu 2019. Once the news of the sentencing arrived in the West, Nivat lost no time to get in touch with his Oxford contacts (George Katkov and Max Hayward) and this set in motion a process that led to the constitution of the Oxford Committee, organized by Katkov, which included intellectuals of the caliber of Bertrand Russell, Rebecca West, and others. The aim of the committee was to secretly pressure the Soviets to release the two women. Also P.E.N. International swiftly got into action and appealed to the Soviets through David Carver, its General Secretary.

Carver addressed Alekseĭ Surkov (1899–1983; head of the Soviet Writers’ Union from 1953 to 1959), who during the Ivinskaya case was chairman of the foreign commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union.

Surkov was Pasternak’s arch-enemy and he is greatly responsible for many events that affected the Pasternak case (see Mancosu 2013), including the decision to ban Pasternak from the Soviet Writers’ Association. That decision was taken at the end of the Nobel Prize crisis and effectively cut off any possibility for Pasternak to earn his living in the USSR. Much of the troubles that were to follow originated with this ban. Surkov was also greatly responsible for the way the Ivinskaya case developed.

Here is how I summarize the Carver-Surkov exchange in my book:

The exchange between David Carver and A. Surkov began in January with a telegram from Carver to Surkov expressing concern about the condemnation of Ivinskaya and Emelianova. A press release dated January 19, 1961, informed the public of the contents of Carver’s telegram to Surkov, which urgently appealed to Surkov to intervene to “secure [the] release [of] Madame Olga Ivinskaya and her daughter.” A telegram along similar lines was sent on January 23 by the English Centre of International P.E.N. Surkov replied on January 24, dismissing the relevance of the Ivinskaya case to a body such as P.E.N. According to Surkov, there were neither moral nor legal grounds for intervening in the case, for Ivinskaya and her daughter had been condemned in a court of law for criminal offenses related to “currency machinations.” Carver replied on January 24 by pointing out that everyone in the West was well aware of who Ivinskaya was and of her relation to Pasternak. Carver asked that the trial proceedings be made public. He also wrote a longer letter on January 30 in which he reiterated his plea for clemency and pointed out how badly this case would affect the relations between P.E.N. and the Soviet Writers’ Union.

No answer was sent to this request, but Carver met Surkov while the latter visited England with the Soviet delegation in February 1961. Surkov replied to Carver on April 4 with a long letter that summarizes the Soviets’ point of view on the Ivinskaya case. Surkov claimed to have studied the three thick volumes making up the trial proceedings and, while he made no concessions on any point, his letter delivered some interesting information.[…] Surkov then expressed his point of view on the proper way to establish relations between P.E.N. and the Soviet Writers’ Union. Carver closed the exchange with a letter dated April 26. Surkov, as we know, did his best to smear Ivinskaya’s reputation, but he also made a terrible blunder. At a reception at the Soviet embassy in February, he promised that Ivinskaya would be released within a few months. Carver reminded him of that promise in his last letter, dated April 26, 1961. This was certainly a source of embarrassment for Surkov, who probably had to justify his statement in front of higher authorities in the USSR. (Mancosu 2019, pp. 125-126)

We will momentarily see that the first letter presented below, from Carver to Berlin, dated April 19, 1961, begins with a mention of the letter Carver had prepared in reply to Surkov, which was sent on April 26, 1961. The reference in the same letter to the “Wiston House Conference” is a reference to the visit of the Soviet delegation in February 1961 that I mentioned above.

But before I provide the background for the meeting at Wiston House, let me cite from a letter by Carver to Pethick Lawrence explaining why Surkov had become the main Soviet referent for P.E.N.’s attempts to influence the Soviets on the Ivinskaya case. On January 23, 1961, Carver explained to Lawrence:

The Moscow radio story of yesterday morning is almost certainly, I feel, a direct result of my cable to Mr. Surkov which went off to him last Thursday [this was the telegram Carver sent to Surkov on January 19]. Don’t imagine for one moment that I feel Surkov himself is likely to be on our side on this, but he is an important functionary and was received here as a guest of P.E.N. at a reception about a year ago. Also, I have been corresponding with him about the possibility of having Russian writers as observers at P.E.N. Congresses. So we are using him as a “letter box”. (PEN Box 153.6; HRC)

Carver used very similar words in a letter, also written on January 23, to Maurice Edelman. The goal of the letters was that of asking Lawrence and Edelman, who were both members of the House of Commons, to raise the issue of the Ivinskaya case in the House. In his future dealings with Surkov, Carver would find drastic confirmation of how little Surkov was on his side on this and other matters.

Let us now return to the meeting at Wiston House. On February 23, 1961, British and Russian politicians met at Wiston House, near Stying, Sussex, for a four-day conference on “the principles and practice of coexistence.” The conference was organized by the Great Britain–USSR Association, presided over by Earl Attlee. The Russian delegation was headed by Alekseĭ Surkov and included Alekseĭ Adzhubei, editor of Izvestia and son-in‑law of Khrushchev. In addition, Georgiĭ Zhukov, a minister in charge of cultural relations with foreign countries, was part of the delegation. On the British side, the delegates included, among others, William Hayter, former British ambassador in Moscow, and Isaiah Berlin. Whatever the goals of the four-day conference might have been, it became clear to everyone involved that the Soviet delegation had arrived with the explicit intent to put an end to the protests concerning the Ivinskaya case that had been raised in the previous month.

This took two forms. The first, as reported in the Daily Telegraph of February 24, consisted in Adzhubei’s  “foisting on the British Press documents intended to blacken the character of Mrs. Olga Ivinskaya, friend of the late Boris Pasternak”. I described and analyzed these documents at length in Mancosu 2019. But in addition to the “public” performance by Azhubei, such as it was, there was Surkov’s “private” performance at the conference and, in particular, what he told Isaiah Berlin in what Berlin calls in one of the letters to be presented below the “never-to-be-forgotten bus journey from Covent Garden at midnight to Wiston House”. Surkov’s main aim was to convince Berlin and the other British delegates that Olga Ivinskaya was a whore. In a very long letter to Rowland Burdon Muller from mid-March 1961, which I published in its entirety in Mancosu 2019, Berlin summarizes Surkov’s performance on the bus journey to Wiston House as follows:

in the bus, Mr Surkov began to tell me why Pasternak’s mistress had to go to jail for 8 years for receiving money from P.’s royalties abroad. She was described as a filthy whore; a woman engaged on subverting not only the financial but the moral politics of the Soviet State; a liar, a cheat, & an evil influence. I was told that while the English clapped their hands with joy when the bloodstained murderer Hammarskjöld—the enemy of liberty & justice—murdered Lumumba, they cried out with hypocritical horror when a squalid prostitute—who led a man of genius to write his worst book—the worthless Zhivago—was imprisoned for receiving stolen goods—100‑000 dollars sent by the pimp Feltrinelli through the spies he filtered into Russia for P’s ill gotten royalties obtained by betraying his country—then the great British public threw up its hands in horror! Did I know with whom I was sympathising? this woman’s husband committed suicide in 1941. Why? because he found her secret diary: containing no fewer than 74—74 he repeated in a voice of thunder which reverberated down that poor bus—lovers! this is the strumpet the British public felt sorry for, Lord Russell wrote about in the Times etc. etc. etc.

