Pasternak Nobel Prize for what. The long road to the Nobel Prize
Dear Polina!
The situation is really difficult. You are distant relatives to each other, namely fourth cousins, and your parents, respectively, are second cousins. And although your degree of relationship is very distant, seventh, you still came from the same family. The issue of your possible marriage must be considered from several positions: ethical, religious, legal, scientific.
Church position
If you are baptized into Orthodoxy, there are no canonical obstacles to your marriage. Since the 19th century, the wedding of fourth cousins has been permitted without special permission from the bishop, which is required for the wedding of relatives with closer kinship, for example, second cousins, who in practice are also married.
If we talk about Islam, then people baptized in this religion also marry with closer relatives. So, among Muslims marriage is possible between cousins and a sister, not to mention the seventh degree of kinship, like yours.
Law
The Family Code of the Russian Federation determines restrictions on marriage between relatives in a direct ascending and descending line, which is enshrined in Article 14 of the RF IC. It's about about parents and children, grandparents and granddaughters, brothers and sisters who have common parents. As for more distant degrees of kinship, the law allows marriage between first cousins, second cousins, fourth cousins, etc. brothers and sisters.
Genetics
The issue of your future offspring deserves special attention, because it is known that close relationship between spouses increases the likelihood of autosomal recessive pathology in children. It is believed that the more closely related the child’s parents are, the higher the likelihood of a hereditary disease in offspring in a consanguineous marriage.
In general, a marriage is considered related if you have a common ancestor in 3 - 4 previous generations. IN in this case these are your great-great-grandparents who gave birth to your great-grandparents, who were siblings. The next generation were your grandparents - your cousins. Next come your parents - second cousins, then you - fourth cousins. So you have one ancestor.
Of course, the risk of having a child with a genetic disease or developmental defect in your case is not very high. Everything will depend on whether you are simultaneous carriers of the same mutant genes in a latent state. A geneticist will help you answer this question. You need to seek an in-person consultation with a specialist. At your appointment, they will draw up a pedigree for you, from which they will calculate the proportion of common genes.
As a rule, testing for the genetic compatibility of spouses includes a blood test for HLA antigens. During the period of bearing a child, to exclude gross anomalies of its development, a triple test is carried out, included in compulsory program diagnosis of pregnancy, i.e. well-known pregnancy screening.
Thus, there are no real obstacles to your marriage, provided your families approve of it. And although a consultation with a geneticist will not hurt you at all, the risks of pathologies in your future children are minimized.
Best regards, Ksenia.
Recent genetic research suggests that distant relatives can marry without serious risk to the offspring. Therefore, in this article we will talk about the moral aspect, religious attitude to this issue and some scientific facts medicine.
Everyone remembers Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In our time love relationship between distant relatives, especially between cousins, sometimes lead to conflicts between their parents or judgment from others. Relatives of both families turn into Montagues and Capulets. In this article, we will find out whether relatives can marry or not, and why.
Recent genetic studies say that first cousins have a 1.9% risk of having affected children. This is not a reason to call such unions a tragedy. Arno Motulski's textbook on genetics covers this topic in more detail. It is necessary to undergo the necessary consultation once again, and that’s it. Therefore, there is no need to worry.
The moral side of the issue
Many people, oddly enough, are concerned about the issue of morality. In Australia, a demonstration was held to demand the repeal of the law prohibiting marriage between cousins. Let's look at two such situations.
Brother and sister live in the same house. One apartment - one family. And the second apartment is a second family. Cousins communicate and frolic every day. And they perceive each other as family. Naturally, even if they are not cousins, but fourth cousins, there can be no talk of any love.
But there is also a second option. Let's say two people live in different families. My second cousin arrived. And her brother suggested that she go ice skating or carried out free excursion around town. Sometimes there are situations when eighth grade schoolchildren come to visit their grandmother. And the three days spent together left an indelible impression. People love each other with all their hearts. But something prevents them from being close.
For some, such relationships are unacceptable, but for others they are quite natural. People decided to officially seal the relationship with the bonds of Hymen, and spend together best years own life. Well, we’ll talk about genetics at the end of the article. Everything seems to be going great. But many relatives, even if they are second cousins, cannot overcome the moral barrier. They are tormented by questions: “What will people say?”, “Parents will judge us,” “The Church believes that this is a sin.” Therefore, let's look at the situation from the religious side.
