Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Russian: Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к; IPA: [bɐˈrʲis lʲeɐˈnʲidəvʲɪt͡ɕ pəstʲɪrˈnak]; 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister, Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Furthermore, Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and William Shakespeare remain deeply popular with Russian audiences.
Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known as the author of Doctor Zhivago, a novel which takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Due to its independent minded stance on the socialist state, Doctor Zhivago was refused publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the midst of a massive campaign against him by the CPSU and the Union of Soviet Writers, Pasternak reluctantly agreed to decline the Prize. In his resignation letter to the Nobel Committee, Pasternak stated the reaction of the Soviet State was the only reason for his decision.
By the time of his death from lung cancer in 1960, the campaign against Pasternak had severely damaged the international credibility of the U.S.S.R. He remains a major figure in Russian literature to this day. Furthermore, tactics pioneered by Pasternak were later continued, expanded, and refined by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents.

Early life
Pasternak was born in Moscow on 10 February, (Gregorian), 1890 (Julian 29 January) into a wealthy assimilated Russian Jewish family.
His father was the Post-Impressionist painter, Leonid Pasternak, professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.
(Leonid Osipovich Pasternak (born Yitzhok-Leib, or Isaak Iosifovich, Pasternak; Russian: Леони́д О́сипович Пастерна́к, 4 April 1862 N.S. - 31 May 1945)
His mother was Rosa Kaufman, a concert pianist and the daughter of Odessa industrialist Isadore Kaufman.
In a 1959 letter to Jacqueline de Proyart, Pasternak recalled,
"I was baptized as a child by my nanny, but because of the restrictions imposed on Jews, particularly in the case of a family which was exempt from them and enjoyed a certain reputation in view of my father's standing as an artist, there was something a little complicated about this, and it was always felt to be half-secret and intimate, a source of rare and exceptional inspiration rather than being calmly taken for granted. I believe that this is at the root of my distinctiveness. Most intensely of all my mind was occupied by Christianity in the years 1910-12, when the main foundations of this distinctiveness -- my way of seeing things, the world, life -- were taking shape..."
Shortly after his birth, Pasternak's parents had joined the Tolstoyan Movement. Novelist Leo Tolstoy was not only a close family friend. Pasternak later recalled, "my father illustrated his books, went to see him, revered him, and ...the whole house was imbued with his spirit."

Russian poet, whose novel Doktor Zhivago brought him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. Though Pasternak was not a political writer, the award brought him brought him into the spotlight of international politics and he had to decline the honour. The novel was banned in the Soviet Union and Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. After Doctor Zhivago had reached the West, it was soon translated into 18 languages. Pasternak was rehabilitated posthumously in 1987, which made possible the publication of his major work.
"Yura enjoyed being with his uncle. He reminded him of his mother. Like hers, his mind moved with freedom and welcomed the unfamiliar. He had the same aristocratic sense of equality with all living creatures and the same gift of taking in everything at a glance and of expressing his thoughts as they first came to him and before they had lost their meaning and vitality." (from Doctor Zhivago)
Boris Pasternak was born into a prominent Jewish family in Moscow, where his father, Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, was a professor at the Moscow School of Painting. His mother, Rosa Kaufman, was an acclaimed concert pianist. 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 suddenly his musical ambitions in 1910. He then studied philosophy under Prof. Herman Cohen 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 tuchakh (1914). During World War I Pasternak worked as a private tutor and at a chemical factory in the Ural Mountains. Due to a leg injury he did not serve in the army. The journey to the Ural gave him material for Doctor Zhivago. Although Pasternak was horrified by the brutality of the new government, he supported the Revolution. His parents and sisters migrated to Germany in 1921, when travel abroad was legalized. Leonid Pasternak died in Oxford in 1945.