I cd only riposte by saying that I cd not check or deny their facts: the trial had not been attended by foreign journalists: but that (a) Pasternak ws the second most famous author in the world now, never mind whether justly or not; anything touching him automatically obtained world wide repercussions; (b) nobody wd believe the Russian story, however true: for the motives for persecution were too great. If, I said, the governor of Napoleon III, who had been denounced by, say, Victor Hugo, had put his mistress, Mme Sainte Beuve, a widow, in gaol for alleged currency offences, who wd have believed them? Karl Marx? One can imagine what he wd have written! or Herzen? or Mazzini? They cd imprison “evil influences” (it is now plain to me that they mean to canonise Pasternak, who really did loathe them, on the principle of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”) as much as they wished: but the effect in the West cd be very melancholy. They wd alienate even the left wing intelligentsia, etc. So we went at it ding-dong till we got to Wiston House, Wilton Park, Sussex, & dropped to bed exhausted at 2 a.m.— (IBMC, MS. Berlin 269, fols. 178–81; Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust: © the Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2018; an excerpt from the letter has already been published in Berlin 2013, 29–32)

After the visit of the Soviet delegation, which gave Carver the opportunity to speak with Surkov in London, Surkov replied with a very long letter dated April 4. All the Carver-Surkov correspondence was published for the first time in the original English in Mancosu 2019 although Italian, Russian (Afiani and Tomilina 1991), and French (Le Dossier 1994) translations had been available much earlier, the Italian one as early as September 1961 in Tempo Presente. A plan to publish the correspondence in English in 1961 failed when the New Statesman, which had been offered the letters, declined to publish them (as it emerges from a letter from John Freeman of the New Statesman to Max Hayward dated September 12, 1961; the letter is preserved in the Max Hayward papers at St Antony’s College, Oxford).

It is with the mention of Surkov’s letter dated April 4 that the next letter from Carver to Berlin opens.

19th April, 1961

Dear Sir Isaiah,

I enclose a copy of a very long letter, as you will see, from Alexei Surkov. It seems to me very interesting that he should have taken the trouble to write at such length and go into so much detail in regard to the Ivinskaya case. Presumably he has been instructed to do so because of the very considerable stir the case made in the West, the extent of which in England, must have been observed by him and his colleagues when they were over here for the Wiston House Conference.

In regard to his comments on Madame Ivinskaya, it seems curious that he does not seem to realise that whatever Ivinskaya did prior to the trial has no bearing whatever on the charges made against her in regard to currency irregularities. If she is [an] immoral woman the Russian courts should not have let this weigh with them. Again Surkov presumably knows that there are letters from Pasternak which make it clear that he was very apprehensive of some such persecution being instituted after his death. The letter makes no mention of the daughter whose sentence was perhaps even more shocking than that of her mother, especially since the Soviet authorities prevented her marriage to her French fiancé.

When replying to this letter I would like to be able to say that I trust that nothing in the letter can be taken to affect the promise he gave to you, (of which Edward Crankshaw has told me) that Madame Ivinskaya would be released in some twelve months. This seems to me to be of crucial importance because the effect of this promise was to muzzle us all here. Crankshaw made no further reference to the matter in his OBSERVER article on the Wiston House Conference and I abandoned the general appeal to all P.E.N. Centres to bombard Moscow with telegrams and letters.

The latter part of this letter, and its discussion of relations between Soviet writers and P.E.N., follows quite logically on the conversation I had with Surkov at the Soviet Embassy just before I met you as you came in to the reception. I have had the letter a few days but have not been able to find the time to deal with it until now, so that I would very greatly appreciate a word from you as soon as possible. I do not want to delay replying much longer.

I am sending Crankshaw a copy of the letter and also Mark Bonham-Carter, who is naturally very interested as Pasternak’s English publisher.

Yrs etc etc

 D[avid] C[arver] [signed]

Sir Isaiah Berlin, C.B.E.,

Headington House,

Headington,

OXFORD.        Enclosure ….. (PEN Box 153.7, HRC)

An interesting part of this letter is the claim that the effect of Surkov’s promise in England “was to muzzle us all here”. While trying to strike a delicate balance between raising an energic protest without antagonizing the Soviets, thereby losing the ability to influence the course of events, even a comment such as the one by Surkov could give hope and call for restrain. The later correspondence, to be presented below, will shed more light on the exact nature of the “promise” Surkov had made. Edward Crankshaw (1909-1984) was a British writer and journalist who devoted much attention to the Ivinskaya case (see also Crankshaw 1984) and wrote two especially effective articles on it, the first published in early March (this is the article referred to in the letter above) and the second on October 1, 1961, which will be mentioned below. Berlin praised both articles in letters to Crankshaw.

Now for Berlin’s reply to Carver’s letter.

HEADINGTON HOUSE,

OLD HIGH STREET, HEADINGTON, OXFORD.

TEL. OXFORD 81005.

22 May, 1961.

Dear Mr. Carver,

I am exceedingly sorry not to have replied to your letter of 19 April, but I was away in Paris during the flurry in North Africa and your letter, which was sent on to Paris, got lost there as a result of the same flurry and only came back weeks later. I know all about Surkov and the case of which you speak for he addressed a long and very lying sermon on the subject in the bus that took us from Covent Garden into the country where an unhappy weekend was spent by the Anglo-Russian symposiasts. You say how curious it is that he does not realise that Ivinskaya’s previous life is not relevant to the case, etc, He does realise all this perfectly well and could not care less. He wishes to convey the notion that she is a prostitute, a low woman, not worthy of our sympathy, and men who can regard the death of Lumumba with equanimity should not make a fuss about the temporary imprisonment of a liar, a cheat, an embezzler and an evil influence. I think you are absolutely right not to bombard Moscow with letters, etc. about this case just then. But I do not think that Surkov has much power of authority and although it is right to treat his promise (if promise it was) as something of great value, since we have heard no more about this lately, it could do no harm if something were done from time to time to convey to them that we have not forgotten. What they hope for is oblivion. I feel that a memorial addressed to them now, signed, if possible, by fairly left-wing writers and those they know -e.g. Maugham, Russell, Graham Greene, Moravia, Mauriac, and of course if you can get them Sartre, etc. just to ask what is happening and whether there is any hope of clemency could not do any harm. It would be as well to stress that the writers of Europe continue to be concerned about this and will go on asking questions. There is no need to include the names of well-known “enemies” like Rebecca West, Stephen Spender, or for that matter myself. – I am not regarded as an enemy exactly – but my name will not add lustre to the document.

