RUSSIA: Having survived Soviet censorship, the works of Boris Pasternak may be about to fall victim to new attitudes, reports Chris Stephen from Moscow.
Russian writers are up in arms about plans to remove from schools the works of Boris Pasternak and other dissidents from the Soviet era. Under the government's 10-year plan for schools, Pasternak's epic novel Dr Zhivago, a love story which paints the Soviet state in grim colours, is to be axed.
Officials say the work - and poems by Ann Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam - are too complicated for young minds to understand. The writers disagree: "It is dangerous to forget things," says an open letter from 13 leading writers and intellectuals.
"The tragic fortune of Russian literature of the 20th century was to give perfect samples that are a warning about repeating historical mistakes. These led to the deaths of millions of people."
Pasternak's masterpiece pulls no punches in showing the disintegration of much of Russia after the revolution. The hero witnesses the cruelty of both the Tsarists and the Bolsheviks as both fight for control.
The book was made into a successful film of the same name in 1965 by the British director, David Lean. It starred Omar Sharif in the title role, opposite Julie Christie as Lara.
The writers say this makes it a valuable insight into Russia's tormented history. "Russian Standards \ continue to try to conceal the truth about repression and totalitarianism and about its influence on the Russian people, country and culture," says the letter, printed in Russia's press.
Akhmatova's poems will be cut from nine to three amid suspicions that the later, more critical, works will be the ones to go.
This is not the first time Dr Zhivago has had problems with the Moscow authorities.
Pasternak finished his masterpiece in 1957, three years before his death, but though it was published in the West a year later - winning him the Nobel Prize - it was banned in the Soviet Union. Only in 1988, with the state on its last legs, was printing finally authorised.
But the men from the ministry say the book is not being banned, just taken off the reading list.
"All programmes on all subjects will be reduced because children are not able to digest all information," a ministry adviser, Anatoli Pinskiy, told Moscow's Kommersant newspaper.
Certainly all agree that the workload for Russian children - roughly double that of some Western school systems - needs to be revised. And competition for a place on the schools reading list is great in a country crowded with literary greats.
But dissident writers hold a special place in many people's hearts: Pasternak's novel and poems are still widely read, as is Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, a lyrical protest on Stalin's Russia.
The problem, of course, is that the Communist years are still within living memory of most Russians. And many of those who held power under the old system still hold power now and are anxious to draw a line under the past.
Russia's largest political party is the Communist Party, itself keen to minimise the terror and horrors of the Soviet years.
"The government is trying to soften the tragic years of the Soviet period," writer Fasil Eskander, a doyen of Russian children's literature, told The Irish Times. "They want to reduce the influence of this literature to the sight of children." The school plan - which has yet to be set in stone - comes with more and more symbols of Russia's once-hated Communist past falling back into place.
Already the nation marches to the former Soviet national anthem, albeit minus the original words. And bookshops sell dozens of portraits of President Vladimir Putin, his face eerily shining in the manner of old Soviet leaders.
Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, wants to reinstall the statue of the KGB icon, Felix Dzerzhinsky, in its former place on Lubianka Square, still headquarters for the secret service.
Dzerzhinsky was the founder of the Cheka, later named the KGB, and his uncompromising attitude to human rights - he executed thousands- led to him being dubbed Iron Felix.
Meanwhile, some leaders of the southern city of Volgograd are pushing for the city to be renamed Stalingrad.
And in Moscow, pictures of Stalin now stare out of shops and cafes, although much of this is an expression of the disappointment at what democracy has brought a country still mired in poverty.
All of this is taking place under the gaze of President Putin, himself a former careerist KGB officer who has installed many former secret service colleagues in key positions in government.
Earlier this year the widow of dissident Andrei Sakharov, Elena Bonner, protested against plans to build a statue of her late husband in Moscow.
Bonner said that Russia's poverty, war in Chechnya and attacks on the free media meant there was little to celebrate and a statue would stain the memory of Sakharov.
But ironically, just as Dr Zhivago is poised to drop from the school shelves, it is about to pop up on the TV screens. Russian television has just bought the rights to show a dramatisation of the book made by a British TV company.