Highly regarded as Russia’s greatest revolutionary poet, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born today on 10th February 1890. He was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. His novel Doctor Zhivago helped win him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 but aroused so much opposition in the Soviet Union that he declined the honour.

Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow into an artistic family of Russian-Jewish heritage. His father, Leonid, was an art professor. The Pasternak's were part of an exclusive social circle that consisted of Russia’s finest musicians, writers, and painters, including premier novelist Leo Tolstoy and composers Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Anton Rubinstein.

Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life, was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an important collection in the Russian language. He is also known as the author of Doctor Zhivago, a novel that takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War.

In 1990 as part of the series "Nobel Prize Winners," the USSR Postal Department has issued stamps depicting Boris Pasternak.

Image Source: wikipedia.org