Boris Pasternak

He was born in Moscow. In the West, Pasternak is best known for his monumental tragic satire on Soviet Russia, Doctor Zhivago. It is as a poet, however, that he is most celebrated in Russia. He is one of a quartet of truly great poets to emerge in the years of Stalin's reign, the others being Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam.

The son of a Jewish professor at the Moscow School of Painting[?], and a mother who was a famous concert pianist, Pasternak was brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. He studied philosophy at the Marburg University[?] in Germany, returning to Moscow in 1914 and published his first collection of poetry in that year.

During World War I he taught and worked at a chemical factory in the Urals; this undoubtedly provided him with material for Dr Zhivago many years later.

The revolution of 1917 led to Pasternak quickly garnering fame as a poet.

He fell out of favour with the Soviet authorities in the 1930s; accused of subjectivism he somehow managed to escape the gulags. ?

[..to be continued]