Yours sincerely,

Isaiah Berlin [signed] (PEN Box 153.7, HRC)

Meanwhile, as Berlin’s reply was taking too long to arrive, Carver had already sent his reply to Surkov, as he reports in the next letter to Berlin.

26th May, 1961.

Dear Sir Isaiah,

Thank you very much for your letter.

I realise, of course, that my letter to you had been delayed.

I duly wrote to Surkov in answer to his long letter to me and I made there pointed reference to his promise that Ivinskaya should be released within a period of months. I have not heard again yet but he is  believed to be coming to this Country with a party of Soviet writers towards the end of next month and they are all expected here, at Glebe House , at the Midsummer Eve subscription party which we happen to be holding for members. In view of this, I think I had better delay organising the kind of memorial which you suggest, and of which of course I heartily approve, until I have had a chance to talk to him. I am sure you are right that we must not let him imagine that we have forgotten the poor woman.

Best regards,

Yours sincerely,

D[avid] C[arver] [signed]

General Secretary.

Sir Isaiah Berlin, C.B.E., Headington House,

Old High Street,

HEADINGTON,

Oxford. (PEN Box 153.7, HRC)

What Carver had written to Surkov concerning the “promise” was as follows:

Your letter makes no mention of Madame Ivinskaya’s daughter, whose sentence has, perhaps, shocked people in the west almost more profoundly.

I would like to express the hope that nothing you say in your letter should be taken to affect the promise you gave while in England that Madame Ivinskaya would be released within a period of months. (For the full letter and the entire Carver-Surkov exchange see Mancosu 2019, document 4.51, pp. 233-245). What follows is Berlin’s reply.

HEADINGTON HOUSE,

OLD HIGH STREET, HEADINGTON, OXFORD.

TEL. OXFORD 81005.

29th May, 1961.

Dear Mr. Carver,

I am sure you are quite right. If you could raise the matter with Surkov on his arrival, although he would certainly not be best pleased – that would be excellent.

Yours sincerely,

Isaiah Berlin [signed] (PEN Box 153.7, HRC)

The next letter is from Berlin to Crankshaw. Edward Crankshaw, who worked for The Observer, had shown an early interest in the Ivinskaya case with the first article on it written on January 22, 1961. In addition to some early articles, he wrote a major story for The Observer on October 1, which brought the reader up to date with the Carver-Surkov exchange (which had meanwhile been sent to the different branches of P.E.N.). The article repeated Surkov’s obscene characterization of Ivinskaya with the intent of conveying to the British public the extent of Surkov’s crassness. In the article Crankshaw returned to the issue of the “promise” and in his letter Berlin clarified what exactly had been said in “the unforgettable bus journey” (I take the opportunity to correct what I said in the passage of my book, cited above: Surkov’s promise was made in the bus ride not at the reception at the Embassy).

TO EDWARD CRANKSHAW [Carbon copy]

2^nd Oct. 1961

First let me congratulate you warmly on your piece on Pasternak in the Observer yesterday. It is a noble, unanswerable and definitive piece on the whole subject – I do not see how this could be done otherwise or better. There is only one correction I should like to make – Surkov did not of course “promise” that Madame I[vinskaya] would be liberated as a matter of weeks – not that he was in a position to make any such promise anyway – he only let drop the possibility that she might in fact not be imprisoned for more than a year or two – all this happened in that unforgettable bus journey from Covent Garden and was never adverted to again. I shall not write to the Observer to correct the record, but I thought I ought to let you know, and I shall send a copy of this to Carver. It makes no difference, of course, to the burden of your indictment. [next sentence added by hand] than[k] you also for not mentioning my name – (Letter from Berlin to Crankshaw, dated October 2, 1961. P.E.N. Archive, 1932-1983. 1984.004. McFarlin Library. Department of Special Collections and University Archives. University of Tulsa.)

The next letter, from Berlin to Carver, contained the carbon copy of the letter to Crankshaw (see above) as enclosure.

HEADINGTON HOUSE,

OLD HIGH STREET, HEADINGTON, OXFORD.

TEL. OXFORD 81005.

2nd October, 1961.

Dear David Carver,

I enclose a copy of my card to Edward Crankshaw – this is only to set the record straight. If you did write to Surkov to say that he had “promised” this would not have been quite an exact rendering of what occurred, but perhaps it does not make a great difference. He could always reply that he neither wished nor had the power to divert the course of “justice”, but I fear he will let the whole matter drop.

Anyway, we have all done what we can at this end.

It is sad that only we should have bestirred ourselves – why have the Americans, the Italians, the French, not done a little more? I do not see how we can be expected to do any more.

Yours sincerely,

Isaiah Berlin [signed] (Letter from Berlin to Carver, dated October 2, 1961. P.E.N. Archive, 1932-1983. 1984.004. McFarlin Library. Department of Special Collections and University Archives. University of Tulsa.)

Crankshaw replied to Berlin’s letter on October 24. I report the beginning of the letter (preserved at the Isaiah Berlin Manuscripts Collection at Oxford), which mentions the matter of the “promise”.

24^th October, 1961.

Sir Isaiah Berlin, C.B.E.,

All Souls College,

Oxford.

My dear Isaiah,

How very sweet of you to trouble to write about my Ivinskaya piece. I am so glad you thought it was all right: it caused me a good deal of heart-searching before I raised the matter again; but as it was clearly going to be raised, I thought it might as well take it on myself and try to hit the right tone. Thank you for telling me that it came off. As you know, there are very few people whose good opinion I value. And you are at the head of them.

I am only sorry that I was careless about the use of the word “promise”. I blame myself for this. But I think it better to say nothing more until the matter comes up again when, if it seems desirable, I can correct myself. (IBMC, MS. Berlin; Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust: © the Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2019)

Let us now go back to the exchange between Carver and Berlin. In a letter dated October 5^th, Carver provides Berlin with a report of the conversations he had had with Surkov in late June when he realized that Surkov had no intention to help with improving the lot of Ivinskaya and her daughter.

5^th October, 1961.

DC/mg.

Dear Isaiah Berlin [handwritten]

Thank you very much for your letter and the copy of your card to Edward Crakshaw. “Promised” does seem a little too strong from what you say, but I certainly got the impression from Crankshaw that Surkov’s final words to you amounted to that.

I quite realise that he could argue that in any case he had no authority to make any promise. But at that time I did not know that he was, to a certain extent, discredited vis-à-vis the USSR government.

I had intended to write and tell you of the conversation I had with Surkov here, at Glebe House, on the 23^rd June and very much regret that I did not do so.

You will remember that he was to come to a party here with a number of Russian writers, including Polevoi, and that you agreed that I should tackle him about Ivinskaya. He duly arrived with a gift of L.P. records of Gagarin’s feat and the voices of renowned Russian writers, a volume of Georgian poetry translated into rather bad English and a bronze medaillon struck to commemorate the centenary of Chekov. We talked of relations between Soviet writers and P.E.N.; I heard again a lot about COM.E.S. and then later during the party, I referred to his conversation with you. I said in fact that we were all depending on him to obtain the release of Mrs Ivinskaya and dwelt on the lamentable effect the persecution of her and her daughter had made in the West. The usual smile was on his face and remained while he said “I know too much about Mrs. Ivinskaya to wish to assist her to obtain her release”. I let him see that I was horrified by this, but I failed to move him at all.

