CIA covertly funded Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago

As part of the Eisenhower Administration's campaign to subvert the Soviet Union from within, the CIA covertly arranged for Boris Pasternak's famed novel Doctor Zhivago to be published in Russian. The operation helped the dissident writer win the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe broadcaster Ivan Tolstoy tells the story in a forthcoming book. "Pasternak's novel became a tool that was used by the United States to teach the Soviet Union a lesson," Tolstoy tells the Washington Post.

The operation is considered a jewel in US cultural warfare against the USSR. Unpublished copies of Doctor Zhivago circulated underground in the Soviet Union. A recently revealed document from the Soviet archives shows then-Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov telling the Communist Party Central Committee in a memo that "Boris Pasternak's novel is a malicious libel of the USSR." A KGB memo said, "a typical feature of [Pasternak's] work is estrangement from Soviet life and a celebration of individualism."

The CIA is not commenting. The Post reports, "The agency's files on its cultural underwriting in Europe remain closed, historians said."