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and the clandestine corridors of the Cold War literature became a weapon. The
year was nineteen fifty eight and a Soviet writer by the name of Boris Pasternak
hat pandom masterpiece, Doctor Schivago. However, its page is brimming with unapologetic,
unapologetic religious fervor and a subtle defiance against socialists. Draw dogma rendered it
unacceptable to the Soviet regime. The author's magnum opus was banned, as words
deemed too dangerous for the Soviet citizenry get across the Iron Curtain. The CIA
saw an opportunity. British intelligence had intercepted roles of film contending photographs of pastron
Acts forbidden manuscripts and sent them to the American counterparts. Within the walls of
Langley, a covert operation was conceived, the mission to publish Doctor Chevago in
Russia and smuggled into the Soviet Union. John Mary, chief of the Soviet
Russian Division, recognized the potential impact of Pastornac's humanistic message. It was more
than a novel. It was a clarion call for individual rights and human dignity.
Every person is entitled to a private life and deserves respect as a human
being, irrespective of their political loyalty, said Mary. The ejective was clear
to seminate the author's work without revealing the hand of the US government sounds like
espionage to me. The CIA, in collaboration with the Dutch Intelligence Service BBD
auchers, orchestrated the prevent the printing of Doctor Chevago in its original Russian.
By September nineteen fifty eight, hardcover copies were discreetly distributed to CIA operatives stationed
across Western Europe Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, London and Paris. Most copies
found their way to Brussels at the Vatican Pavilion, a small library set up
by a Russian immigrant Catholics became a cover distribution point. Blue linen covered copies
of the novel were handed discreetly to Soviet citizens to concio their contraband many tore
off the cover, smuggling the pages back to their homeland. By July nineteen
fifty nine, the operation escalated at least nine thousand pocket sized editions of Doctor
Chivago were printed at CIA, camouflaging of the guise of a fictitious French publisher,
Societyda deshon Des. Around two thousand copies were clandestinely delivered to the nineteen
fifty nine World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace and Friendship in Vienna.
The event, through agents mingling with Soviet tourists and the officials, was infiltrated.
This bold operation was sanctioned at the highest levels Eisenhower Operations Coordinating Board,
reporting to the National Security Council, greed Litum Mission CIA director monitored its progress.
Unbeknownst to the author, Passernak his model. His banned novel was now
a powerful instrument in the ideological warfare of the Cold War. The dissemination of
Doctor Chivago's The Novel marked a pivotal movement in the psychological battleground of East versus
West. Semistry that sometimes the mightiest weapon did come from a pen.