'Doctor Zhivago': Russian literary classic or the CIA's ultimate Cold War weapon?

CIA officials had rave reviews for Boris Pasternak’s classic Russian novel Doctor Zhivago and promoted it heavily – not because of its literary merit but as a propaganda weapon during the Cold War. 

The US intelligence agency saw the book as a challenge to Communism and a way to make Soviet citizens question why their government was suppressing one of their greatest writers, according to newly declassified CIA documents that detail the agency’s involvement in the book’s printing, the Washington Post reported on April 6.