When D’Angelo’s open letter reached me after I had talked to Max Hayward and previously Dr. Katkov, and had read Conquest’s long article in ENCOUNTER, I decided that it would be best to allow the relevant passages of Surkov’s long letter to me to be made public so that the whole story could be told and I agree with you that Crankshaw has done it admirably.

The texts of the telegrams and letters that passed between Surkov and myself together with D’Angelo’s letter and a statement by Hayward (anonymous) have been sent to all the national centres of P.E.N. with the suggestion from me that the national executives should consider what action to take, vis-à-vis their own press, following publication of Crankshaw’s article in THE OBSERVER. I don’t think there is any doubt that the result will be a considerable amount of further airing throughout the world.

Hayward assures me that anything that can be done to expose Surkov is likely to help Madame Ivinskaya. I can only hope that he is right. Perhaps now, the Americas, Italy, France and all the rest of them will do something more.

My International Executive Committee meets in Rome on November 1^st with Moravia presiding and one of the main items for discussion on the Agenda will, of course, be the action taken in London.

Kindest regards,

Yours sincerely,

DC [signed]

General Secretary.

Sir Isaiah Berlin

Headington House,

Old High Street,

Headington,

OXFORD.

(Letter from Carver to Berlin, dated October 5, 1961. P.E.N. Archive, 1932-1983. 1984.004. McFarlin Library. Department of Special Collections and University Archives. University of Tulsa.)

This letter of October 5 refers to a number of events that we need to summarize briefly. First of all, we need to clarify the reference to the meeting at Glebe House with Surkov in June. The P.E.N. records contain a list of all the Soviet writers in attendance at the meeting that took place on June 23, 1961. Among them were Boris Polevoi, Svevolov Ivanov and his wife Tamara Ivanova. Second, let us say something about the reference to Sergio d’Angelo’s letter. D’Angelo had found out about Surkov’s April letter to Carver (which had been treated confidentially but, apparently, not sufficiently so) and thus saw the accusations against him (d’Angelo) that were contained in it (among other things, Surkov said that d’Angelo was an international swindler). D’Angelo wrote an open letter  to Surkov challenging Surkov to provide proofs of his accusations. D’Angelo sent a copy of his letter to Surkov to David Floyd asking the latter to forward the letter to the General Secretary of P.E.N. for maximum publicity and distribution.  The accompanying cover letter to P.E.N., written by d’Angelo, is dated July 27, 1961. However, since the letter was published in Italian in the June 21 issue of Vita, its composition goes back to the month of June. As it transpires from correspondence between Carver and Floyd, the letter was first translated into English by David Floyd, and then Max Hayward improved the translation (the English version of the letter is now published in Mancosu 2019, document 4.51; the letter from d’Angelo to P.E.N., the letter from Floyd to Carver (undated) and the reply from Carver to Floyd, dated August 30, 1961, are found in the PEN Box 153.7, HRC). I now cite from the memo that Carver sent to the P.E.N. centers on September 25, 1961 (PEN Box 153.7, HRC), for it reflects Carver’s reasons for making the various letters available to the P.E.N. centers.

Olga Ivinskaya And Her Daughter Irina.

I regret I must refer again to the imprisonment of Olga Ivinskaya, literary collaborator of the Russian poet Boris Pasternak, and her daughter Irina. You will remember that this matter was discussed at the International Executive Committee last May (when I referred to a letter I had received from Mr. Surkov) and was reported on in the Minutes of that meeting since circulated to all Centres. Reference was also made to Sir Isaiah Berlin in February this year that both women would be released within a period of months. Because of this promise, P.E.N. refrained from further pursuing the question of their release.

Mr. Surkov visited Glebe House as one of a party of Russian writers late in June, when I took the opportunity of reminding him of his promise, and was bitterly disappointed and disturbed to learn that he had no intention of fulfilling it.

Mr. Surkov’s letter to me contained a number of charges against the Italian publisher of Dr. Zhivago and other persons, including Signor Sergio D’Angelo. I have now received a letter from Signor D’Angelo, enclosing an open letter intended for the press, in which he replies to Mr. Surkov’s charges. I must stress very emphatically that I have no knowledge as to how Signor d’Angelo obtained a sight of Mr. Surkov’s letter to me, since it has only been shown to a very few leading P.E.N. personalities in London (as Mr. Surkov himself suggested at the close of his letter); this was felt to be in the best interest of Mrs. Ivinskaya as, in view of Mr. Surkov’s promise, silence was then believed to be fundamental to her safety and eventual release.

Now, in view of Signor D’Angelo’s open letter, and as it is clear he hopes to secure maximum publicity for his refutal of Mr. Surkov’s charges in the world’s press, it has been decided to release the contents of Mr. Surkov’s letter to me in so far as they refer to Mrs. Ivinskaya, so that Signor D’Angelo’s letter can be judged in the context of the original charges. The relevant parts of Mr. Surkov’s letter and my reply are therefore being given to the press, and an article dealing with the whole matter is likely to appear in one of the leading British Sunday newspapers on October 1^st [this was Crankshaw’s article on the Observer] You will find, enclosed with this letter, the texts of the correspondence that has passed between Mr. Surkov and myself on this subject, including the texts of telegrams sent early this year. I also enclose an English translation of Sergio d’Angelo’s letter, and a brief memorandum by an English friend of the late Boris Pasternak which comments on certain aspects of Mr. Surkov’s expressed views of Mrs. Ivinskaya.

You will appreciate that the release of this material, forced upon me by events, has been decided  upon solely to help the unfortunate woman who has been condemned to eight years’ imprisonment in the Soviet Union. (PEN Box, 153.7, HRC)

Now back to Berlin’s reply to Carver’s letter of October 5th.

6 October 1961

Headington House

Dear Carver,

Thank you for your letter of 5 October. The account of your conversation with Surkov does not of course surprise me in the least. They have made up their mind to do exactly what Crankshaw said they intended to do, and that is a decision taken well above Surkov’s head, and he is merely the tough and cynical executant.

All that happened in that never-to-be-forgotten bus journey from Covent Garden at midnight to Wiston House was that after Surkov had revealed the full depth of Madame I[vinskaya]’s depravity, and other members of his party joined in about her financial dishonesty and acts likely to undermine the financial policy of the Soviet Union, etc., Surkov finally said, with a sort of crocodile smile, that perhaps she would not have to stay in prison all the eight years, or whatever it was – perhaps ‘a year or two’ (that is my recollection) would be enough. I said that one year was better than two, and six months better than one year, to which he rejoined nothing at all and spent himself on amiabilities about Baroness Budberg and other London friends.

