Who wrote Doctor Zhivago?

Boris Pasternak, and the novel could not be published in the Soviet Union. He smuggled the manuscript to an Italian publisher in 1957, it appeared abroad, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize the following year - at which point the Soviet state gave him a choice between accepting it and being permanently exiled, and he declined the prize by telegram.

The CIA then used it. Declassified documents confirm the agency arranged printing of a Russian-language edition and had copies distributed to Soviet visitors at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, on the reasoning that a book banned by Moscow and written by a Russian was the most effective possible propaganda. Copies were handed out at the Vatican pavilion, and Soviet citizens took the pages apart and hid them in their pockets.

Pasternak was hounded for the rest of his life - expelled from the writers' union, denounced in the press by people who admitted they had not read it, and threatened with prosecution. He died in 1960; thousands came to the funeral despite it going unannounced. His partner Olga Ivinskaya, the model for Lara, was sent to a labour camp afterwards. His son accepted the medal in 1989.