CIA rigged at least one Nobel Prize

[fourier jr]

they've also been involved in book publishing:

January 10, 2009, 21:55
Nobel Prize ‘stolen’ by CIA
If you think the US intelligence agency, the CIA, has no interest in literature, you are very much mistaken. According to Italy’s La Stampa newspaper, it played a decisive role in giving the Nobel Prize to Russia’s Boris Pasternak, the author of Doctor Zhivago, instead of Italian writer Alberto Moravia.

Back in 1958 the three big names in the running for the Nobel Prize were Alberto Moravia, Boris Pasternak and Denmark’s Karen Blixen. Pasternak suddenly got the support of Anders Esterling, the Academy permanent secretary. His colleagues were surprised. After all, the Russian author had already been nominated in 1946 for his novel “Doctor Zhivago”, which was forbidden in the Soviet Union. Then the opinion of Slavic expert Anton Kalgren was taken into account. He claimed Pasternak’s books are not understandable for many people.

In light of this, the Nobel Academy lost interest in Pasternak’s work. But unexpectedly in 1957 Harry Martinson described him as the most outstanding Soviet writer of the century. That, according to La Stampa, was because the West found out that “Doctor Zhivago” was banned in the author’s Motherland, making Pasternak popular again. His book became known in the West after it was smuggled out of Russia and published in Italy.

But in 1958, as La Stampa notes, Moravia had the advantage. In Sweden, where the Academy is based, his works were widely known, but Pasternak’s famous novel hadn’t been published yet. Esterling read it in Italian and said its author was “one of the most outstanding writers of our time”.

But finally, according to La Stampa, it was the CIA that decided the winner. A CIA lobby operating in the Swedish Academy wanted to annoy the USSR by giving the award to a dissident writer. So, it was Pasternak who became the Nobel Prize that year. But victory turned to personal tragedy for Pasternak himself. In the USSR it was made clear he was free to go to Stockholm to get his award – but if he did, he was told, he wouldn’t be allowed back home. That was something the writer, who was deeply attached to his homeland, couldn’t bear, so he didn’t receive the prize. Two year later, when he was dying, he confessed he would have been happy to get it. In 1961 he was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union, but “Doctor Zhivago” wasn’t published in the USSR until 1988.

Italy was compensated the following year, when writer Salvatore Quasimodo was awarded the prestigious literary prize.

http://www.russiatoday.com/features/news/35742

& here's RIA Novosti's coverage, which is more in-depth:
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20090119/119705315.html

 

[mgb_phys]

40 years ago General Franco rigged the voting for the Eurovision song contest so that a Spaniard would win - rather than Cliff Richard. (So power mad fascist dictators aren't all bad)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/may/06/news.spain

 

[tiny-tim]

the CIA did nothing more than steal and publish the original Russian text

CIA rigged at least one Nobel Prize

Hi Fourier jr!

erm … your quotations are from a sensationalised English-language summary of a rather biased Italian account in La Stampa (http://www.lastampa.it/redazione/cmsSezioni/cultura/200901articoli/39884girata.asp

It gives the impression that CIA pressure achieved the Nobel prize for Pasternak …

but all the CIA did was steal a copy of the original Russian text, and present it to the Nobel committee …

this was needed because the Nobel Committee only considers original-language texts, and Russia wasn't allowing any out of the country.

From your other link:

The aircraft carrying a passenger with a copy of the novel was ordered to land in the airport of Malta in the Mediterranean. The pilot apologized for the stopover. The annoyed passengers went to the airport's departure lounge, while CIA agents found the right suitcase, took out the text, and photographed it page by page. They put the text back into the suitcase, and two hours later the aircraft was airborne again. The passengers arrived at their destination. The owner of the suitcase was in blissful ignorance of what had happened with it.
…
However, under the Nobel Committee's rules, the novel had to be in the original. Here the CIA-copied version came in handy. Every hour counted in what was a now-or-never situation. Through proxy funds, the CIA gave money to urgently publish the novel in Russian. To cover up the traces of stealing, the CIA made galleys from the photocopies and printed the Russian version in the academic publishing house of Muton in the Hague without any copyrights in the August of 1958.

The Swedish Academy had no more obstacles for awarding Pasternak, and on October 23, 1958 the Nobel cannon shot at the Soviet government. Pasternak received a Nobel Prize for outstanding merits in modern lyric poetry and for continuing the traditions of the great Russian novel.

Pasternak then won the prize on his own merits.

The CIA did not "rig" the Nobel prize …

they only made eligible a book which would have been a walkover from the start had Pasternak's own country not suppressed it.