I do not myself believe that anything done to expose Surkov will help Madame I. – I think they have made up their minds about that and Surkov is merely reproducing a carefully officially prepared line to which they all stick. He may, being an exceedingly clever man, have helped to work out the official version, but once it is adopted it ceases to be his property, and his personal fate has little to do with the fate of the victims. The only thing which could save them would be a change of heart on the part of some person in real authority from Mr K[rushchev] downwards – and how that is to be compassed I have no idea. If the people I still preserve a tenuous connection with inside the Soviet Union are not to get into further trouble (they have had a good deal already – I do not know if I ever told you about my conversations with various semi-condemned writers), it were best if my name were kept out of this. But there is no harm in saying, perhaps, that Surkov, in general conversation with no one in particular, seemed to hold out hope of a shorter sentence owing to the general clemency and humanity of the Soviet authorities (or similar rot).

Yours sincerely,

Isaiah Berlin (Letter from Berlin to Carver, dated October 6, 1961. P.E.N. Archive, 1932-1983. 1984.004. McFarlin Library. Department of Special Collections and University Archives. University of Tulsa.)

Carver replied on October 11.

11^th October, 1961.

DC/mg.

Dear Berlin,

Thank you very much for your letter and for letting me have the picture so fully.

I feel with you that it is all pretty hopeless. Surkov is a such a tough, cynical creature that there is no hope of moving him and, as you say, we need to get at some person in real authority. Margaret Storm Jameson wrote a note to Madame Furtseva when she was here, as one woman to another, but got no reply.

The Russian Service of the BBC persuaded me to do a piece for them which went out last night. I retold the story simply and that is apparently what they wanted. I enclose a copy of my talk. I was persuaded to do this by Lieven, who said he wanted something from somebody in a more objective position, Crankshaw being so well known as a political journalist.

I will certainly do what I can see that your name is not mentioned.

Yours, DC [signed]

Sir Isaiah Berlin, C.B.E., F.B.A.,

Headington House,

Old High Street,

Headington, Oxford. (Letter from Carver to Berlin, dated October 11, 1961. P.E.N. Archive, 1932-1983. 1984.004. McFarlin Library. Department of Special Collections and University Archives. University of Tulsa.)

TO DAVID CARVER

12 October 1961

Headington House

Dear Carver,

Thank you very much for your letter and the excellent enclosure. I thought your talk absolutely appropriate and I hope it penetrates Surkov’s thick hide to the necessary depth. But I fear he is a hopeless case. And so are they all, including Ehrenburg, who is falsely credited with civic courage. I am sure there is nothing more to be done at present; and it is very creditable that the sharpest voices were raised in England. I hope that you will have sent copies of your talk to the other national centres of P.E.N.

Yours sincerely,

Isaiah Berlin (Letter from Berlin to Carver, dated October 12, 1961. P.E.N. Archive, 1932-1983. 1984.004. McFarlin Library. Department of Special Collections and University Archives. University of Tulsa.)

Here is the the text of the talk by Carver that was broadcast on the B.B.C.’s Russian Service on October 10. The talk was circulated to P.E.N. Centers a few days after October 17.

Since drafting the letter to Centres dated October 17. 1961, Mr. Carver obtained permission from the B.B.C. to send out to all Centres the text of a broadcast by him which went out over the B.B.C.’s Russian Service on October 10. 1961, which it was felt would interest Centres since it is on the subject of Olga Ivinskaya. In any reproduction of this talk, due ACKNOWLEDGMENT must be made to the B.B.C., London.

***

Who is Olga Ivinskaya?

Until a comparatively short time ago her name, in the West, was known to only a handful of intellectuals as being the close friend and literary assistant of one of the most admired of living poets – Boris Pasternak.

Then, Boris Pasternak died and – suddenly – the world was startled and shocked to hear reports of the arrest of this woman, and her daughter Irina, in Moscow, and of their condemnation to Siberia – the mother for eight years and Irina for three. I say ‘shocked’ because this savage sentence has, without doubt, profoundly stirred and horrified all thinking people in the West.

The protestations of Alexei Surkov in speeches, conversations and in letters that those women had been involved in illegal traffic in roubles and therefore it was necessary to make an example of them has done nothing to shake the firm belief held here that the trial and condemnation of Olga Ivinskaya and her daughter is an act of sordid revenge.

That Pasternak feared for Mrs. Ivinskaya’s safety is quite clear from letter to friends written during the last few months of his life. Certainly those few in the West who knew something of the inner history of the systematic persecution to which the poet had been subjected were worried and apprehensive.

I did not know Pasternak – I have never met Mrs. Ivinskaya. But, in my capacity as General Secretary of the international organization known as P.E.N., I have met and talked with Mr. Surkov on several occasions. Mr. Surkov is known to me principally as a high executive of the Union of Soviet Writers. It was to him that the cable was addressed appealing to Soviet writers to protect Pasternak from persecution when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958. It was to him also that I addressed several telegrams and letters, early this year, begging him to intercede with his government on behalf of Mrs. Ivinskaya and her daughter.

I turned to Mr. Surkov because I had this contact with him already. We had exchanged views on the question of whether or not Soviet writers would attend annual P.E.N. Congresses and meet their colleagues from all over the world, exchange opinions with them and so let in that draught of fresh air on a cultural level which, I believe, is our greatest, perhaps our only, hope for future peace and understanding.

I have always understood that Mr. Surkov favoured  this contact between Soviet writers and their colleagues abroad. His interest in the Italian-based European Community of Writers certainly suggests it. But in the very long letter he addressed to me last April – in reply to my letters and telegrams – he devoted page after page to vicious attacks on Mrs. Ivinskaya’s morals and referred only comparatively briefly to developing contacts between Soviet writers and their colleagues in International P.E.N.

Does Mr. Surkov believe that such terrible events as the persecution of Boris Pasternak, and the savage sentence on the woman who was for fourteen years his greatest friend, foster these cultural links which are so vital to our survival? Or doesn’t he care?

The tragic story of Olga Ivinskaya and her treatment at the hands of those who affect to admire Pasternak  as a great Russian writer has – in my views – destroyed the patient work of years. It has, in fact, confirmed in their belief those who support the policy of the closed door – those who mistakenly urge that contact, whether cultural or otherwise, between people with widely different political systems can bring profit to neither.

One thing is clear: Mr. Surkov doesn’t understand the extent to which enlightened opinion in the West has been shocked by this persecution of Mrs. Ivinskaya and her daughter.

She is a whore, he repeats again and again, she was a bad influence on Pasternak and a trafficker in illegal currency. But as I and many others have told him – we, in the West, are not concerned with Mrs. Ivinskaya’s morals, we are not arguing about the alleged currency crimes; what we are saying is simply this ‘Let her and her daughter go free in the name of humanity: release this aging woman who was the trusted friend of the greatest creative writer of his generation.’

There is no place in the annals and history of a modern state with its record of superb achievement in the arts and the sciences for such a degrading story.

P.E.N.

