Doctor Zhivago

Academician D. Likhachev called «Doctor Zhivago» the spiritual autobiography of Pasternak. Perhaps this is the most accurate and concise — therefore, it may be the most valuable — description of the book. Only the author himself can add or clarify:... «I am currently writing a large prose novel about a man who constitutes a certain resultant between Blok and me, and Mayakovsky and Yesenin, perhaps.» As a result, a book emerged with a sweeping canvas of Russian life from the early 20th century to the Great Patriotic War. The country saw the aphorism «Haven't read it, but condemn it!» — and the tragic persecution of the author as a traitor and slanderer of the Soviet regime. And in the history of world literature, a new Nobel laureate appeared — Boris Leonidovich Pasternak.