Talk:Boris Pasternak

message: Did Pasternak merely "decline to accept it", or was he prevented by the Soviet authorities from doing so?  I always understood the latter was the case.  JackofOz 00:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He declined to accept because Khruschev's campaign at his systematic persecution implied that, once departing for Stockholm, he would be stripped of Soviet citizenship and would never be allowed to return home. Pasternak was old and, knowing that his end was near, chose to die in Russia rather then accept the prize and end his days abroad. --Ghirla | talk 01:08, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you, Ghirla.  Doesn't this need some reference in the article?  From what you say, discretion was the better part of valour, but if political circumstances had been different, there would have been no reason for Pasternak to decline the award.  He may have declined to accept it, but only in the face of undesirable consequences if he had done so.  JackofOz 02:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, that's exactly how I and other people in Russia interprete his reclusion. I'm not a native speaker, so I trust you would articulate the passage better than myself. --Ghirla | talk 08:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you.  I've made some changes to the article using your information.  JackofOz 09:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: UYGHTFREGRFTEVDCGFDVRFGDCGDFCX 50.5.60.185 (talk) 16:39, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Nobel Prize

message: There is one confusion here: 
* Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (...
It's right that he was born Jan 29 (old style), i.e. Feb 10 (Gregorian). Avia 08:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's now been fixed.  --  Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Birthdate

message: This entry and the one specifically on Doctor Zhivago offer conflicting dates for the eventual publication of the book in Russia. They differ by a year. Anyone know? Fitzhugh 05:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Contradicts entry on Doctor Zhivago regarding publication date in Russia

message: Any recommendations? The Harvill one I've got is awful. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.98.144.27 (talk) 23:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Best English translation of Zhivago?

message: Someone has vandalized this page recently. They replaced Russian/Soviet with France. I made some corrections but one France remains and I am not sure if it is correct or not. Help?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.71.63 (talk) 01:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism

message: Do we really need the phrase:
:His cousin, Polish poet Leon Pasternak was not so lucky. As a result of his political activities in Poland — writing satirical verses for socialist revolutionary periodicals - he was imprisoned in 1934 in the Bereza Kartuska detention camp.
Was the fate of his cousin so important for Boris Paternak? Alex Bakharev (talk) 04:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Leon Pasternak]]

message: 1. The word Pasternak in Russian meaning parsnip has nothing to do with Boris Pasternak.
2. I believe that Pasternak had a more important legacy than a verse of his being used in some song and an asteroid being named after him.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.163.66.166 (talk) 21:05, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legacy Section 

message: This article has been reverted by a bot to  as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 14:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem 

message: Under ethnicity it says russian, which is a nationality. Should this not be changed to either represent his ethnicity or change the title ethnicity to nationality?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.95.114.167 (talk) 14:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: ethnicity IS nationality - you are confusing this with CITIZENSHIP, which is the political side of a person HammerFilmFan (talk) 19:55, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnicity 

message: OK, where is it?
--Gergyl (talk) 22:44, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of works 

message: The article is getting well referenced and becoming, I think , a really useful resource. I am concerned about the level of quotation used, especially from the Ivinskaya biography. She does offer a unique perspective, however Wikipedia doesn't like to rely on primary sources (see WP:PRIMARY). The article is a bit of a quotefarm; the biography is still under copyright. The guidelines say 
While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Long quotations crowd the actual article and remove attention from other information. Many direct quotations can be minimized in length by providing an appropriate context in the surrounding text. A summary or paraphrase of a quotation is often better where the original wording could be improved. Consider minimizing the length of a quotation by paraphrasing, by working smaller portions of quotation into the article text, or both.
(It's a long quote). Most of the quotes can be successfully paraphrased, while keeping the reference, helping to improve the article even more. Best wishes  Span (talk) 20:43, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Quotes

message: When did this guy get married? And who was his wife? Should be mentioned somewhere in the article, unless I missed it.
Clickclickdecker (talk) 17:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: His wife Zinaida Pasternak is mentioned but not their meeting or wedding, that I can see. It would be good to add. Span (talk) 19:32, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've inserted minimal info about Pasternak's two wives. HuPi (talk) 23:15, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: There should also be basic data about his children; the article has odd gaps.Parkwells (talk) 14:59, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marriage 

message: Is an autobiography, not a collection. The collection in mind is probably My Sister-Life, written in 1917, published in 1922.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.85.48.190 (talk) 08:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Safe Conduct 

message: The title of Pasternak's cycle of love poems is rendered variously (e.g., here) as 'Sister my life', 'My Sister, Life', 'My Sister --Life', 'My Sister-Life' and other variants, several of which occurred in the WP article before my copyedit.  My reading is that 'Sister' and 'Life' are intended to be in apposition—not hyphenated nor separated by an em rule, as suggested by the layout of some printed covers. For this reason, in adopting a consistent style, I have opted for the simple and unambiguous comma, which also looks tidiest in the infobox and other contexts. Cheers, Bjenks (talk) 09:26, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  My Sister, Life 

