I wanted to read the book “Doctor Zhivago” after I watched the 2005 Russian film. Many scenes in it were staged in a rather controversial manner, and it was this very fact that made me start reading the work of the same name by Boris Pasternak. At one time, my husband had already started reading it, but he never mastered it… one day, it fell on the floor and got wet, after which he said that he would not read it at all and in principle… When the book dried, however, there was no trace of the “wet incident” and I took up reading.

So. In the novel “Doctor Zhivago” there were two types of people: the first sympathized with the working people and wanted to help them, the second, on the contrary, fully endorsed the policy of the Romanovs, and afterwards, some of them also supported the policy of the Provisional Government, these second, above all, wanted to preserve the Russian Empire, because for them it was their alma mater. However, against the background of these two social groups described above, there were also other bright types of socio-political formations among the population, namely anarchists and democrats, these were two different tendencies, one of which was ready to go to the most extreme extremes to achieve its goals, and the second, on the contrary, radically denying radicalism, was fanatically fixated on its intellectualism and thus was as detached from the masses as their opponents-anarchists. The vast majority of people encountered in the novel, regardless of their estate or class position in society, are highly moral and ethical individuals; this is truly amazing when reading the work. Many people remained to live in Soviet Russia solely because they could not leave it, and therefore were forced to adapt to life in a country where everything was ruled by the bolshevik regime and they did not accept it. “Doctor Zhivago” reveals this moment especially vividly, when some of the heroes of the story rush about in desperate attempts to leave the Sovok, but the borders are already closed… Yuri’s wife Antonina, nevertheless escapes from remote Siberia and leaves Soviet Russia by transit through Moscow. Tony’s father is a doctor of science, a prominent scientist, but he is not loyal to the bolshevik government and therefore this very government wants to expel him from the country as an “enemy of Soviet power” and although this term will appear decades later, it is he who most clearly characterizes the attitude of the communists – bolsheviks to people like Antonina and her father.

The October Coup was carried out not only by the bolsheviks, but also by anarchists, as well as the Left Social-Revolutionaries. After taking power, the Leninist Guard will declare enemies and shoot without trial even those who helped them overthrow the Provisional Government… Essentially political terror begins, the bolshevik dictatorship begins to purge everyone in general, anarchists, socialist-revolutionaries, social-democrats, liberals, monarchists… forest brothers, scientists, intelligentsia, poets and musicians… a cruel fate awaited all those who were not loyal to the current government… those who fled behind the cordon were saved, those who stayed behind perished in the moloch of repression…

The novel very clearly and vividly reveals how many people in Russia changed to please the new trends of “new life”, namely, how people abandoned the old religious traditions and succumbed to the new orders began to consider that pray, baptize, go to church, bury and burial – it’s atavism. The important thing here is that they did all this, not because they were actually atheists, but only because the “rules of life” had changed and no one does that anymore. Ruthless social collectivism quite often works much faster and more efficiently than any decrees of any, even the most hellish dictatorship. Pasternak clearly describes this moment when Yuri Zhivago’s second common-law wife, the woman with whom he lived in the last years of his life, refuses to perform a funeral service and bury him, deciding for the sake of fashion to only cremate him… Zhivago himself was never able to leave Soviet Russia, and therefore had to exist in it somehow… After his death, not a single Soviet document will be found in his possession; everything he had was issued to him to him by Tsarist Russia…

At the end of the work, two friends of Yuri Zhivago, who lived through the difficult period of formation of the Sovdepov power and all the horrors associated with it all, namely: repressions, prisons, gulags and all possible wars of those years, including the war with Nazi Germany, fully accepted the Bolshevik Soviet Union and sitting on a bench, in the middle of the street, read the diary of his close and deceased friend, as a documentary chronicle of a long past era in which they lived and survived until now….

Pani Pantera