“Dr Zhivago” in the Amazon rainforest

Abstract

The author of the article makes an attempt to verify the veracity of the story set out by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in his poem "Dora Franco". It is about a copy of Doctor Zhivago, which the poet discovered in a small library in the town of Leticia in the Amazon part of Colombia in 1968. The book bore an inscription of the soviet writer Sergei Smirnov. This fact is remarkable not only because Doctor Zhivago was still banned in the USSR, but also because in 1958 it was Smirnov who chaired the meeting of writers which expelled Pasternak from the Writers' Union. Archival searches, analysis of contemporaries' testimony, as well as interaction with a colleague from the Amazonas department made it possible to discover that Sergei Smirnov had indeed visited Leticia several months before Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Together with the translator he attended the same places, performed in the same House of Culture and interacted with the same people (e.g. the famous animal trapper Mike Tsalickis). During this trip to Colombia in 1967 Smirnov often had to answer uncomfortable questions about Pasternak. Nine years after the Pasternak affair, it is clear from newspaper articles that not a trace of aggression remains in the words of the chairman of the "trial", while ego-documents by their contemporaries suggest that Sergei Smirnov regretted the role he had assumed in 1958 for the rest of his life. The research also established that there may have been only one library in Leticia before the 1980s — the House of Culture, which both Smirnov and Yevtushenko mention in their travel reports. Both indirectly confirm that there were no Russian books in it. We couldn't find out whether Doctor Zhivago was the only exception, i.e. was already on the bookshelf, or whether it was brought by Smirnov and the translator N. Bulgakova. However, we were able to confirm that it was a Spanish translation of the book. Since the very book itself has never been found, we cannot unequivocally assert that the inscription of the penitent Smirnov in Pasternak's book is not a figment of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's fiction; however, our research allows us to think that this story did take place.