The museum’s caption refers to Tolstoy’s book as “alleging that the CIA had secretly arranged for the publication of a limited-run, Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago,” but coyly adds (as if the museum had no connection with its bosses), “the CIA officially declined to comment on Tolstoy’s conclusions.” Perhaps it was in 2009, when the Russian journalist and broadcaster Ivan Tolstoy published The Laundered Novel: Doctor Zhivago between the KGB and the CIA, the first serious investigation of the subject for many years.

For over half a century the CIA kept totally quiet about its involvement with Doctor Zhivago and only very recently admitted to it. So far as I know, it’s the only literary exhibit in the museum and its presence in such incongruous surroundings indicates the importance the CIA once placed on “soft” warfare and propaganda, though when exactly the book was put there and information about it released online is not clear. The front cover and the binding identify the book in Russian the back of the book states that it was printed in France.” The caption reads: “Copy of the original Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago, covertly published by the CIA. It’s a pocket edition of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, six hundred pages printed on bible paper for smuggling purposes. 1 Among its prize exhibits, alongside the Enigma encryption machine, a semi-submersible submarine, and Osama bin Laden’s AK-47, is an unassuming paperback book measuring five-and-a-half inches high, three-and-a-half inches wide, and three quarters of an inch thick. The museum’s function, according to its website, is to “inform, instruct and inspire” members of the CIA as they practice the craft of intelligence. In its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the CIA has a museum that’s not generally open to the public.

Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya at his dacha in Peredelkino, late 1950s

Pasternak dr zhivago