62 Glebe Place

London S.W.#

October 17/1961

DC/hr. (P.E.N. Archive, 1932-1983. 1984.004. McFarlin Library. Department of Special Collections and University Archives. University of Tulsa.)

The final part of the exchange between Carver and Berlin relevant to the Ivinskaya case is from November-December 1964. Irina Emelianova had already been freed in 1962 and the correspondence below concerns what attitude to take towards Surkov and the Soviet Writers’ Union after Ivinskaya’s liberation in November 1964.

HEADINGTON HOUSE,

OLD HIGH STREET, HEADINGTON, OXFORD.

TEL. OXFORD 81005.

20th November [1964]

Dear David Carver,

Ought we now – P.E.N., I mean – to signify our satisfaction at the release of Ivinskaya which we must assume to have occurred? Having rightly persecuted Surkov, etc., over all this, we ought, I suppose, to react – if only because it makes future protests (the need for which will, alas, probably not be absent) more effective if we chalk something up in favour of the oppressors whenever they display ‘clemency’ even for non­existent offences: still, about this you would know better than I. I had no idea before reading the Bulletin of the English Centre that Surkov had let himself go about P.E.N: it does us nothing but credit.

Yours sincerely,

Isaiah Berlin [signed] (PEN Box, 153.7; HRC)

[Carbon Copy]

mg.                27th November, 1964.

Dear Sir Isaiah Berlin,

Thank you for your letter of the 20^th November addressed to Mr. Carver. He is at present away from the office but will see your letter immediately on his return to Glebe House early next week.

Yours sincerely,

Secretarial Assistant to Mr. David Carver.

Sir Isaiah Berlin, CBE., FBA., Headington House,

Old High Street.

Headington,

Oxford. (PEN Box, 153.7, HRC)

4th December, 1964.

DC/mg.

Dear Isaiah Berlin,

Thank you very much for your letter which, back from a short visit to Brussels, I have now seen.

On the whole I am inclined to think that beyond merely telling the Soviet Writers Union that we are glad to see that Ivinskaya has been released we should leave matter as they are. I have to write to Konstantin Simonov to follow-up a discussion we had in Budapest a few weeks ago when he and three other Soviet writers attended a Round Table Conference as observers, and I could very easily put in a sentence then. I rather jib at talking of clemency, particularly in the case of Ivinskaya when I remember how monstrous the whole thing was and how ill she became during the last year of incarceration.

Yes, certainly Surkov let himself go about P.E.N. and it will interest you perhaps to see the IZVESTIA article in which he made his accusations. I also enclose the text of my reply which, of course, was not printed. It did, however, form the basis of a number of articles in the European press, particularly in France and Italy.

Budapest was the first P.E.N. International meeting in forty-three years at which Soviet writers were present in any capacity. If this leads to a real relationship between Soviet writers and P.E.N., either direct or through their Union, I can only feel that it would be very desirable. There is talk of my going to Moscow to discuss ways and means ­– I shall certainly go if invited. Yours is the perfect comment on the Surkov attack and I appreciated it greatly.

Kindest regards,

Yours sincerely,

DC [signed]

General Secretary

Sir Isaiah Berlin, c.a.,

Headington House,

Headington,

OXFORD.     Enclosures (PEN Box, 153.7, HRC)

HEADINGTON HOUSE,

OLD HIGH STREET, HEADINGTON, OXFORD.

TEL. OXFORD 81005.

7th December [1964]

Dear D.C.

Thank you for your letter of the 4th. “Clemency” is perhaps not the right word – it certainly isn’t on any true appraisal of what was done – I entirely agree with you about that – the only question is whether from a strictly utilitarian point of view this would be useful for the purpose of saving further victims who, I fear, are bound to crop up behind the Iron Curtain. But in general, I think you are probably quite right: we could simply acknowledge our satisfaction at this release and communicate this to them in cool and correct terms.

I hope you go to Moscow: it cannot possibly do any harm and might do good.

Yours sincerely,

Isaiah Berlin [signed] (PEN Box, 153.7; HRC)

This completes the exchange between Carver and Berlin on the matter of the Ivinskaya case. It is only a small portion of a very complex case. The reader who would like to grasp the case in its totality is referred to Mancosu 2019. I will conclude by mentioning that the Carver–Surkov debate was to flare up again in 1964 (see the reference in the last two letters to Surkov’s “letting himself go about P.E.N.”) in connection with an article published by Surkov in Izvestia on January 4, 1964. However, since that exchange was only tenuously related to the Ivinskaya case, I will not treat it here.

Bibliography

Afiani, Vitaliĭ I., and Natal’ia G. Tomilina, eds. 2001. A za mnoiu shum pogoni: Boris Pasternak i vlast’; dokumenty 1956–1972 [But the hunters are gaining ground: Boris Pasternak and the regime; Documents, 1956–1972]. Moscow: ROSSPĖN.

Berlin, Isaiah. 2013. Building: Letters 1960–1975. Edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle. London: Chatto & Windus.

Crankshaw, Edward. 1984. Putting Up with the Russians 1947–1984. London: Macmillan.

Le dossier de l’Affaire Pasternak: Archives du Comité Central et du Politburo. 1994. Preface by Jacqueline de Proyart. Paris: Gallimard.

Mancosu, Paolo.  2013. Inside the Zhivago Storm. The Editorial Adventures of Pasternak’s Masterpiece. Milan: Feltrinelli.

Mancosu, Paolo.  2018. “We Need to Help The Russians Save Face: ‘The Ivinskaya Case’ in the West”, Russian Literature, Vol. 100-101-102 (2018), pp. 127–220.

Mancosu, Paolo.  2019. Moscow has Ears Everywhere. New Investigations on Pasternak and Ivinskaya. Stanford: Hoover Press.

I am delighted to announce the publication of “Moscow Has Ears Everywhere. New Investigations on Pasternak and Ivinskaya” (Hoover Press, Stanford, 2019). What follows is the description from the flaps of the book and the advance praise for the book signed by three eminent specialists of Slavic Studies.

The struggle between the Soviet Communist Party and Boris Pasternak over the publication of Doctor Zhivago did not end when he won the Nobel Prize, or even with his death. After the prize the Soviets vilified and impoverished him. After his death, they turned against Olga Ivinskaya, his literary assistant, companion, and the model for Zhivago’s Lara, sending her and her daughter to a labor camp for accepting Pasternak’s royalties from the West.
            In Moscow Has Ears Everywhere, Mancosu provides the first examination of what happened after the scandal that followed the award of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak in October 1958.

            Pasternak had said he would not accept the royalties for his work. However, when exclusion from the Soviet Writers’ Union left him with no other source of income, he reconnected with Sergio d’Angelo, the scout for the Feltrinelli publishing house in Milan, the first to publish Zhivago in the West. Mancosu also describes how d’Angelo became part of a campaign to smuggle money to Pasternak.

