And these days, when interest in poetry is practically zero, few remember him. A pity, for he was an unusual man and a unique poet. It was he who was destined to become the ‘godfather’ of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Nikolay Shatrov met Boris Pasternak through Jacqueline de Proyart, the famous Slavist who managed to smuggle out of the Soviet Union the only copy of Pasternak’s manuscript with the author’s corrections.