Soviets Finally Get to Read ‘Dr. Zhivago’

MOSCOW — A literary journal has begun serial publication of the Boris Pasternak novel “Doctor Zhivago”--31 years after it appeared in the West.

Appearance of the first section of the novel in the journal Novy Mir on Monday represented a victory for Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms.

The entire novel, turned down for publication in the Soviet Union in 1956, will be serialized in five issues of Novy Mir, which first turned it down in 1956, charging it was anti-Soviet. The author died in 1960.