The Zhivago Affair
The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
About this listen
In May of 1956, an Italian publishing scout took a train to the Russian countryside to visit the country's most beloved poet, Boris Pasternak. He left concealing the original manuscript of Pasternak's much anticipated first novel, entrusted to him with these words from the author: "This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world." Pasternak knew his novel would never be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an assault on the 1917 Revolution, so he allowed it to be published in translation all over the world. But in 1958, the CIA, which recognized that the Cold War was above all an ideological battle, published Doctor Zhivago in Russian and smuggled it into the Soviet Union where it was snapped up on the black market and passed surreptitiously from friend to friend. Pasternak, whose funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands of fans who stayed for hours in defiance of the watching KGB, launched the great Soviet tradition of the writer-dissident. With sole access to otherwise classified CIA files, the authors give us an irresistible portrait of the charming and passionate Pasternak and a twisting Cold War thriller that takes us back to a time when literature had power to shape the world.
©2014 Peter Finn and Petra Couvée. Recorded by arrangement with Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. (P)2014 HighBridge CompanyListeners also enjoyed...
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Rasputin
- Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs
- By: Douglas Smith
- Narrated by: PJ Ochlan
- Length: 33 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Rasputin separates fact from fiction to reveal the real life of one of history's most alluring figures. Drawing on a wealth of forgotten documents from archives in seven countries, Smith presents Rasputin in all his complexity - man of God, voice of peace, loyal subject, adulterer, drunkard. Rasputin is not just a definitive biography of an extraordinary and legendary man, but a fascinating portrait of the twilight of imperial Russia as it lurched toward catastrophe.
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A story that deserves a better narrator.
- By James on 01-27-18
By: Douglas Smith
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Ayn Rand and the World She Made
- By: Anne C. Heller
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Ayn Rand is the author of two phenomenally best-selling ideological novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have sold over 12 million copies in the United States alone. Through them, she built a right-wing cult following in the late 1950s and became the guiding light of Libertarianism and of White House economic policy in the 1960s and '70s. Her defenses of radical individualism and of selfishness as a "capitalist virtue" have permanently altered the American cultural landscape.
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Great history of both Rand and her era
- By Mark on 08-07-10
By: Anne C. Heller
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Stalin
- The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives
- By: Edvard Radzinsky
- Narrated by: David McCallum
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Abridged
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The Kremlin intrigues, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class, Radzinsky thrillingly brings them to life. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might, and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history, is solved.
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A Great Book About a Great Tyrant
- By Moon Man on 05-01-05
By: Edvard Radzinsky
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True Believer
- Stalin's Last American Spy
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.
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Misplaced Loyalty
- By Joanne on 04-08-18
By: Kati Marton
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A Torch Kept Lit
- Great Lives of the Twentieth Century
- By: William F. Buckley
- Narrated by: Tony Pasqualini
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In a half century on the national stage, William F. Buckley Jr. achieved unique stature as a polemicist and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He knew everybody, hosted everybody at his East 73rd Street maisonette, skewered everybody who needed skewering, and in general lived life on a scale, and in a swashbuckling manner, that captivated and inspired countless young conservatives across that half century.
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Excellent...inspiring imagery!
- By Lisa Hill on 10-14-16
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
- By: Gerald Martin
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In his novels and short stories, Gabriel García Márquez has transformed the particulars of his own life and the lives of his fellow Colombians into wondrous fiction. While telling the story of the sloppily dressed, skinny young man who rose from obscurity as a provincial journalist to international fame as the progenitor of a new literature, Gerald Martin also considers the tensions in García Márquez's life between celebrity and the personal quest for literary quality, between politics and writing, and between the seductions of power, solitude, and love.
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Great content, somewhat disappointing narrator.
- By Paola Herrington on 01-08-13
By: Gerald Martin
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The Pope and Mussolini
- The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe
- By: David I. Kertzer
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.
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It is not narrated well - the delivery does not keep it as captivating as this book should be
- By Karina Inigo on 07-14-15
By: David I. Kertzer
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Lioness
- Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
- By: Francine Klagsbrun
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 32 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Born in tsarist Russia in 1898, she immigrated to America in 1906 and grew up in Milwaukee, where from her earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel's founding generation. Moving to mandatory Palestine in 1921 with her husband, the passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life.
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The persistent mispronunciations of Hebrew and Yiddish words ruined this performance
- By YH-O on 12-30-18
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Children of Paradise
- The Struggle for the Soul of Iran
- By: Laura Secor
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The drama that shaped today’s Iran, from the Revolution to the present day. In 1979, seemingly overnight - moving at a clip some 30 years faster than the rest of the world - Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be.
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Most Engaging
- By malita on 12-29-22
By: Laura Secor
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The Devil's Diary
- Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
- By: Robert K. Wittman, David Kinney
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A groundbreaking historical contribution, The Devil's Diary is a chilling window into the mind of Adolf Hitler's "chief social philosopher", Alfred Rosenberg, who formulated some of the guiding principles behind the Third Reich's genocidal crusade.