Church attitude
The Koran allows marriages between uncle and niece, aunt and nephew, and relationships between cousins. Earlier Orthodox Church officially and without special rituals she married her cousins. But with the coming to power of communism, something changed, and it began to be considered a sin. So, the Orthodox Church in our time considers it a sin life together cousins.
A Catholic Church turns a blind eye to these marriages. Any certificate is suitable for marriage. And in some countries it is customary for Catholics to conduct weddings between cousins. Watch Mexican TV series. In the books “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “War and Peace,” love between cousins took place.
The Protestant Church places no restrictions on relationships between cousins. Sometimes marriages between uncle and niece or between aunt and nephew are allowed. The main thing is that they love each other, and there is no bed before the wedding. However, in Protestant countries there is criminal liability for sexual relations between the closest relatives. For example, in Germany, if a brother and sister, a mother and son, or a father and daughter give birth to a child, they face up to three years in prison.
If anyone wants to approach this issue responsibly and have continuation of the family with their significant other, they are concerned about the likelihood of having sick children. Now, finally, the desire to have normal children remains.
What geneticists say
In every married couple, if they do not have common ancestors, the chance of having a sick child is from 3 to 6 percent, depending on environmental situation environment. To this percentage must be added the risk of sick children as a result of the presence of common genes.
The inbreeding coefficient shows the percentage of genes that are shared. It is calculated using the following formula:
where m is the number of common relatives, n is the number of probands.
Once the coefficient of common relatedness is found, we know what the probability of common genes colliding is. And then Mendel's laws work. 25% of sick children, 50% carriers and 25% of healthy children. This means that when calculating the probability of the appearance of sick offspring, the inbreeding coefficient must be divided by another 4. Roughly speaking, the number of sick children is four times less than the inbreeding coefficient. Arm yourself with basic math and exponentiation. The carriers will never manifest themselves, so they can be neglected.
Here we are not considering incestuous marriages (father - daughter, mother - son, brother and sister having two common parents). With such marriages, inbreeding is 25%, and the probability of giving birth to a freak is about 20%. Why take the risk?
IN traditional families, where the parents are not relatives, the risk of sick children, according to various sources, is 3 - 6%. To simplify the calculations, we assume that the possibility of a healthy baby being born is 95% (in families where the parents are not related).
Finally, let's look at a few examples.
Uncle - niece (or aunt - nephew)
The uncle's common ancestors are mom and dad (for the niece, these are grandparents). The inbreeding coefficient is 2 × (1/2) 3+1 = 1/8 = 12.5%.
Half-brothers and sisters who have only one common parent have the same indicators.
The inbreeding coefficient is (1/2) 2+1 = 1/8 = 12.5%. This means that the probability of sick offspring is the same for all such unions.
Number of sick children = 3.125% (4 times less than the inbreeding coefficient). Statistics say that the risk of disease is from 3 to 6 percent. In a word, taking into account all the necessary factors, 8 - 12% of sick children, or 88 - 92% of healthy offspring. You can have children, but you must undergo genetic testing. In further examples, the number of common ancestors is 2. And after the inbreeding coefficient is found, it must be divided by 4.
Marriage between cousins
The inbreeding coefficient is 2 × (1/2) 4+1 = 1/16 = 6.25%.
The number of sick children = 1.56% (25% if 2 common genes nevertheless collided, which is unlikely). In Japan, where cousin marriage is common in some regions, the risk of disease is only 1.9 percent. If the parents are cousins, 93% of children will be absolutely normal. There is almost no threat to your health, marry for your health.
Keep in mind that in a particular case, if parents identical twins, you can’t have children. The risk is the same as in incest marriages (20% of sick children). Well, fortunately, such cases have not yet happened. If your parents are not identical twins, Everything will be ok. A woman geneticist in the news believes that bans on marriage between cousins are discrimination against ordinary people.
Cousins uncle and niece
Let's consider a situation where a niece decided to marry her great uncle. Number of probands = 5 (2 generations from uncle to his grandmother and 3 generations to his niece). We calculate the inbreeding coefficient. 2 × (1/2) 5+1 = 1/32 = 3.125%. Number of sick children = 0.78%. Well, whether to go to a geneticist or not is up to you.
