Chapter 9: 1958: The Nobel Prize and Boris Pasternak “Police Measures” During the Khrushchev Thaw

In 1983, in connection with a wide-ranging discussion among literary critics trying to ascertain the years in which Boris Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Lars Gyllensten stated that there were definitely seven such nominations — five annual, in the period between 1946 and 1950, and two more, after the interval of six years, in 1957 and 1958. At the present time the documents of the Nobel Committees are available for researchers up to 1955, which allows us to form an objective judgment about their nominations and nominees in the first five years after the end of the World War II…