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Fresh perspective on terrible events.
- By Sparkly on 04-20-16
By: Robert K. Wittman, and others
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Lenin's Tomb
- The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
- By: David Remnick
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 29 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.
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The moral complexity of a comic book
- By Tot on 02-22-19
By: David Remnick
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Existentialism and Excess
- The Life and Times of Jean-Paul Sartre
- By: Gary Cox
- Narrated by: Matt Addis
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the undisputed giants of 20th-century philosophy. His intellectual writings popularizing existentialism, combined with his creative and artistic flair, have made him a legend of French thought. His tumultuous personal life - so inextricably bound up with his philosophical thinking - is a fascinating tale of love and lust, drug abuse, high-profile fallings-out and political and cultural rebellion.
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a capitalista biography of Sartre
- By Anonymous User on 01-24-20
By: Gary Cox
What listeners say about The Zhivago Affair
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sally M.
- 06-26-21
Excellent
An informative book. Well done. Pasternak is more than the author of Dr Zhivago. The CIA involvement was a surprise without which we might not have known Zhivago..
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- Edward Forsythe
- 01-11-15
Excellent History of Pasternak and his Masterpiece
I loved the inside look at the life of an amazing writer and literary legend in Soviet times. Along with Fifty Russian Winters, it portrays the life of the artistic elite and their struggles to create and express themselves within the boundaries--or sometimes outside of them--imposed by the Communist Party and Soviet leaders. This story is an inspirational tale of perseverance in the struggle for what the author thought was right and his struggles to survive and see his life's work emerge from behind the Iron Curtain. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in Pasternak, Soviet and Russian history, or literature in general. The reading was well done; the pronunciation of Russian names and places was accurate (I'm a Russian-speaker); and the story was engaging. Be sure to check it out and then read Dr. Zhivago with this new knowledge in mind!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dave
- 06-22-17
mostly about personal histories
great insight into Soviet literary life but less about the spies and more about the sorted lives of the artists.
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- Steve Herrmann
- 03-06-22
Must read!
This gives the needed background to the novel & film. It is a must read/listen! Even as the Zhivago Affair and the novel Dr.Zhivago are related, as cousins, the Affair does not explain the novel itself, but the background to the history of the novel’s writing. It reveals the result of the history seen in the novel. What Yuri Zhivago shows us of the beginning of the Soviet system, is seen in Boris Pasternak’s life experience. Pasternak realized the necessity of the publishing of his book Dr.Zhivago, and was willing to sacrifice for it. As the Soviets tried to silence the book, the reality of who they are and what their system is came all the more to the fore.
The reading was one of the best I have ever heard. Not at all monotone, nor mellow dramatic, but engaging all the way through! Excellent!
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- Melita
- 10-29-14
Non-fiction as Spellbinding as a Thriller
Where does The Zhivago Affair rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Well researched from what seems to be a large number of different sources, the story takes us on a journey of history, literature, espionage and human drama.
What other book might you compare The Zhivago Affair to and why?
I have never come across a work of non-fiction as thrilling as this one. The listening is equivalent of a page-turner.
Have you listened to any of Simon Vance’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
The narration is superb, doing justice to the text with elegance.
Any additional comments?
I was at the same time entertained and learned a lot about the history of the country I currently happen to live in.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Alison
- 07-07-16
great story. dragged in some places
I love Simon Vance...and know him from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series. so I chose this book based on him and thought it would be an interesting story. it was! but sometimes I struggled to keep up with all the characters. names spanned across continents, languages...sometimes even minor characters were mentioned to what significance I don't know. so in some places it dragged (or was hard to follow)...bit I still thought it was a good read.
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- KathrynVB
- 10-16-14
Read this to understand Doctor Zhivago and Russia
I remember reading in the 1960s that there was great drama in the publishing of Doctor Zhivago in the west, and in Boris Pasternak being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This is the story of that drama. "The Zhivago Affair" will give you a better understanding of the times and how difficult it was for Pasternak to publish an honest book about Russia in the early days of the USSR. We can only dimly imagine how fraught with terror were the lives of Russian intellectuals. This is a wonderful history of the author, the book he wrote, and the consequences of its publication.
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5 people found this helpful
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- D. Littman
- 06-27-14
wonderful book
Would you listen to The Zhivago Affair again? Why?
Yes eventually. Very moving history book.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
In the latter portion of the book, when Pasternak, his family & his mistress family were being unjustly persecuted by the Soviet state & it's corrupt literary hierarchy I got very mad.
Any additional comments?
Just a terrific book of political & literary history. Very moving & impossible to put down.
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4 people found this helpful
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- BG
- 07-09-24
An excellent book, so interesting
In depth, detailed, research. Excellent. Everything, every page, is fascinating; The history of Soviet Union and this book, Doctor Zhivago, and of Boris Pasternak. I had no idea it world be so enriching. Putin carries on the maladies. Highly recommend.
Simon Vance did a great job, as usual!
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