Soviets to Publish ‘Dr. Zhivago’ After a Ban of 30 Years

“Doctor Zhivago,” the novel that brought Boris Pasternak fame abroad and condemnation at home 30 years ago, will be published in the Soviet Union for the first time next year, Tass said today.

The novel about post-revolutionary Russia, which won Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, will appear in three or four installments in the literary magazine Novy Mir during 1988.

Other works by Pasternak, who died in 1960, have been published over the years but “Doctor Zhivago,” with its tale of suffering in the turmoil after the 1917 revolution, was always labeled anti-Soviet.

Pasternak, knowing that the novel would not be published in the Soviet Union, had it printed first in Italy. The worldwide acclaim for the book brought him the Nobel Prize, but he was forced by Soviet authorities to decline it.