Ok what about this then? A typical story about Russia on the BBC. If it's not anti Putin then it's anti USSR story. This one is kind of interesting:

The first Russian copy of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Palsternak, was published by the CIA and distributed to the USSR in 1988 (I'll take a wild guess that it was circulating before that as well, informally).
However, per the BBC it was the CIA that brought this masterpiece to Russia. BBC News - How the CIA secretly published Dr Zhivago

Right or wrong? Any other books you want the CIA to publish for you you, folks?

Have you read the book (I haven't, but I watched the British film with Kiera Knightley...)


The CIA's Doctor Zhivago project was part of a wider effort by the agency to get forbidden novels into Eastern bloc countries, including books by George Orwell, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and Ernest Hemingway.
Sneaky anti-Russia psy-ops tactics, or serves the USSR right for not allowing the books?

As I understand it, this type of stuff still goes on, although slightly a bit more low key. Putin knows it, and has done things like challenge the British council and US "human rights" organisations for the most blatant cases.

Other books printed by the CIA and distributed to Eastern Europe according to the BBC.

  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, which is about a young man who questions and rebels against his upbringing
  • Animal Farm, described by its author George Orwell as a "satirical tale against Stalin"
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
  • The God That Failed - essays by six ex-communist writers who had grown disillusioned with communism
  • Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, which follows a Russian-born professor living in the US