            After the poet died, Ivinskaya received some of those funds. Mancosu shows that the KGB intercepted Pasternak’s “will,” a document that transferred Pasternak’s royalties to his longtime companion. The Soviets then arrested Ivinskaya and her daughter, Irina Emelianova, and sent them to a labor camp.

            Finally, Mancosu provides new evidence showing that Western literary figures used a campaign of clandestine persuasion rather than confrontation in an attempt to win the women’s release. Mancosu’s new book—the first to explore the post–Nobel history of Pasternak and Ivinskaya—provides extraordinary detail on these events, in a thrilling account that involves KGB interceptions, fabricated documents, smugglers, and much more. Scholars will relish the rich assemblage of new archival material, especially letters of Pasternak, Ivinskaya, Feltrinelli, and d’Angelo from the Hoover Institution Library and Archives and the Feltrinelli Archives in Milan. But Moscow Has Ears Everywhere speaks to everyone who has read the story of Zhivago and his Lara. In many respects, this is its final chapter.

Below are the advance praises for the book signed by three eminent specialists of Slavic Studies.

Paolo Mancosu’s richly documented and profoundly moving account of
some of the most dramatic episodes in the cultural life of the Cold War
period is a major contribution to Pasternak scholarship and Russian
studies.
—Lazar Fleishman, Stanford University

Paolo Mancosu’s new book is a treat for the specialist and the general
reader. Mancosu has unearthed an enormous amount of new documentary
evidence that sheds a completely new light on a story we thought
we knew well: Pasternak’s persecution following the Nobel Prize award,
the arrests of Olga Ivinskaya and Irina Emelianova, and their subsequent
release. Mancosu unveils the surprising twists of the story and weaves a
rich tapestry describing the political, literary, and private relations among
the protagonists. Most important, he gives us insights into their inner
lives—the lives of outstanding and ordinary people enmeshed in the cruel
hostility of the Cold War. It is a splendid achievement.
—Anna Sergeeva-Klyatis, Moscow State University

Professor Mancosu’s book investigates the post–Nobel Prize events in
Pasternak’s life and the repercussions of his confrontation with Soviet
power on his beloved Olga Ivinskaya and her daughter Irina Emelianova.
It represents a quantum leap in our understanding of those events, both on
account of the impressive number of unknown archival sources Mancosu
brought to light as well as for the thorough and careful interpretation of
those tragic events. Mancosu’s first-rate
study is a must read for anyone
interested in the relationship between literature and politics during the
Cold War.
—Fedor Poljakov, University of Vienna

It is with great sadness that I recently learned that Jacqueline de Proyart passed away in Paris on January 30. Jacqueline de Proyart was a French Slavic scholar who taught at Poitiers and Bordeaux. She was known, among other things, for her work on Pasternak and Chekhov. In addition, she played a central role in Boris Pasternak’s life.

I first got in contact with Jacqueline in January 2012. I wrote her an email in which I asked her a question concerning one of the Russian editions of Doctor Zhivago. Her answer ended up determining my subsequent engagement with the publication history of Doctor Zhivago. That first email led to more emails, then to a personal acquaintance, which in turn turned into a friendship. Jacqueline was a generous and noble spirit. Her friendship meant very much to me and my wife. All my research on Doctor Zhivago benefited enormously from her advise and support. And of course, she was also one of the main characters in the saga which is the subject of my books, namely the publication history of Doctor Zhivago and Boris Pasternak’s life. I shall miss her very much.

I would like to celebrate her memory by briefly recounting here how it happened that in February 1957 Boris Pasternak nominated Jacqueline de Proyart de Baillescourt, a young French countess whom he had recently met at the beginning of January in his dacha in Peredelkino, as his literary agent responsible for all decisions (‘literary, juridical, and pecuniary’) concerning his work and in particular entrusted her with the task of preparing and publishing the original text of the novel in Russian.

Jacqueline recounts the story of her first acquaintance with Boris Pasternak in the introduction to Pasternak 1994a. The year was 1956. In order to improve her Russian, she was sent by her professor, André Mazon, to Moscow. The official justification was developing contacts between the Tolstoy library/museum at the Institute of Slavic Studies in Paris, which she was in charge of, and the Tolstoy museums in Moscow and Yasnaya Polyana. In Paris, she had also studied with Pierre Pascal and Nina Lazarewa. Through the latter, she had been able to become familiar with the artistic sensibility of pre-revolutionary Russia, including its spiritual and religious aspects. She arrived in Moscow on November 23, 1956 (see below her “Propusk” dated November 22, 1956).

While attending courses at the State University of Moscow (MGU), she took time to explore Moscow and to realize that traces of the Russian sensibility she had been exposed to in Paris could still be found, hidden behind the ideological façade, in certain museums and institutions. One such place was the Scriabin Museum. She had in fact been invited for tea in a part of the museum that was restricted to “Scriabin’s friends”, a group of people “who shared the same spiritual values”. Given Pasternak’s deep connection to Scriabin – Pasternak was under his spell as a youth and even considered a career as a composer – it is perhaps not surprising to find out that “in this sanctuary, the name of Boris Pasternak was uttered with admiration and fervor” (Pasternak 1994a, p. 15). She was told she had to meet Pasternak, for otherwise her stay in Russia would be meaningless. When arriving in Moscow, Jacqueline did not even know whether Pasternak was dead or alive. What she knew about him went back to a lecture course by Roman Jakobson, which she attended in 1951 when she was a student at Harvard, and to a selection of verses (mainly from Lieutenant Schmidt and The Year 1905) contained in the anthology by Jacques David, Anthologie de la Poésie Russe, which had been published in the late 1940s. Little did she know that the meeting that was soon organized to allow her to meet the poet would change her life. She laid eyes on a typescript copy of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago for the first time at the Scriabin Museum in mid-December 1956. The copy had been promised to Dmitriĭ Ivanov, aka Jean Neuvecelle, and thus she could not have access to it immediately. To make up for the disappointment, a few friends from the circle took her to visit Pasternak on the evening of January 1, 1957.

The impression the poet made on her was immediate and “his warm tenderness soon had the better of my shyness” (Pasternak 1994a, p. 18). At the end of a sparkling evening, full of intellectual conversation, Jacqueline expressed her desire to read the novel. Pasternak asked Nikolaĭ Shatrov, one of the persons who had accompanied Jacqueline to see Pasternak, to fetch the copy that was still in Simonov’s hands, the very copy which had been used – but of course Jacqueline knew nothing about this – by the main editor of Novy mir when writing his negative report on the novel in September 1956. On the evening of January 2, 1957, she already had the first part of the novel. After one week, she already had enough information about the Italian translation –which was being prepared by the publisher Feltrinelli– to propose, on January 9, to act on Pasternak’s behalf in arranging for a French translation with Gallimard. The names of Hélène Peltier, Michel Aucouturier, and Louis Martinez also came up, and it turned out that Pasternak was already familiar with them (he did not reveal at this stage that he had already given a copy of the novel to Peltier). Pasternak also showed her the contract he had signed with Feltrinelli.  Pasternak gave de Proyart the second part of the novel on January 16 and 17, and on those dates he gave her “the rights for publishing and translating abroad the Autobiographical Essay, since no contract tied Pasternak to Feltrinelli for this work” (p. 23).