Second cousins
Common ancestors - great-grandparents. This means the number of probands = 6 (3 tribes from brother to common ancestor and 3 knees to my sister). The number of common relatives = 2. We calculate the inbreeding coefficient: 2 × (1/2) 6+1 = 1/64 = 0.0157. Number of sick children = 0.39%. That is, second cousins can have children without thinking about the consequences. There is no need for genetic counseling.
P.S. So, the possibility of having a normal child is:
- Uncle and niece - from 88 to 92%;
- Cousins - 93%;
- Second cousins - 94.61%;
- Traditional families - 95%.
In some textbooks on genetics, the probability of sick children from marriages of a second cousin coincides with the background risks. We recommend reading textbooks by Arno Motulski and K. Stern about human genetics in your spare time.
On October 31, 1958, Boris Pasternak wrote a letter to Nikita Khrushchev, where he explained that life outside his homeland was unthinkable for him. A week earlier, he became a Nobel laureate. But persecution by the Soviet authorities forced the writer, thanks to whose translations in Russian Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Goethe’s Faust spoke to us, to refuse the prize.
For ten years - from 1945 to 1955 - Pasternak worked on the novel Doctor Zhivago, which became the pinnacle of his work, and at the same time because of which the writer was attacked by the government. The work was banned from publication due to Pasternak's critical attitude towards October revolution. A negative attitude towards the novel has also developed in the official literary community. Chief Editor magazine " New world“When refusing to publish Doctor Zhivago, Konstantin Simonov said: “You cannot give Pasternak a platform!”
But Pasternak’s new novel became known in the West, and the young Italian publisher Feltrinelli became interested in it. By the fall of 1957, the writer realized that he would not wait for the novel to be published in Russia, and secretly granted the publisher the right to print Italian translation. Already on November 23rd bookshelves The novel "Doctor Zhivago" appeared in Italy, and then the book was published in France.
The Soviet government did not know what to do: the novel had already been published in 23 languages, including even the language of the Indian people. Therefore, it was decided not to take any action against Pasternak for now.
In the USSR, such an act of the writer was considered outrageous, but they gave him a chance to improve. In December 1957, at the insistence of the culture department of the CPSU Central Committee, foreign correspondents were invited to Pasternak’s dacha in Peredelkino and demanded that the author of the sensational novel renounce the publisher and lie that he had stolen the unfinished manuscript. But unexpectedly for everyone, during an interview, Pasternak said: “My book was criticized, but no one even read it,” and added that he regretted the lack of a publication in Russian.
On October 23, 1958, Boris Pasternak became the second Russian writer after Bunin to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for outstanding achievements in modern lyric poetry and the development of the traditions of classical Russian prose.” Secretary of the Nobel Foundation Anders Oesterling sent Pasternak a telegram of congratulations and invited him to the presentation of the prize on December 10 in Stockholm. Pasternak responded briefly: “Endlessly grateful, touched, proud, surprised, embarrassed.”
“On the evening of the day when it became known in Moscow that my father had been awarded the Nobel Prize, we were glad that all the troubles were behind us, that receiving the prize meant a trip to Stockholm and a speech. How beautifully and meaningfully it would be said! Victory seemed to us like that complete and beautiful. But with the newspapers that came out the next morning, our dreams were disgraced and trampled upon,” the writer’s son Evgeny Pasternak.
At the same time, the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution “On the slanderous novel of B. Pasternak.”
1. Recognize that the Nobel Prize was awarded to Pasternak’s novel, which slanderously portrays Oktyabrskaya socialist revolution, Soviet people, who carried out this revolution, and the construction of socialism in the USSR, is an act and instrument hostile to our country international reaction aimed at fueling the Cold War.
2. Prepare and publish a feuilleton in Pravda, in which to give a sharp assessment of Pasternak’s novel itself, and also to reveal the meaning of the hostile campaign waged by the bourgeois press in connection with the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak.
Pasternak did not know this yet; on October 24, he celebrated the name day of his wife Zinaida Nikolaevna and the news of the Nobel Prize with family friends. At the insistence of the head of the culture department of the CPSU Central Committee, Dmitry Polikarpov, Pasternak’s friend, writer Konstantin Fedin, came to Peredelkino. He was tasked with persuading the laureate to refuse the prize. During the conversation in a raised voice, Fedin said that if Pasternak does not refuse the bonus, the consequences are unpredictable. But the writer firmly stood his ground: he would not refuse the Nobel Prize.