message: In the Khrushchev thaw section, the original quote from the Ivinskaya biography (1978, p142) was:
"At this period, [Boris Leonidovich] was reading George Orwell's Animal Farm in the English original and he hugely enjoyed this merciless satire about a society of animals which mutiny against their human masters, and then gradually revert to a wretched caricature of their original condition. The animals were presided over by a fat hog who vividly reminded [Boris Leonidovich] of our head of state. Sometimes he said laughingly that Khrushchev put his collar around the wrong part of his anatomy."Ivinskaya (1978) p 142.
This was paraphrased in the article as 
:"During this period Pasternak was reading a clandestine copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm in English. He relished the caricature of Nikita Khrushchev as the swine dictator Napoleon."
which is a different thing. Ivinskaya isn't saying that Napolean was based on Khrushchev, but that Napolean reminded Pasternak of Khrushchev. The point is that Pasternak was reading and appreciating Animal Farm. I have edited to that effect. Large chunks of the article consisted of direct quotes from the biography; (this is still the case). Span (talk) 21:35, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice catch! Thanks for looking into it, too. I only reverted the initial edit because it looked slightly OR-y to me. Now that you've checked the source and confirmed, it appears to be good for the article. Evanh2008 (talk) (contribs) 21:38, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Animal Farm

message: A lot of good work here, but ... 
#Boris_Pasternak#Legacy. This should be about legacy of Pasternak, not about legacy of Olga Ivinskaya (first two paragraphs).
#Too much about Stalin's epigram (although should be noted). It was important for Mandelshtam and Akhamatova. Pasternak did not talk with Stalin about epigram, but about Mandelshtam.
#Introduction. It tells: "Furthermore, tactics pioneered by Pasternak were later continued, expanded, and refined by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents." What tactics? What? Did he want to damage "international credibility of the U.S.S.R."? Was his persecution his "tactics"?
#"My Sister, Life ... decisively changed the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetayeva". ??? Where that comes from?
#Too much about Olga Ivinskaya in this article, something should be moved to her article. 
#This English translation of his "Hamlet" is terrible (I saw better).
There is an interesting biography of Pasternak by Dmitri Bykov. Here is one interesting observation about persecution of Pasternak from the literature: Soviet authorities wanted this Nobel prize to be given to Mikhail Sholokhov, however his And Quiet Flows the Don (approved by Stalin) was significantly more "anti-Soviet" than Doctor Zhivago (novel) (disapproved by Khrushev)... This is true. My very best wishes (talk) 05:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Some problems

message: This article relies too much on Ivinskaya's memoir of Pasternak and his own writings, essentially a primary sources. There are many excellent academic books on Pasternak which should be used to strengthen the facts and interpretation.Parkwells (talk) 14:57, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs more secondary sources

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The early education section within the Early life section carries a very biased tone.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A03F:1614:2A00:C016:1EA:B11A:4677 (talk) 09:43, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early Education  

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion 

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thread_title:  Citation style 

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message: For section the Nobel Prize about CIA role in the Pasternak's winning of the Nobel.
There is opposite opinion said in Washington Post by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée (During Cold War, CIA used ‘Doctor Zhivago’ as a tool to undermine Soviet Union April 5, 2014): "While the CIA hoped Pasternak’s novel would draw global attention, including from the Swedish Academy, there was no indication that the agency’s motive for printing a Russian-language edition was to help Pasternak win the prize, something that has been a matter of speculation for some decades." 
So, there may need probably some clear-up (if there is no exact citations) for wording like 
* "...a massive propaganda campaign to influence the Nobel Prize committee to consider Zhivago for the award" -- as said above (Finn, P. Couvée, P.), there was no indication that the agency’s motive for printing a Russian-language edition was to help Pasternak win the prize.
* "The issue of whether or not the CIA had a hand in creating the international controversy that led to Pasternak's winning the Nobel Prize was definitively settled on 11 April 2014..." -- Nobel Literature Prize is not awarded obviously for "the international controversy".
Also I would ask citation about 
* "In order to turn Pasternak's novel into an international bestseller worthy of consideration for the Nobel Prize, the CIA purchased thousands of copies of the novel as they came off the presses throughout Europe" (Nobel committee does not watch the work is a bestseller or not to consider about Prize obviously, that is why I guess the phrase is probably to have no source or wrong cited.).
While considering the clear-up, bear in mind that Nobel Prize was awarded on October 23, 1958, so all printed books after that date were not connected with the Nobel winning at all (for example, as cited the miniature books, but they were printed by CIA only in 1959, -- this is good story about the CIA activities, but has nothing to do with the 1958 Nobel Prize). PoetVeches (talk) 15:51, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, indeed. Moreover, this is a content fork. This is already included on page Doctor_Zhivago_(novel)#Russian_text_published_by_CIA where it belongs. On this page this is briefly mentioned in section about the book, which is sufficient. I therefore removed this section from this page. My very best wishes (talk) 02:47, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia:Neutral point of view about CIA role in Pasternak's winning of the Nobel Prize

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message: Very difficult to read with excessive quotes and coverage of his personal life. I think it should be completely redrafted and condensed to read like a biography.♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:39, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs a complete rewrite from scratch