FOIAWEAR — DOCTOR ZHIVAGO / Published in Secret 1958 Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 043 — DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

In 1958 the Agency secretly printed a banned novel in Russian and handed it out at a world's fair.

Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago could not be published in the Soviet Union. The memorandum for the record of 8 September 1958, written under the subject line “Publication of Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago”, explains what happened instead: the Russian edition was “published this week… in Holland”, and arrangements had been made “to receive the first thousand copies of the book off the press.” Those copies were “distributed to Soviet visitors at the Brussels Fair and in Western Europe.”

The memo sets out the reasoning in its own words — observing that this “great anti-communist philosophical novel” was being published in Italian, French, English and German, and “realizing that there was little chance of Soviet authorities publishing it in the Soviet Union, we felt that the book should be published in Russian” for Soviet readers.

Distribution was thought through in detail. There was “the capability of giving the book to travelers going into the USSR for internal distribution”; some American travellers would “similarly carry the book into the Soviet Union”; and plans were being made “to mail a certain number of the books to students and members of the Soviet intelligentsia.”

Then there is the line that stays with you. The memo records that an attempt was being made to inform Pasternak that an escrow account from the sale of the book had been set up in his name — and that he would be told the funds from that account “will be available if he is ever in a position to use them.”

A memorandum for the record of 3 March 1958 fills in the printery: the novel was to be published in Russian by the Mouton Company in The Hague. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1958 and was forced to decline it.

Forty-three documents on Pasternak and Doctor Zhivago survive in the released files — memoranda, cables on press coverage, notes on the Italian publisher, and a 2 January 1958 entry recording the “transmittal of film of Pasternak book.”

The artwork shows the CIA's own copy of the novel — the miniature Russian-language volume held up between two fingers to show how small it is, a spill of identical copies beside it, and the Atomium of the 1958 Brussels fair behind. The CIA Museum notes of this edition that “the front cover and the binding identify the book in Russian” while “the back of the book states that it was printed in France” — a false imprint for a book printed in Holland with American money.

Offered in eleven garment colours, printed as two different plates rather than one image re-toned. On the dark garments (Black, Graphite, Espresso, Pepper) the print carries the book's warm paper, the lifted green and brick of the hand and the gold of the Atomium. On the light garments (White, Ivory, Butter, Chalky Mint, Light Green, Blossom, Chambray) the same scene is drawn again as a three-ink screen plate for pale cloth — heavy black line work and halftone shading, the Atomium in brick and the skyline in deep ochre, with the Russian lettering on the cover drawn clean.

The QR code on the front opens the released document itself — Memorandum for PP Notes, Publication of Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, 8 September 1958: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0005795662

Note: quotations above are taken verbatim from the released documents, with redactions and OCR damage not reproduced; where a passage is damaged it is paraphrased rather than quoted. Doctor Zhivago is Boris Pasternak's novel, in copyright to his estate; this design is a historical tribute and quotes only the declassified record about the novel, not the novel itself. This is not an official publication and is not affiliated with any government or agency.

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed t-shirt. Heavyweight 6.1 oz/yd² (206.8 g/m²), 100% ring-spun US cotton, pre-shrunk, relaxed fit, double-needle stitched with no side seams and a sewn-in label. Sizes S–4XL. Printed on the front at 300 DPI; plain back. The main artwork prints at 10 × 10 in and the QR at 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low. Do not iron directly on the printed area.

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