DOCTOR ZHIVAGO AND AMERICAN CONSERVATISM — PASTERNAK’S NOVEL PLAYED A ROLE IN SORTING OUT BIRCHERS FROM MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVES. At National Review Online, Benjamin Musachio writes:

Buckley gave his take on the Zhivago controversy in the introduction to his 1959 book, Up From Liberalism. He praised Pasternak as a “triumph of man over ideology.” Of Doctor Zhivago specifically, he later wrote in a letter to Welch that he “found in it an engrossing poetical indictment of Communism.”

Robert Welch and the more radical American Opinion, the John Birch Society’s monthly magazine, thought differently. In the February 1959 issue of American Opinion, the editors proclaimed the publication of Zhivago to be a part of the Communist conspiracy. The “damning” facts that prove the novel’s Communist character? 1) Pasternak never explicitly praises capitalism. 2) Nor does he obviously and unequivocally condemn revolutionary socialism. 3) The religious sentiments expressed in the novel are forced and “unconvincing.”

Western intellectuals’ warm reception of Zhivago, as well as its wild popularity among Western readers, was, according to American Opinion, cause for celebration in the capitals of Communism. Yes, Moscow and Tito’s Belgrade were both in on the deceit — even though the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had been at odds since 1948.

America Opinion’s staggering “revelations” triggered a stinging rebuttal from Eugene Lyons in the pages of National Review. Lyons, a seasoned warrior of the anti-Communist crusade, had a rich insider’s perspective on the Soviet state. A native speaker of Russian, Lyons had worked in Moscow for the United Press from 1928 to 1934. (He was in fact the first foreign correspondent to obtain an interview with Josef Stalin, in 1930.) Lyons regularly contributed to NR in its early years, in addition to holding down a post as a senior editor for Reader’s Digest.

In rebutting American Opinion’s accusations, Lyons reminded the readers of Buckley’s magazine that the Soviet authorities had suppressed the publication of Zhivago behind the Iron Curtain. Lyons’s polemic, which was titled “Folklore of the Right,” went on to mention that the Soviet authorities had essentially forced Pasternak to decline the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. Not only that, but Pasternak was publicly denounced by the Soviet literary establishment. Lyons claimed that these two facts undermine American Opinion’s paranoid reading.

Like Buckley, Lyons discovered an anti-Soviet message in Pasternak’s poeticized prose: “[Pasternak] exalts man above the State, life above terrestrial dogma . . . , conscience above conformity, religious insights above sociological forms.”

Regarding David Lean’s epic 1965 cinematic adaptation, after the earlier box office and critical triumph of Lawrence of Arabia, the reception of his film version of Zhivago split the opinion between the general public and film critics. Commercially, Zhivago was one of Lean’s most successful films. But critics, particularly New York critics, crudely trashed Lean for the first time in heretofore celebrated career, likely because of the strong anti-Communist message of his film and its similar role of exalting man over state. Leftist film critic Pauline Kael, who would go on to champion the crude violence of the “New Hollywood” of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, watched Zhivago and sniffed that Lean’s “method is basically primitive, admired by the same sort of people who are delighted when a stage set has running water or a painted horse looks real enough to ride.”

Thanks in part to Kael’s efforts, Hollywood would be nearly incapable of staging such a “basically primitive” movie ever again.  If you’ve only seen Zhivago late at night on a small low definition TV, watching the blu-ray version on a large HDTV set is a revelation, revealing Lean’s brilliant compositions, sweeping camera moves, and all of the multifaceted techniques he employed to recreate the scope of Russia in much the same way he depicted Lawrence’s desert.

Breitbart London notes that “Director David Lean’s legendary epic, which won five Oscars upon its release in 1965, is getting a 4K digital restoration and re-release to cinemas in the United Kingdom, courtesy of the British Film Institute, to coincide with the film’s 50th anniversary” in late November. I hope an American cinematic rerelease is also forthcoming, and if so, I’ll certainly be there to finally see it on the big screen myself.