Why The CIA Distributed Pocket-Sized Copies Of ‘Doctor Zhivago’ In The USSR

“Pasternak did not think of his novel as a weapon for intellectual warfare. … He wanted [it] treated as a novel, not a pamphlet. The CIA, on the other hand, was delighted by the media spotlight on the anti-Communist passages. The CIA also recognized that the symbolism of the situation made the Soviet Union look at least as bad as the novel itself did.