Literature

Nikolai Morshen papers now in Hoover Institution Archives

Nikolai Nikolaevich Marchenko, a Russian émigré writer best known under the pen name Nikolai Morshen, taught Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey and wrote poetry in his spare time. His father, Nikolai Vladimirovich Marchenko, pen name Nikolai Narokov, is known for two novels: Mogu! and Mnimye velichiny, translated into English as The Chains of Fear (Chicago: Regnery, 1958).

Featured Find: Cold War Science Fiction

Paul M.A. Linebarger had the international pedigree and double life of a John le Carré character. Born to Sun Yat-sen’s American adviser, Linebarger grew up in China, Germany, and the United States, spoke six languages, and received his doctorate at twenty-three. After teaching at Duke, he was hired by the US War Department to serve as the Far East Asian specialist of the Psychological Warfare branch.

Hoover Acquires Substantial Collection of Papers of the Late Yugoslav Dissident Mihajlo Mihajlov

Recently the Hoover Institution Library and Archives acquired more than seventy boxes of archival materials from the estate of the late Mihajlo Mihajlov (1934–2010), a Serbian writer, political activist, and dissident who was imprisoned for his critiques of Tito’s Yugoslavia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This collection, which augments an earlier donation made during Mihajlov’s lifetime, contains correspondence, publications, and audiovisual media that document the breadth of Mihajlov’s public career.

Angela Livingstone, from the University of Essex, reviews Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence 1921–1960

This collection of Boris Pasternak’s letters to his parents and sisters after they had left Russia offers vivid insights into what it was like for so gifted and honest a poet to live and work in Soviet Russia. We see Pasternak coping with everyday survival; looking after others; trying to understand history; alternately enduring and foiling “the terrible forbearance of the authorities” (p. 238); and being preoccupied by attempts to write something utterly new. Click here to read Livingstone’s review or here for information about the book launch.

Review of Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence, 1921–1960

In The Russian Review, Christopher J. Barnes, from the University of Toronto, reviewed Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence, 1921–1960. Barnes highlights the “strong sense of the family nature of their messages” and the “common interests, concerns, and a unique spiritual kinship that overrode long years of separation.” Click here to see the review.

International Conference and Exhibit on Boris Pasternak, Poet and Author of the Timeless Doctor Zhivago, Cosponsored by the Hoover Institution and Stanford University

The Hoover Institution announces its publication of Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence 1921–1960

The Hoover Institution today announced publication of the book Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence 1921–1960, translated and annotated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and edited by Maya Slater, with a foreword by Lazar Fleishman.

Hoover Institution Cosponsoring Symposium on Dr. Zhivago; Hosting Exhibit on Boris Pasternak

The Hoover Institution is cosponsoring an international symposium titled “The Life of Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago: Culture and the Cold War” with Stanford University’s School of Humanities and Sciences.

Digital Archive of Pasternak Family Papers Now Available

The first segment of the Pasternak Family Papers digital archive is available in the Hoover Archives reading room.