Work record

Doctor Zhivago

Name: Doctor Zhivago
Author: Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

1957 · Postwar Contemporary · Novel · Russian

CopyrightedFive-minute digest

Abstract

Written: Written c. 1945–1955; published 1957
Setting: c. 1903–1929, with an epilogue in the 1940s; Moscow, the front, the Urals and Siberia
Author: Boris Pasternak; trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harari
Country: Soviet Union
Language: Russian
Genre: Historical novel
Form: Two books in fifteen chapters, an epilogue and a cycle of poems
Recommended: Grades 11–12 (Mature content: adultery, a teenager's seduction by an older man, war and revolutionary violence.)

Background. A celebrated poet who survived Stalin's terror largely by translating, Pasternak spent a decade on this, his only full-length novel, and saw it first printed in Milan after Moscow journals refused it. The smuggled manuscript reached an Italian Communist publisher, who printed it in defiance of Soviet requests.

Plot. An orphaned Moscow doctor with a gift for verse marries into a cultured household, but war, revolution and civil conflict scatter everyone he knows. Fleeing hunger to a remote Ural estate, he falls in love with a nurse he had met at the front, is pressed into service by forest guerrillas, and loses both his family and his beloved before dying obscurely in the capital. His poems conclude the book.

Ideas. The work defends private experience, love, nature and art against the claims of ideology, and draws on Christian imagery of sacrifice and renewal. Coincidences repeatedly bring the characters together across vast distances, and recurring images, such as a candle burning in a frosty window, link the prose story to the closing verse.

Reception. An international sensation during the Cold War, it brought its author the Nobel Prize and official persecution at home, and inspired a popular 1965 film. Readers in Russia could obtain it legally only from 1988, during glasnost.

Main characters

Yury Zhivago: Physician and poet
Lara: His beloved
Tonya: His wife
Strelnikov: Revolutionary commander, Lara's husband

Summary

Doctor Zhivago is a novel by Boris Pasternak, completed in the mid-1950s and first published in Italian translation by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in Milan in November 1957, after Soviet publishers rejected it. The English translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari appeared in 1958, the year Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. Yury Andreievich Zhivago, orphaned as a boy, is raised in Moscow by the cultivated Gromeko family, trains as a physician, writes poetry and marries Tonya Gromeko. Running through his story is that of Lara Guishar, the daughter of a widowed dressmaker, who as a schoolgirl is seduced by her mother's protector, the lawyer Komarovsky. Lara later fires a shot at him at a Christmas party, then marries the idealistic Pasha Antipov, who goes to war and is reported captured. Zhivago and Lara meet properly during the First World War, when he serves as an army doctor and she as a nurse. After the Revolution of 1917, famine and disorder in Moscow drive the Zhivago family to Varykino, a former estate in the Urals. In the nearby town of Yuriatin Zhivago finds Lara again and begins an affair with her. Captured by partisans who need a doctor, he is held for about two years in the forests of Siberia during the Civil War. When he escapes and returns, he learns that Tonya and her family have gone back to Moscow and will be deported abroad. He and Lara spend a final winter at Varykino until Komarovsky persuades Zhivago to let her leave with him for the Far East. Pasha, who has become the feared Red commander Strelnikov, arrives at Varykino as a fugitive and shoots himself. Back in Moscow, Zhivago lives in poverty with a new companion, Marina, writes, and dies of a heart attack in 1929. Lara attends his funeral and then disappears. In an epilogue set during the Second World War, his friends learn of a laundry girl, Tanya, apparently the daughter of Zhivago and Lara. The book closes with twenty-five poems attributed to Zhivago. The novel's portrayal of the Revolution as a catastrophe for individual lives, its Christian imagery and its lyricism made it a cause célèbre during the Cold War. David Lean's 1965 film made its story widely known.

Plot or Argument

Part One, Chapters 1–7: Before and after 1917
Zhivago's childhood, education and marriage; Lara's seduction by Komarovsky and her marriage to Pasha; the war, the meeting at the front, and the Revolution in Moscow; the journey east to the Urals.
Part Two, Chapters 8–15: The Urals and Moscow
Life at Varykino and the affair in Yuriatin; Zhivago's captivity with the partisans; the final winter with Lara; Strelnikov's death; Zhivago's last years and death in Moscow.
Epilogue and poems
Zhivago's friends learn of his daughter during the Second World War; the novel ends with the poems of Yury Zhivago.

Characters

Yury Andreievich Zhivago, protagonist
Physician and poet whose personal life is overturned by war and revolution.
Larissa (Lara) Fyodorovna Guishar, major
Zhivago's beloved, a nurse and teacher, whose life is shaped by Komarovsky and Pasha.
Antonina (Tonya) Alexandrovna Gromeko, major
Zhivago's wife, raised with him in the Gromeko household.
Pavel (Pasha) Antipov / Strelnikov, major
Lara's husband, an idealist who becomes a ruthless Red Army commander.
Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, antagonist
Unscrupulous lawyer who seduces Lara and later takes her away.
Yevgraf Zhivago, minor
Yury's mysterious half-brother, who helps him at critical moments.

