I find this story utterly fascinating: Did the CIA fund Boris Pasternak's publishing of a Russian-language version of Dr. Zhivago that helped him win a Nobel Prize in Literature as a way to foster anti-Russian sentiments among the intellectual elite? That's the allegation alleged by Ivan Tolstoy in a new book. It makes one wonder: what books/other media out there may be CIA-funded psy-ops to influence thinking now? Has anyone audited News Corp.'s books recently?

WaPo:

Into one of the most sordid episodes in Russian literary history, the Soviets' persecution of Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago," a Russian historian has injected a belated piece of intrigue: the CIA as covert financier of a Russian-language edition of the epic novel.

[..]"Pasternak's novel became a tool that was used by the United States to teach the Soviet Union a lesson," (author Ivan) Tolstoy said in a telephone interview from Prague, where he works as a Russian commentator for the U.S. government-funded radio stations. The novelist knew nothing of the CIA's action, according to Tolstoy and the writer's family.

[..]A CIA role in printing a Russian-language edition has been rumored for years. Tolstoy offers the first detailed account of what would rank as perhaps the crowning episode of a long cultural Cold War, in which the agency secretly financed literary magazines and seminars in Europe in an effort to cultivate anti-Soviet sentiment among intellectuals.

[..]Soviet-era documents published in 2001 show that even in unpublished manuscript form it was hardly ignored. "Boris Pasternak's novel is a malicious libel of the USSR," wrote Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov in an August 1956 memo to members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In a memo of its own, the KGB offered the opinion that "a typical feature of his work is estrangement from Soviet life and a celebration of individualism."