Pasternak was born into a prominent Jewish family in Moskow, where his father, Leonid Pasternak, was a professor at the Moscow School of Painting. His mother, Rosa Kaufman, was an acclaimed concert pianist, and their home was open to such guests as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Tolstoy. Inspired by Scriabin, Palsternak entered the Moscow Conservatory, but gave up his studied in 1910. He studied then philosophy at the Marburg University in Germany, and returned to Moscow in the winter of 1913-14.

As a poet Pasternak made his debut with the collection BLIZNETS V TUCHAKN (1914). During World War I Pasternak worked as a private tutor and at a chemical factory in the Ural Mountais, and the journey to the Ural gave him later material for Doctor Zhivago.

After the Revolution of 1917 Pasternak worked as a librarian. With the books Over the Barriers (1917) and My Sister - Life (1922) he gained fame as a prominent new poet. In the early 1920s Pasternak wrote autobiographical and political poetry, and some short stories, which were collected in The Childhood of Luvers (1922). He married in 1922 Evgeniia Vladimirovna Lourie. They hand one son, but the marriage dissolved in 1931. In 1934 he married Zinaida Nikolaevna Neigauz, they had one son.

From the mid-1920s Pasternak moved away from personal themes and began to reflect on historical and moral concerns flowing from the Bolshevik consolidation of power. When the Writer's Union increasingly imposed on the docrine of socialis realism, he gradually ceased to produce original work.

In the 1930s and 1940s Pasternak's works didn't gain authorities favour and they were not printed. Stalin's respect of Pasternak, who did not die in the Gulag Archipelago, remains one of the mysteries of the Soviet dictator's behavior. Unable to publish his own poetry Pasternak became translator, selecting works from such authors as William Shakespeare (Hamlet), J.W. von Goethe (Faust), Heinrich Kleist (Prinz Friedrich von Homburg), Paul Verlaine and Rainer Maria Rilke.

During World War II Pasternak wrote patriotic verses, and published a collection of poems, NA RANNIKH POYEZDAKH in 1943. Another collection appeared in 1945, followed by a selection of earlier poetry in 1947.

Pasternak's disagreement with Soviet Communism was not political but rather philosophical and moral. In a personal letter to the premier Nikita Khrushchev he expressed the hope that he would be allowed to remain in his home country after continuing attacks against him and his work. He remained at Peredelkino quietly writing until his death from lung cancer on May 30, 1960. Pasternaak's son accepted his father's Nobel Prize medal at a ceremony in Stockholm in 1989.

Doktor Zhivago - rejected by the Soviet journal Novye Mir and published first in Russian and in Italian translation by the publisher Feltrinelli in Milan in 1957, English translation in 1958, banned in the Soviet Union for three decades and appeared then in Novye Mir in 1988. The novel has been recognized by many as the greatest Russian novel of the 29th century. It is partly autobiography and partly epic novel, a many-layered story starting from the year 1903, when Iurii Zhivago's mother died. His father commits sucide through the malign influence of his lawyer, Komarovskii. The boy is brought up in the Gromenko family, and durig this time Zhivago finds his call to poetry and decides to become a doctor. Simultaneously Lara Guishar is seduced in her teens by Komarovskii, she marries Pasha Antipov. Zhivago qualifies as a doctor, marries and has a child. He meets Lara during World War I, they fall in love. He moves with his family to Urals and meets there Lara. Zhivago chooses a life with her, but is captured by local partisans, escapes and makes his way back to Lara. His family has returned meanwhile to Moskow. Komorovskii discovers Lara and Zhivago and offers the a kind of safe conduct to the east. Lara follows with him expecting that Zhivago will follow shortly. He meets Lara's husband Pasha, who commits suicide disillusioned with the Revolution. Zhivago returns to Moskow and dies years later of a weak heart. Lara reappears before his burial. Zhivago's friends collect his poetry.

For further reading: Boris Pasternak and Dr. Zhivago by A.g. Gaev (1959); The Pastenak Affair: Courage of Genius by R. Conquest (1962); Boris Pasternak by J.W. Dyck (1972); Pasternak: A Critical Study by H. Gifford (1977); by Olga Ivinskaya (1978); Boris Pasternak's Translations of Shakespeare by Anna Kay France (1978); Boris Pasternak: His Life and Art by Guy de Mallac (1981); Pasternak: A Biography by R. Hingley (1982); Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, Vol. I: 1890-1928 by Katherine Tiernan O'Connor (1989); Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago by Angela Livingstone (1989); The Poet and His Politics by L. Fleishman (1990); Boris Pasternak: A Biography by Peter Levi (1990); Boris Pasternak: the Tragic Years, 1930-1960 by Evgeny Pasternak (1990): A Literary Biography, Vol. 1, 1890-1928 by Christopher Barnes (1990) Doctor Zhivago: A Critical Companion, ed. by Edith W. Clowes (1995); Understanding Boris Pasternak by Larissa Rudova (1997)

