“We Need to Help the Russians Save Face”: The “Ivinskaia Case” in the West

Abstract

Following Boris Pasternak’s death his lover and literary assistant Ol’ga Ivinskaia and her daughter Irina Emel’ianova were arrested and sentenced to eight years and three years of labor camp respectively. The “Ivinskaia case” became a cause célèbre in the West but, notwithstanding reports in the international press, was mostly conducted as an unreported, hidden campaign to persuade the Soviet authorities to revoke or soften Ivinskaia’s and Emel’ianova’s sentences while at the same time allowing the authorities to save face. Using hitherto untapped archival sources, the author reconstructs the behind-the-scenes events of one of the major literary-political confrontations of the Cold War.