When Boris Pasternak, under fire from Soviet authorities, turned down a Nobel Prize. - https://lithub.com/when-boris-pasternak-under-fire-from-sovi...
But Mikhail Sholokov was in good odor with the Soviet government, and he got the prize for literature in 1965.
Just like propaganda uses lies mixed up with truths to be less evident.
Maybe other people liked it, even if you didn't?
Never saw anyone who liked it. Everybody I asked about Doctor Zhivago, said it is graphomania (I don't know if it is customary to call bad books by this name in English, but we usually use this word).
Great word! And as someone who knows a bit about English literature, I've never heard it before.
It's a common trope about widely respected, intellectual works, 'nobody really likes them'. (The following is not about you; I don't know you at all, of course:) Frankly, I think people can find them difficult, naturally, and an anti-intellectual response is an easy cover story that they know will be socially accepted. Lots of people like these works, including Dr Zhivago and Maria Stepanova. As I've grown older I've learned that if I don't like it then usually there's something I'm missing, which an opportunity for me to learn. As I've grown more sophisticated, I've learned why they are so admired - I just lacked the background to grasp it before. Certainly, reading these works in school was often impractical. Now, I'm sorry I don't have the time to read them all.
I don't know if Maria is a good poet. I'm not a big fan of poetry. Opened a couple of her old poems (on stihi.ru) and wasn't impressed.
But since almost half of the article is devoted to how it is important to be in opposition to the current Russian government and how it's a good thing to vilify Russian past (especially Soviet past), I tend to assume that she's an ordinary poet (maybe not bad but definitely not exceptional like the article claims) that is just being used as an ideological weapon against Russia.