After this conversation, Pasternak lost consciousness and did not read newspapers for the following days. It was the right decision.
David Zaslavsky, who had long disliked Pasternak, wrote an article “The noise of reactionary propaganda around a literary weed,” published in Pravda on October 26: “Choking with delight, the anti-Soviet press proclaimed the novel the “best” work of the current year, and the obliging serfs of the big bourgeoisie crowned Pasternak Nobel Prize."
At the same time, student volunteers from the Literary Institute went to the demonstration with a poster “Judas, get out of the USSR”: they caricatured Pasternak, and next to them they depicted a bag of dollars, to which the writer was reaching.
On October 28, the department of culture of the CPSU Central Committee discussed the issue “About the actions of a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR B.L. Pasternak, incompatible with the title of a Soviet writer.” Author of Doctor Zhivago feeling unwell I couldn't come to the meeting. The writers present unanimously decided to expel Pasternak from the Union membership Soviet writers. The telegram from British writers, who stood up for the laureate: “We are deeply alarmed by the fate of one of greatest poets and writers of the world Boris Pasternak... In the name of that great Russian literary tradition, which stands behind you, we urge you not to dishonor this tradition by persecuting a writer revered by the entire civilized world."
Pasternak’s exclusion from the Union of Writers of Soviet Power was not enough - Colonel General Vladimir Semichastny suggested that the writer emigrate at one of the reports of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist League of Young Communists: “A pig... never shits where it eats, never shits where it sleeps. Therefore, if you compare Pasternak with a pig , then the pig will not do what he did. He shit where he ate, he shit those whose labors he lives and breathes... Why shouldn’t this inner emigrant taste the capitalist air, which he misses so much and about he spoke out in his work."
Pasternak understood that he had no other choice but to refuse the prize. He wrote to the Swedish Academy: “Due to the importance that the award awarded to me has received in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it. Do not consider my voluntary refusal an insult.”
Also, on the advice of lawyers from the All-Union Agency for Copyright Protection, on October 31, Pasternak wrote a letter to Khrushchev.
"Dear Nikita Sergeevich,
I am addressing you personally, the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet government.
From the report of Comrade Semichastny, I learned that the government “would not create any obstacles to my departure from the USSR.”
This is impossible for me. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, and work.
I don’t think of my destiny separately and outside of it. Whatever my mistakes and delusions, I could not imagine that I would find myself at the center of such a political campaign, which began to be inflated around my name in the West.
Realizing this, I informed the Swedish Academy of my voluntary refusal of the Nobel Prize.
Traveling outside my homeland is tantamount to death for me, and therefore I ask you not to take this extreme measure against me.
Hand on heart, I did something for Soviet literature and I can still be useful to her.
B. Pasternak."
Soon Pasternak was summoned to the Kremlin, he was delighted - he hoped for a personal meeting with Khrushchev. But Polikarpov was waiting for him, who said that the writer could stay in his homeland.
A couple of days later, TASS was authorized to declare that “from the outside government agencies there will be no obstacles if B.L. Pasternak will express a desire to go abroad to receive the prize awarded to him... If B.L. Pasternak would like to leave the country entirely. Soviet Union, social order and whose people he slandered in his anti-Soviet work “Doctor Zhivago,” then the official bodies will not create any obstacles for him in this.”
Pravda" letters from Pasternak. "There is no hopelessness in my situation. Let us continue to live, actively believing in the power of beauty, goodness and truth. The Soviet government offered me free travel abroad, but I did not take advantage of it, because my activities are too connected with my native land and do not tolerate being transferred to another."
It was a temporary respite. The persecution of Pasternak began again in March 1959, after the publication in the West of his poem “The Nobel Prize.”
I disappeared like an animal in a pen.
Somewhere there are people, will, light,
And behind me there is the sound of a chase,
I can't go outside.
Dark forest and the shore of a pond,
They ate a fallen log.
The path is cut off from everywhere.
Whatever happens, it doesn't matter.
What kind of dirty trick did I do?
Am I a murderer and a villain?
