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A review by chris_chester
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
4.0
This belongs in the great tradition of revolutionary and wartime fiction alongside the likes of The Tale of Two Cities and War and Peace.
What got Pasternak in trouble with this book is that it presents a humanist view of the Russian Revolution and its impact on a middle class doctor/poet from Moscow. The project of the Soviet Union, so the thinking went in the USSR, should be viewed from the perspective of human epochs. The rise of proletariat, according to a certain kind of thinking, was an inevitable and permanent change for the better for humankind.
Of course, the trouble with that as we well know -- not just through the heavily-filtered Western propagandist's perspective during the Cold War, but with the benefit of hindsight decades later -- is that the experience on the individual human level was almost uniformly awful. And that's what Doctor Zhivago is -- a perspective from the human vantage point.
As a medical professional, the titular Doctor Zhivago is part of the privileged merchant middle class under the Czars. He has a liberal bend to his philosophy well before the revolution, served his country in the military, and is an all-around pretty cool dude. But when the wave of the revolution hits, disorder and famine sets in, ultimately yielding to a civil war and power consolidation, Zhivago's life gets twist-turned upside down.
His family tries to make due with diminished circumstances in Moscow before deciding to pursue an almost utopian vision of living off the land in the country's relatively untamed eastern portion. This succeeds for a while before the civil war rolls over and he is conscripted in the partisan forces and his family is basically permanently severed.
There is way more to it in the 700+ pages, obviously, including a cast of characters that recurs throughout Zhivago's life, a doomed love affair that spins of bittersweet moments, and many unsolved mysteries (what the heck drove Zhivago's father to suicide?) to chew on over several readings.
I think the strongest thread I was able to pull out of this well-wrought tale though was that philosophy and ideology are great in theory, but often produced monstrous results when applied to reality. As an idealist myself, I think I often succumb to the idea that if only everybody listened to my common sense ideas, so many of the world's problems would be solved!
But the real world does not bow to the logic and pure forms that populate our minds. Politics is not philosophy, it's a negotiation between powerful factions. People are fallible and hypocritical and selfish and don't always behave in a way that's rational. So no bit of high-minded political rhetoric is going to be warped into something much different and dangerous by reality and circumstance.
That doesn't mean necessarily that the ideas behind a project like the Soviet Union are in some way flawed and evil. It just means that trying to convert a region that has largely been dominated by autocrats into a system genuinely governed by small Soviets of citizens is inevitably going to snap back to its natural form. In this case, autocracy where everybody calls everyone else comrade.
And even if that political form had come out all roses from the societal perspective, it's still going to make many lives much worse than they were before, like for our friend Doctor Zhivago, flawed human being that he is.
I can understand why the Soviet Union didn't like the book, but I also think that many Americans wouldn't like the message either... which is really, don't buy the propaganda, do what you have to do to preserve the health and safety of you and yours. Or your mistress, you know, whatever.
What got Pasternak in trouble with this book is that it presents a humanist view of the Russian Revolution and its impact on a middle class doctor/poet from Moscow. The project of the Soviet Union, so the thinking went in the USSR, should be viewed from the perspective of human epochs. The rise of proletariat, according to a certain kind of thinking, was an inevitable and permanent change for the better for humankind.
Of course, the trouble with that as we well know -- not just through the heavily-filtered Western propagandist's perspective during the Cold War, but with the benefit of hindsight decades later -- is that the experience on the individual human level was almost uniformly awful. And that's what Doctor Zhivago is -- a perspective from the human vantage point.
As a medical professional, the titular Doctor Zhivago is part of the privileged merchant middle class under the Czars. He has a liberal bend to his philosophy well before the revolution, served his country in the military, and is an all-around pretty cool dude. But when the wave of the revolution hits, disorder and famine sets in, ultimately yielding to a civil war and power consolidation, Zhivago's life gets twist-turned upside down.
His family tries to make due with diminished circumstances in Moscow before deciding to pursue an almost utopian vision of living off the land in the country's relatively untamed eastern portion. This succeeds for a while before the civil war rolls over and he is conscripted in the partisan forces and his family is basically permanently severed.
There is way more to it in the 700+ pages, obviously, including a cast of characters that recurs throughout Zhivago's life, a doomed love affair that spins of bittersweet moments, and many unsolved mysteries (what the heck drove Zhivago's father to suicide?) to chew on over several readings.
I think the strongest thread I was able to pull out of this well-wrought tale though was that philosophy and ideology are great in theory, but often produced monstrous results when applied to reality. As an idealist myself, I think I often succumb to the idea that if only everybody listened to my common sense ideas, so many of the world's problems would be solved!
But the real world does not bow to the logic and pure forms that populate our minds. Politics is not philosophy, it's a negotiation between powerful factions. People are fallible and hypocritical and selfish and don't always behave in a way that's rational. So no bit of high-minded political rhetoric is going to be warped into something much different and dangerous by reality and circumstance.
That doesn't mean necessarily that the ideas behind a project like the Soviet Union are in some way flawed and evil. It just means that trying to convert a region that has largely been dominated by autocrats into a system genuinely governed by small Soviets of citizens is inevitably going to snap back to its natural form. In this case, autocracy where everybody calls everyone else comrade.
And even if that political form had come out all roses from the societal perspective, it's still going to make many lives much worse than they were before, like for our friend Doctor Zhivago, flawed human being that he is.
I can understand why the Soviet Union didn't like the book, but I also think that many Americans wouldn't like the message either... which is really, don't buy the propaganda, do what you have to do to preserve the health and safety of you and yours. Or your mistress, you know, whatever.