Lessons

The individual and history
The novel follows private lives swept up in war and revolution. Readers can consider how Pasternak weighs personal life against political movements.
- How do the Revolution and Civil War change Zhivago's life?
- Does the novel suggest that individuals can resist history?
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- Reynolds v. United States, Lesson: History as a dictionary
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- Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Lesson: Patience under a long providence
  Patience under a long providence. Pericles does nothing to deserve his losses. He flees a wicked king, feeds a starving city and marries honourably, yet the sea takes his wife and treachery seems to take his daughter. The play's answer is not an explanation but endurance and an ending in which, as Pericles says, present kindness makes past miseries sport. Marina is likened to "Patience gazing on kings' graves," the virtue the whole play praises.
Poetry within the novel
Zhivago's poems close the book and reinterpret its events. Students can examine how the poems relate to the narrative.
- Which events in the novel reappear in the poems?
- Why might Pasternak end with poetry rather than prose?
Related across the library
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- The Conquest of Gaul, Lesson: Siege as a contest of endurance and hunger
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Love and responsibility
Zhivago loves both Tonya and Lara. The novel presents his divided loyalties without simple judgment.
- How does Zhivago describe his feelings toward Tonya and toward Lara?
- How do other characters respond to his choices?
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- The Nibelungenlied, Medical lens
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Context

The novel spans the period from the 1905 revolution through the First World War, the 1917 revolutions, the Russian Civil War and the 1920s, with an epilogue during the Second World War. Pasternak wrote it in the late Stalin years and the early Khrushchev 'thaw'.

Composition

Pasternak worked on the novel from about 1945 to 1955. When the journal Novy Mir rejected it, a copy reached the Italian publisher Feltrinelli, who published it in November 1957 despite Soviet pressure. A Russian-language edition was printed abroad in 1958; documents released in 2014 confirmed that the CIA had arranged for its printing.

Reception

The novel became an international best seller. After Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958, he faced a campaign of official denunciation and expulsion from the Writers' Union and declined the prize. The novel was published in the Soviet Union in 1988 and is now widely read in Russia.

Love Desire War Violence Power / Politics Art / Creation Faith / Religion Home Exile

Comparisons

War and Peace
Tolstoy's novel likewise sets private lives and loves against vast historical upheaval.
Anna Karenina
Tolstoy's study of love outside marriage shares the novel's attention to passion, family and conscience.
The Master and Margarita
Bulgakov's novel, also suppressed in the Soviet period, combines a love story with an artist's struggle under Stalinism.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Solzhenitsyn's novella, published in the USSR in 1962, depicts the Stalin-era repression that shadows Doctor Zhivago's epilogue.
The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky's novel shares Pasternak's concern with faith, freedom and the meaning of suffering.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orwell's novel, from the same postwar years, imagines a regime that seeks to control private love and memory.

Quotes

“Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.”

— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Part Two, Chapter 9 ('Varykino'), section 14, trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harari (1958).Quote card

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For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The candle in the window that Zhivago sees in Moscow.
Coincidences that bring characters together.
Seasons, especially winter at Varykino.
The connections between the novel and the poems at the end.

Key terms and names

Bolshevik: Member of Lenin's faction, which took power in October 1917.
Civil War: The 1917–1922 conflict between Reds and Whites in Russia.
Partisans: Irregular fighters, such as the forest band that captures Zhivago.
Samizdat: Underground copying of banned writing in the Soviet Union.
Epilogue: A concluding section set after the main story.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension Why does the Zhivago family leave Moscow for the Urals?
Comprehension Who is Strelnikov, and what happens to him?
Interpretation Why does Pasternak rely so heavily on coincidence?
Interpretation What does the candle in the window come to mean?
Big Question Can art and private life survive political upheaval?
Big Question Should individuals be sacrificed for a political ideal?

Faith Connections

John 11:25 (Scripture)
'I am the resurrection, and the life': the novel's Christian imagery, including Zhivago's poems on Gospel themes, frames death and renewal in these terms.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Great Conversation)
Tolstoy's reflections on history and individual freedom provide a background for Pasternak's treatment of revolution.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Through a doctor-poet who refuses to subordinate life to ideology, the novel argues that personal love, art and conscience have a value that political schemes cannot replace.

Rhetorical device: lyrical imagery. Recurring images of snow, candles and the seasons give the novel a poetic structure that links its many episodes.

Debate: Resolved: Zhivago is a hero rather than a passive observer of his times.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how Pasternak portrays the effect of the Revolution on private life.

Comparison with War and Peace: Compare how Tolstoy and Pasternak relate individual lives to historical events.

Creative Prompts

Poetry
Write a short poem in Zhivago's voice about one scene from the novel, such as the candle in the window or the winter at Varykino.
Essay
Compare Zhivago and Strelnikov as two responses to the Revolution.
Classroom
Build a timeline that places the novel's events against the history of Russia from 1905 to 1945.