ABSTRACT
Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953 marked the end of a quarter of a century’s particularly harsh regimentation, and his passing was welcomed for the hope of widespread relaxation which it seemed to offer. There were alternating phases of relaxation, commonly termed ‘thaws’, and of renewed regimentation, commonly known as ‘crackdowns’ or ‘freeze-ups’. Works by Andrey Sinyavsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and numerous other famous or less famous nonconformist Russian writers, Soviet-domiciled at the time in question, have been brought out abroad in the last three decades some pseudonymously, some under the author's true name while remaining unpublished in their country of origin. But it turned out that the fatal document was already beyond the Central Committee's reach, having been dispatched to Feltrinelli in Milan. Pasternak regarded Protest Literature as a farce and a fraud, but could not escape involvement entirely. Pasternak’s unwillingness to attempt a portrayal of fully-fledged Stalinism in his Autobiographical Sketch is reflected in Doctor Zhivago.