I made the whole world cry
Over the beauty of my land.
But even so, almost at the grave,
I believe the time will come -
The power of meanness and malice
The spirit of goodness will prevail.
One day, when Pasternak was walking alone in Peredelkino, a car drove up, they forced him into it and brought him to the prosecutor's office. He was personally interrogated by Prosecutor General Rudenko. The writer was accused under Article 64 - “Treason to the Motherland.” For two hours, Pasternak was threatened with the initiation of a criminal case: if his work was published in the West again, he would be arrested.
Refusal of the Nobel Prize, attacks from the government, criticism from other writers - all these unrest greatly undermined the health of 69-year-old Pasternak. In April 1960, he first felt that he was sick: due to pain in his left shoulder blade, he could not write while sitting. On May 30, he died of lung cancer.
Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago formed the basis for a Hollywood film adaptation that won an Oscar. But for the first time in Russian the work was published only in 1989, 29 years after the death of the author. Then the medal Nobel laureate was presented to members of the Pasternak family.
A novel in the classical tradition, with the main character plunged into the events of the Russian revolution, which he does not resist, but does not accept, and this hurricane inevitably carries him along. Pasternak had absolutely no intention of writing a counter-revolutionary book. On the contrary, recreating the era through the prism of the hero’s perception and his own experiences, he tried, making an effort on himself, to accept the regime or, at least, to understand the powerful movement that turned the life of his native country upside down.
"New World" began preparing the novel for publication - and encountered terrible difficulties. For many months no decision was made. Meanwhile, a copy of the Zhivago manuscript reached an Italian publisher. He was very inspired and decided to publish the novel in Italy. The book came out very quickly, and its success in the West caused a huge scandal in Moscow. Seeing the turn events were taking, the editorial board of Novy Mir, trying to secure their rear, sent a letter to the Central Committee pointing out the anti-Soviet nature of Doctor Zhivago. This is one of the darkest pages in the history of the magazine. A campaign immediately unfolded, which continued until Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958.
Semichastny, secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee and future head of the KGB, compared Pasternak to a pig. This was the signal to start the persecution. A large meeting immediately followed at the House of Writers, chaired by Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, at that time deputy editor-in-chief of Novy Mir. And the entire literary elite demanded that Pasternak be expelled from the Union. Nobody protected him. Moreover, those gathered fought to speak in order to insult him. Although there were quite a few people in the hall who were considered quite decent. Starting with Smirnov himself, who wrote a bold book about the defenders of the Brest Fortress. Boris Slutsky, a man of great courage and wonderful poet, my old friend, previously completely impeccable, also took part in this matter. It must be said that he could never forgive himself for this moment of weakness and for many years he tried to explain to everyone he met why he took the floor at that meeting. He insisted that he did it with the best intentions, trying to save what could still be saved. Vera Panova, also the author of "New World", came specially from Leningrad and was among the most fierce speakers. She said that the author of Zhivago was simply a provocateur who had put the entire intelligentsia at risk. I know only two who behaved with dignity or even courage: Volodya Tendryakov, specially called by phone and staying at home under the pretext of the flu, but first of all Vyacheslav Ivanov, today a world-famous linguist. Then he was about twenty-five years old, and he was the only one who defended the poet’s right to freedom of creative expression in front of a packed audience at the philology department. Well, the reaction was not long in coming: he lost his job at Moscow State University and was unable to defend his doctoral dissertation for twenty years.
On October 23, 1958, the Nobel Prize in Literature was announced to the writer Boris Pasternak. Before that, he had been nominated for the prize for several years, from 1946 to 1950. In 1958, his candidacy was proposed by the previous year's laureate Albert Camus. Pasternak came second after Ivan Bunin domestic writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
By the time the prize was awarded, the novel Doctor Zhivago had already been published, published first in Italy and then in the UK. In the USSR, there were demands for his expulsion from the Writers' Union, and his real persecution began from the pages of newspapers. A number of writers, in particular Lev Oshanin and Boris Polevoy, demanded that Pasternak be expelled from the country and deprived of his Soviet citizenship.
However, the novel, published abroad, was published in huge numbers, for which the author was entitled to royalties of almost ten million dollars, but Pasternak could neither travel abroad nor receive the due remuneration. In the USSR, Doctor Zhivago was published in a small edition and was available only “for internal use” to high-ranking officials of the CPSU Central Committee.
