View source for Boris Pasternak

=== Stalin Epigram ===
In April 1934 [[Osip Mandelstam]] recited his "[[Stalin Epigram]]" to Pasternak. After listening, Pasternak told Mandelstam: "I didn't hear this, you didn't recite it to me, because, you know, very strange and terrible things are happening now: they've begun to pick people up. I'm afraid the walls have ears and perhaps even these benches on the boulevard here may be able to listen and tell tales. So let's make out that I heard nothing."<ref name="Ivin61">[[#Ivinskaya|Ivinskaya]], pp. 61–63.</ref>

On the night of 14 May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested at his home based on a warrant signed by [[NKVD]] boss [[Genrikh Yagoda]]. Devastated, Pasternak went immediately to the offices of ''[[Izvestia]]'' and begged [[Nikolai Bukharin]] to intercede on Mandelstam's behalf.

Soon after his meeting with Bukharin, the telephone rang in Pasternak's Moscow apartment. A voice from [[Moscow Kremlin|the Kremlin]] said, "Comrade [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] wishes to speak with you."<ref name="Ivin61"/> According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak was struck dumb. "He was totally unprepared for such a conversation. But then he heard ''his'' voice, the voice of Stalin, coming over the line. Stalin addressed him in a rather bluff uncouth fashion, using the [[T–V distinction in the world's languages#Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian (mainly Eastern)|familiar ''thou'' form]]: 'Tell me, what are they saying in your literary circles about the arrest of Mandelstam?{{'"}} Flustered, Pasternak denied that there was any discussion or that there were any literary circles left in Soviet Russia. Stalin went on to ask him for his own opinion of Mandelstam. In an "eager fumbling manner" Pasternak explained that he and Mandelstam each had a completely different philosophy about poetry. Stalin finally said, in a mocking tone of voice: "I see, you just aren't able to stick up for a comrade", and put down the receiver.<ref name="Ivin61"/>