Selected works:

• BLIZNETS V TUCHAKH, 1914
• POVERH BAR'EROV, 1917 - Over the Barriers
• DEVJATSOT PJATYI GOD, 1922
• SESTRA MOYA ZHIZN, 1922 - My Sister-Life
• TEMY I VARIATSII, 1923
• RAZZKAZY, 1925
• DESTVO LIUVERS, 1925 - The Childhood of Luves
• LEITENANT SHMIDT, 1926-27
• DEVIAT'SOT PIATYI GOD, 1927 - title poem The Year Nineteen Five translated
• VYSOKAIA BOLEZN, 1928 - Sublime Malady
• OKHRANNAYA GRAMOTA, 1931 - Safe Conduct
• SPEKTORSKII, 1931
• VTOROE ROZHDENIE, 1932
• STIKHOTVORENIIA V ODOM TOME, 1933
• POVEST, 1934 - The Last Summer
• Bystander, 1936
• IZBRANNIE PEREVODY, 1940 (translations)
• GAMLET PRINTS DATSKII, 1941 (translation of William Shakespeare's play)
• Childhood, 1941
• NA RANNIKH POYEZDAKH, 1943 - On Early Trains
• ROMEO I DZHUL'ETTA, 1943 (translation of Williams Shakespeare's play)
• ANTONII I KLEOPATRA, 1944 (translation of William Shakespeare's play)
• The Collected Prose Works, 1945
• ZEMNOI PROSTOR, 1945
• OTELLO, VENETSIIANSKII MAVR, 1945 (translation of William Shakespeare's play)
• Selected Poems, 1946
• GRUZINSKIE POETRY, 1946 (translation)
• GENRIKH CHETVERTYI, 1948 (translation of William Shakespeare's play)
• STIKHOTVERENIIA, 1948 (translation of N.M. Baratashvili's works)
• Selected Writings, 1949
• KOROL' LIR, 1949 (translation of William Shakespeare's play)
• VIL'IAM SHEKPIR V PEREVODE BORISA PASTERNAKA. 1949 (translation)
• FAUST I, 1950 (translation of Goethe's work)
• VITIAZ IANOSHCH, 1950 (translation of Sándor Petöfi's works)
• MAKBET, 1951 (translation of William Shakespeare's play)
• DOKTOR ZIVAGO, 1957 (published in Milano) - Doctor Zhivago - (film 1965, directed by David Lean)
• Safe Conduct, An Early Autobiograph, and Other Works, 1958
• MARIIA STIUART, 1958 (translation of Schiller's play)
• STIKHI O GRUZII, 1958 (translation)
• KOGDA RAZGULJAJETSJA, 1959 (published in Paris)
• The Poetry of Boris Pasternak, 1917-1959, 1959
• Poems, 1959
• An Essay in Autobiography, 1959
• When the Sky Clears, 1960
• KOGDA RAZGULIAETSIA: POEMS 1955-1959, 1960
• Poems 1955-59, 1961
• SOCHINENIIA, 1961 (3 vols.)
• AUTOBIOGRAFICHESKIY OCHERK, 1961 - I Remember: Sketch for an Autobiography
• In the Interlude: Poems 1945-1960, 1962
• Fifty Poems, 1963
• Poems 1916-1959, 1964
• STICHOTVORENIJA I POÉMY, 1965
• ZVEZDNOE NEBO, 1966 (translation)
• Letters to Georgian Friends, 1967
• SLEPAIA KRASAVITSA - The Blind Beauty, 1969
• Seven Poems, 1969
• The Poems of Doctor Zhivago, 1971
• Letters to Georgian Friends, 1971
• Collected Short Prose, 1977
• PREPISKA S OL'GOI FREIDENBERG, 1981 - Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg
• Zhenia's Childhood and Other Stories, 1982
• VOZDUSHNYE PUTI, 1982
• The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910-54, 1982
• Selected Poems, 1983
• JUVENILIA B. PASTERNAKA, 1984
• IBRANNOE, 1985 (2 vols.)
• Pasternak on Art and Creativity, 1985
• The Voice of Prose, 1986-90
• OB ISKUSSTVE, 1990
• SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1989-92 (5 vols.)
• Selected Writings and Letters, 1990
• ZARUBEZHNAIA POEZIIA V PEREVODAKH B.L. PASTERNAKA, 1990 (translation)
• Poems, 1990
• Second Nature, 1990
• PREPISKA BORISA PASTERNAKA, 1990
• BORIS PASTERNAK OB ISKUSSTVE, 1990
• IZBRANNYE PROIZVEDENIIA, 1991
• PIS'MA B.L. PASTERNAKA K ZHENE Z.N. NEIGAUZ-PASTERNAK, 1993
• BORIS PASTERNAK I SERGEI BOBROV, 1996