A very interesting, very in-depth look at how and why the USSR collectively freaked out at the publication of Dr Zhivago in 1956, and why the writers community in particular turned on the author. Pasternak is not idealized. He is shown in all his faults and is destroyed by his own hubris. He was one of the few writers willing to address flaws in the Soviet system, but still was horrified by the threat of exile and could not imagine life outside the USSR. Also TIL that Gloria Steinem once worked as a punker of Russians for the CIA.