Reviews at Amazon.Com

From El
As far as I know, this book was banned in the USSR and countries it was allied with for the obvious reason that it played down the Bolshivek revolution, gave an individualist appeal, and gave a detailed view of it through the eyes of someone who had lived before it, during it, and then after..albiet a fictional character. (Yuri Zhivago) It covers a time from Czarist Russia to World War I to Bloody Sunday till Yuri's death in what was the 1960's or 70's.

But as it would be, the Communist governments didn't want the risk of people rising up and over throwing them over a novel. In fact, I think this book was first published in Italian or German and then 10 years later it was translated to English. And I believe that it was also sometime in the early 1990's before this novel was finally published in its native language.

I am not aware this novel is still banned anywhere (save maybe China, Cuba, N. Korea and Vietnam and anywhere else still "Communistic") but it would be interesting to know if it is.

From Liz
"Doctor Zhivago" was banned in the USSR when it was first published. It was allowed to be published in the USSR uncensored in the 1980s (1982?) when Gorbachev took office.