The secrets behind how the CIA recruited 'Doctor Zhivago'

"Dr.Zhivago" was a dangerous book, because it celebrated the private life, at a time when that was forbidden behind the Iron Curtain. The story of how "Doctor Zhivago" came to be published in Soviet Russia is a thriller in itself, it involves spies and smuggling and that story is finally being told in a new book.


The film "Dr. Zhivago" won five Academy Awards. The novel it was based on, helped earn its author the Nobel Prize for Literature.

And while the Jewish writer and poet Boris Pasternak is celebrated today, there were many in power in his native Soviet Union who wanted him stopped.

His great novel, Doctor Zhivago, was considered dangerous. It was forbidden in the U.S.S.R., and the story of how the book eventually got published and made its way back into the Soviet Union is a cloak and dagger tale as good as any Cold War spy novel itself.

Peter Finn tells that incredible tale in "The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, The CIA, and The Battle Over a Forbidden Book." Peter Finn is the National Security Editor of the Washington Post. And he co-wrote the book with Petra Couvee.

Peter Finn joined us from Washington DC.

This segment was produced by The Current's Howard Goldenthal.