I am not sure what Yuri Krotkov was trying to achieve in [The Nobel Prize]. Was he paying his own tribute to the memory of a great poet, Boris Pasternak?…

Or perhaps—in fact more probably—Mr Krotkov intended to study the tragic dilemma of Pasternak vis-à-vis the state. The terrible position in which he found himself—knowing that acceptance of the Nobel Prize (and thereby standing up publicly for the freedom of the artist) would mean him being forced to leave his homeland—only brought to a head the struggle which had been going on in his conscience since the beginning of the Bolshevik era. Never had he betrayed his principles or his fellow-man; but … he had striven to see some good in Stalin and in the creation of a socialist state. The storm of abuse over Doctor Zhivago fell on a writer who could at...