Doctor Zhivago

Although he was not outwardly connected to his Judaism, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born to a Jewish family at the center of Moscow’s cultural scene; his father was a painter and his mother a pianist. He grew up studying piano, composing three (known) completed pieces before enrolling at Moscow University in 1909 for law and, later, philosophy. He left school in 1912 to pursue his passion for poetry. Pasternak’s first poems were published in early 1917; he became widely respected for his serious tone and patriotic themes. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his only novel, Doctor Zhivago, in 1958. In response to the abundant praise he earned from the West, Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers, and the novel was banned in the Soviet Union until after his death. He probably converted to Russian Orthodoxy as an adult in the 1930s or 1940s.