Doctor Zhivago. First edition in Russian.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich [Doctor Zhivago]. Doktor Zhivago. A novel. Milan [Hague], Feltrineli [Mouton], 1958. 8vo, 634 pp. In publisher’s hardcover and modern slipcase. No dust jacket as issued. Near very good condition. The rare CIA-sponsored first edition in Russian. The history of 'Doctor Zhivago' publication is very complicated and confusing. Several monographs about the manuscript traveling and the appearance of the first edition were issued nowadays. Among them are 'The Laundered Novel: Doctor Zhivago between the KGB and the CIA' by Ivan Tolstoy (St. Petersburg, 2009) and 'Inside The Zhivago Storm' by Paolo Mancosu (Milanoi, 2013). When 'Doctor Zhivago' was banned for printing in the USSR, Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) sold the rights to the novel to Italian editor Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. In November 1957 the first edition of 'Doctor Zhivago' appeared (in Italian). On April 2014 the Central Intelligence Agency posted to its public website nearly a hundred documents that clari