Pasternak (Boris) Doktor Zhivago original typescript, 2 vol., the George Katkov copy, author's autograph deletion of passages, insertion of words and typographical corrections in faint pencil and ink on over 200pp., light toning to text margins, vol.1 with 5ff. creased, vol.2 misbound with pagination as follows: 1-165, 178-184, 166-177 and 185-422, 2pp. in Russian relating to the 1958 BBC broadcast, lower joints starting, original brown cloth, large 8vo, 1956.

⁂ One of the most famous Russian novels of the 20th century, which earned Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature and was a major source of embarrassment to the Soviet Union. Doctor Zhivago stands as one of the great epic Russian novels, its semi-autobiographical saga of the love between the eponymous doctor and the tragic Lara told against the backdrop of revolution and civil war familiar to many Russians of that generation.

"I wrote the novel in order for it to be published and read, and that remains my only desire." - Boris Pasternak

The George Katkov copy of the Doctor Zhivago typescript. One of only six typescripts to leave the Soviet Union prior to the novel's publication. This copy was instrumental in the first English translation, the BBC broadcasts of the novel in Russian and is very likely one of only two possible copies used by the CIA to publish Doctor Zhivago in Russian. No other complete typescript has ever been available freely on the market; the remaining copies are either in institutions or exceedingly unlikely to be sold. The existence of the Katkov typescript only became widely known with the publication of Paolo Mancosu's Zhivago's Secret Journey from Typescript to Book in 2016. Mancosu's authoritative research gives us a new and incontrovertible account of the complexities of the situation.

Pasternak was already a highly acclaimed poet when he began writing Doctor Zhivago in 1945. He had long planned to write a novel which he considered a higher form of art than poetry, and regarded this work the greatest achievement of his oeuvre. Although it was already known to friends through private readings, the first public announcement of its existence and impending publication was a notice in the magazine Znamya in 1954: "The novel will probably be completed in the course of this summer. It covers a period from 1903 to 1929, with an epilogue relating to the Great War for the Fatherland." Nevertheless, it took until 1955 for Pasternak to complete the novel, submitting it for publication with a number of Soviet publishers in early 1956. Having received no reply for several months, Pasternak then commenced plans to have the typescript smuggled out of the USSR and published in translation overseas, hoping that this would force the Soviet Union to agree to publication in his homeland.
Pasternak's forebodings about publication in Russia were realised when he received an excoriating thirty-page analysis of his novel from the editors of the literary magazine Novy Mir, rejecting it as unfit for Soviet publication and concluding with the sentence: "And so, Boris Leonidovich you have used your great gift in order to resuscitate in the soul of our people ideals which have been dead for a long time, and have passed by those ideals by which our people live."
Mancosu has traced and examined the six typescripts sent out of Russia by Pasternak, all have handwritten corrections by the author, and Pasternak continued to add or alter passages throughout 1956-58 (the Katkov and Jacqueline de Proyart copies were the last to leave Russia, although it is unclear in what order).
The first typescript to leave the country was given to Sergio D'Angelo, an Italian literary scout, on 20th May 1956. It made its way to the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli who arranged a contract for publication with Pasternak, signed in June of that year. After delays owing to severe pressure brought to bear by the Soviet authorities upon both Pasternak and Feltrinelli (who was a member of the Italian Communist Party), the latter went on to publish the first worldwide edition on 15th November 1957. This typescript is now located at the Feltrinelli Foundation in Milan.
The remaining five typescripts were distributed as follows:
1. To Ziemowit Fedecki, now located in the Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw. This copy is lacking the final 250pp.
2. To Isaiah Berlin, now located with the Pasternak Family Papers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, California.
3. To Hélène Peltier, now located in the Peltier archive in Sylvanès, France. This copy is lacking the second volume.
4. To Jacqueline de Proyart which remains in private hands.
5. To George Katkov.
George Katkov (1903-85), a Russian academic, born in Moscow, was the son of a professor of Roman law at Kiev University. In 1921, at the age of 18, he fled Russia with his family at the height of the civil war, the very era of which Pasternak writes so movingly in the novel. He earned a doctorate in Philosophy at the German University in Prague before finally settling in England in 1939. After working at a number of academic posts and for a period with the BBC he became senior lecturer in Russian history at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, in 1953. Katkov travelled to Moscow in 1956 as part of a British academic delegation and met Pasternak during this trip. During their meeting Pasternak told Katkov that he had given a copy of his typescript to Feltrinelli and requested that Katkov assist in the English publication. Katkov could not risk taking the typescript at this point but one was sent to him, most likely through diplomatic channels, arriving in February or March 1957.
Collins publishers obtained the rights for publication in English in late 1956, and the process of translation began. Katkov recommended Max Hayward, who worked as a research fellow at St. Anthony's College, as the principal translator, he was later joined by Manya Harari, with Stephen Spender enlisted to help translate the poems. The English translation was then checked for style before being read to Katkov, who checked it against his copy of the typescript, noting any passages that he felt had become distorted. The first English edition was published on 8th September, 1958.
Katkov, along with his copy of the text, was also instrumental in the 1958 BBC radio production of the novel in Russian which was broadcasted into the Soviet Union. The two pages accompanying this copy show the breakdown of the novel into thirty-eight segments for broadcast. His assistance with this broadcast was contentious and earned Katkov the opprobrium of a number of Russian émigrés, including Berlin. For many people living in the USSR however, this would have been the first, and possibly only, opportunity to listen to the novel. The controversy surrounding the BBC broadcasts embodied the wider philosophical debate that had occupied many of the people involved in the novel's publication: though Pasternak was determined to have the novel published, success in this regard could have led to a death sentence for him. Those who were in favour of publication ultimately succeeded, and it was likely one of these people who was instrumental in passing a copy of the text to the CIA for dissemination in the Soviet Union.
The CIA were quick to realise the propaganda potential of the novel; in recently declassified memos dating from as early as 1957, agents expressed a desire to obtain a copy of the work in order to assist in its publication in Russian, eventually obtaining a microfilm of the text in early 1958. The clear desire of the Soviet government to block publication of the novel, in large part due to its critiquing of the brutalities embodied by the regime, meant that for the CIA the novel could be a powerful Cold War weapon and its publication a propaganda coup. Through close textual analysis, Mancosu has been able to establish that only the Berlin and Katkov copies could have been used for the first Russian edition, and that Katkov appears to be one of the most likely candidates for the unknown individual who passed a copy of the typescript to the CIA.
The Russian edition was published by Mouton in the Hague in early September 1958 (although with a false imprint of "Feltrinelli-Milan 1958"). It was distributed via the Vatican pavilion at the Brussels World Exhibition; Russian visitors were ushered in and handed copies of the novel, many of whom then broke the books down to secrete the sheets amongst their clothing. After decades of underground circulation, Doctor Zhivago was finally published officially in Russia in 1988.

Provenance: George Katkov, thence by descent.

Literature

Paulo Mancosu, Inside the Zhivago Storm, The editorial adventures of Pasternaks Masterpiece, Feltrinelli Milan, 2013
Paolo Mancosu, Zhivago's Secret Journey from Typescript to Book, Hoover Institution Press, 2016.
Peter Finn and Petra Couvée, The Zhivago Affair, Harvill Secker, 2014
Frances Stonor Saunders, The Writer and the Valet, in London Review of Books, vol.36, no.18, September 2014.