On January 17, Pasternak wrote a letter to Hélène Peltier (on Peltier see Mancosu 2016) where he said:

I want that every choice, every initiative, all the rights concerning the handling abroad (not only in France) of the affairs related to my writings, including the edition of the original Russian text, be concentrated only in your hands and in those of Madame de Proyart, for your exclusive profit, without any deduction, of which I have no need whatsoever. (Pasternak 1994a, p. 63.)

On February 6, 1957, Pasternak wrote to Peltier:

I am leaving the previous letter unfinished. Jacqueline is leaving, and I am rushing. Here it is in brief. I am burdening madame de Proyart with a power of attorney, which would be desired of you as well. Questions of danger, carefulness, etc. are a complete philosophy, mind- numbing and with the ability to break your heart as well as mine. For example, if Mr. Michel Aucouturier (please send him my warmest greetings) does not mention my novel in his article in “Esprit” [March 1957]—which, quite likely, would be a sensible thing to do—what else is left of me at all? Is it not logical, that for the joy of writing the novel, I must pay, risking and putting myself in danger! Do not forget the thing that I told you. I am not dictating anything and am not suggesting anything. I would like for you and Jacqueline to do things in complete independence, in accordance with your own thoughts and inherent courage. And I thank you, endlessly thank you. Glory to you!

By the time Jacqueline left Moscow on February 8, Pasternak had given her a corrected version of Doctor Zhivago, which improved on the copy that had been sent to Feltrinelli in May 1956, a copy of the Autobiography, and a mandate nominating her as his representative. Lack of communication with Feltrinelli, who discovered the real nature of Pasternak’s mandates on her behalf only in January 1959, and the lack of clarity in the mandates themselves (as Jacqueline herself admitted), was at the core of the troubles that followed.

When Jacqueline returned to France she brought with her a letter, dated February 6, 1957, addressed to Gallimard in which Pasternak asked Gallimard to “have faith in Madame Jacqueline de Proyart as my representative in all business matters of a literary, juridical, and financial nature that could arise between your publishing house and me. I give her full power and I authorize her to replace me abroad in an unlimited way until the complete forgetfulness of my person.” (For a photographic reproduction of the original document in French, see Pasternak 1994b.) While this document had little effect on the destiny of Zhivago in France, it will by contrast be quite relevant for the autobiography and for other issues that led later to a stormy relation between Feltrinelli and de Proyart (Mancosu 2013).

Well, the rest is history, as one says. Jacqueline corresponded extensively with Pasternak (Pasternak’s side of the correspondence is published in Pasternak 1994a); she was one of the translators of Doctor Zhivago into French; she wrote the preface for one of the volumes of the 1961 Michigan edition of Pasternak’s Works; she was Pasternak’s representative in the West in 1959 and 1960; she prepared the revised edition of the Russian text of Doctor Zhivago published by Michigan in 1967, and she published extensively on him. In addition to Pasternak 1994a and Pasternak 1994b, Jacqueline’s long involvement with Pasternak is recounted in detail in Mancosu 2013, 2016, and 2019, to which we refer the reader.

Bibliography

De Proyart, J. (1964), Pasternak, Gallimard, Paris.

De Proyart, J. (1985), Études sur la littérature Russe du Moyen-Âge à nos jours et sur l’histoire de la Russie sous le règne d’Alexandre III, Thèse d’État, Université de Bordeaux III.

De Proyart, J. (2005), Brice Parain et Boris Pasternak, in Besseyre, M., Brice Parain. Un Homme de Parole, Gallimard/BnF, Paris, 2005, 189-196.

Mancosu, P. (2013), Inside the Zhivago Storm. The Editorial Adventures of Pasternak’s Masterpiece, Feltrinelli, Milan.

Mancosu, P., (2016), Zhivago’s Secret Journey: from typescript to book, Hoover Press, Stanford.

Mancosu, P. (2019), Moscow has Ears Everywhere. New Investigations on Pasternak and Ivinskaya, Hoover Press, Stanford.

Pasternak, B.(1958), Le Docteur Jivago, Gallimard, Paris.

Pasternak, B. (1967), Doktor Zhivago: s poslednimi popravkami avtora, Rev. and corr. by Jacqueline de Proyart, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, third printing, [Doctor Zhivago: with final corrections by the author.]

Pasternak, B. (1994a), Lettres à mes amies françaises. 1956-1960, Introduction et Notes de Jacqueline de Proyart, Gallimard, Paris.

Pasternak, B. (1994b), Le Dossier de l’Affaire Pasternak. Archives du Comité Central et du Politburo, Préface de Jacqueline de Proyart, Gallimard, Paris.

In Zhivago’s Secret Journey: from typescript to book (Hoover Press, 2016), I analyzed the typescripts of Doctor Zhivago that Pasternak sent outside the USSR and studied the role they played in the publishing history of Doctor Zhivago. The book discusses in detail six typescripts that arrived to the West and I showed that the source of the first Russian edition of Doctor Zhivago, the so-called Mouton edition – a pirated edition covertly organized by the CIA – was one of two identical typescripts that arrived in Oxford. One of the typescripts was owned by Pasternak’s sisters (it was sent to them through Isaiah Berlin) and the other was the property of George Katkov. One important consequence of this result, which rests on a philological comparative analysis of the relation between the Mouton text and the six typescripts, was that the Feltrinelli typescript, contrary to what had been assumed by most scholars, was not the one that was microfilmed for the CIA. And that is sufficient to eliminate the various cloak and dagger accounts of how the Feltrinelli typescript was intercepted by various intelligence agencies and was reproduced for the CIA. In my book, I was careful to qualify my claims by allowing for the possibility that more than six typescripts might have left the USSR. In particular, in a footnote on p. 138, I mentioned some intriguing evidence about the possibility that a typescript might have reached the USA already in October 1957. Further work on this topic led me to show that there was indeed a typescript that reached the USA by October 1957.

In a recent article titled “The hunt for the seventh typescript” I have been able to show that Henry Carlisle and Rinehart & Co. in New York had available a typescript of Doctor Zhivago in October 1957. In the article, I reconstruct the story of how the typescript made its way from Peredelkino to the United States – it was brought there by Vladimir Bronislavovich Sossinsky –  but I also argue that this typescript played no role in the publication history of Doctor Zhivago. Thus, all the key claims made in my book are unaffected by this further research, which however completes the picture of the history of the typescripts that were sent by Pasternak outside the Soviet Union. The article appeared in Across Borders: 20th Century Russian Literature and Russian-Jewish Cultural Contacts. Essays in honor of Vladimir Khazan.  Edited by Lazar Fleishman and Fedor Poljakov (Stanford Slavic Studies. Vol. 48), Peter Lang Verlag, Berlin etc., 2018, pp. 587-623.