A new round of persecution began after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. In particular, two after the announcement of the decision of the Nobel Committee " Literary newspaper”wrote: “Pasternak received “thirty pieces of silver,” for which the Nobel Prize was used. He was awarded for agreeing to play the role of bait on the rusty hook of anti-Soviet propaganda... An inglorious end awaits the resurrected Judas, Doctor Zhivago, and its author, whose lot will be popular contempt.” In Pravda, publicist David Zaslavsky called Pasternak a “literary weed.”
Critical and openly boorish speeches towards the writer were made at meetings of the Writers' Union and the Komsomol Central Committee. The result was the unanimous expulsion of Pasternak from the Union of Writers of the USSR. True, a number of writers did not appear to consider this issue, among them Alexander Tvardovsky, Mikhail Sholokhov, Samuil Marshak, Ilya Erenburg. At the same time, Tvardovsky refused to publish the novel Doctor Zhivago in Novy Mir, and then spoke critically of Pasternak in the press.
Pasternak was supported by the family of Korney Chukovsky, his neighbors at the dacha in Peredelkino. When the Nobel Prize was announced, Korney Ivanovich, together with his granddaughter Lyusha (Elena Tsezarevna Chukovskaya), went to congratulate their neighbor. There were foreign correspondents standing around the house, and a little further on there were people in civilian clothes. Nevertheless, Chukovsky, in an interview with the foreign press, praised Doctor Zhivago and supported Pasternak. Also great help The disgraced writer was also supported by Korney Ivanovich’s daughter Lydia.
Also in 1958, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Soviet scientists Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm. In this regard, the Pravda newspaper published an article signed by a number of physicists who argued that their colleagues received the prize by right, but that it was awarded to Pasternak for political reasons. Academician Lev Artsimovich refused to sign this article, demanding that he first be allowed to read Doctor Zhivago.
Actually, “I haven’t read it, but I condemn it” became one of the main informal slogans of the campaign against Pasternak. This phrase was originally said at a meeting of the board of the Writers' Union by the writer Anatoly Sofronov, and it is still popular today.
Despite the fact that the prize was awarded to Pasternak “for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel", through the efforts of official Soviet authorities it was to be remembered for a long time only as firmly connected with the novel Doctor Zhivago.
Following the writers and academics, labor collectives across the country were involved in the persecution. Accusatory rallies took place in workplaces, institutes, factories, government organizations, creative unions, where collective insulting letters were drawn up demanding punishment for the disgraced writer.
Jawaharlal Nehru and Albert Camus approached Nikita Khrushchev with a request to stop persecuting the writer, but this appeal remained unheeded.
Despite his expulsion from the USSR Writers' Union, Pasternak continued to remain a member of the Literary Fund, receive fees, and publish. The idea repeatedly expressed by his persecutors that Pasternak would probably want to leave the USSR was rejected by him - Pasternak wrote in a letter addressed to Khrushchev: “Leaving the Motherland for me is tantamount to death. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, and work.”
Because of the poem “Nobel Prize” published in the West, Pasternak was summoned to the USSR Prosecutor General R. A. Rudenko in February 1959, where he was threatened with charges under Article 64 “Treason”, but this event had no consequences for him, perhaps because the poem was published without his permission.
Boris Pasternak died on May 30, 1960 from lung cancer. According to the author of the book from the ZhZL series, dedicated to the writer, Dmitry Bykov, Pasternak’s illness developed due to nervousness after several years of continuous persecution.
Despite the writer’s disgrace, Bulat Okudzhava, Naum Korzhavin, Andrei Voznesensky and his other colleagues came to his funeral at the cemetery in Peredelkino.
In 1966, his wife Zinaida died. The authorities refused to pay her a pension after she became a widow, despite petitions from a number of famous writers. At 38, approximately the same age as Yuri Zhivago in the novel, his son Leonid also died.
Pasternak's exclusion from the Writers' Union was canceled in 1987; a year later, Novy Mir published the novel Doctor Zhivago for the first time in the USSR. On December 9, 1989, the diploma and medal of the Nobel laureate were awarded in Stockholm to the writer’s son, Evgeniy Pasternak.
