October 27, 1958
ATTACK ON PASTERNAK: Moscow, 24 – The Russian writer Boris Pasternak, in an interview with foreign journalists in the Soviet capital, said winning the Nobel Prize for Literature was «a great joy for me.» He said he had been told of his winning the award the previous evening by friends, but that nothing official had yet been announced. He also said he would like very much to go to Stockholm to receive the prize but was not able to confirm anything until it was official. He said he had received a large number of letters about his novel «Doctor Zhivago,» which eventually had prevented him from working, as he felt obliged to reply to all of them. Many of these letters had come from the USA. He said that he had worked on the book for 10 years. Moscow radio quoted a comment in the Soviet press to the effect that giving the award to Pasternak was a hostile political act toward the Soviet regime and socialism in general and was aimed at exacerbating the Cold War. It also said that the phrasing of the statement along with Pasternak’s award was «hypocritical and filled with falsehoods,» and that, apart from «Doctor Zhivago,» none of Pasternak’s other works were known in the West. It said the award was an «ideological expression of international reactionism.»
