CALENDAR OF THE REVOLUTION
251
ening of the autocracy, spoke of the "liquidation of the illusions and
methods of 1905"; and the Bolsheviks were already virtually alone in
upholding the tradition of revolutionary action-outside their ranks only
Plekhanov and Trotsky, and their very few followers, did the same.
This then is the climate of opinion which Pasternak-Zhivago recalls in
1917, reflecting that "it would be good to go back to that climate once
the war was over, to see its renewal and continuation, just as it was
good to be going home." Thus, even at this stage, on the eve of the
October insurrection and well before his disillusionment had begun,
Zhivago's "loyalty and admiration for the revolution" is nothing but
a transfigured and glorified nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Russia.
Latent and unconscious at the beginning, this nostalgia comes into
its own and bursts to the surface later. "I can still remember a time when
we all accepted the peaceful outlook of the last century," says Lara to
Zhivago. "It was taken for granted that you listened to reason, that it
was right and natural to do what your conscience told you...." she
adds (as if Russia had not lived in serfdom for most of that golden age,
"the last century," and in semi-serfdom for the rest of it!). "And then
there was the jump from this calm, innocent, measured way of living to
blood and tears,
to
mass insanity. . . . You must remember better than
I do the beginning of disintegration, how everything began to break
down all at once-trains and food supplies in towns, and the foundations
of home life and conscious moral standards."
"Go
on," Zhivago interjects. "I know what you will say next. What
good sense you make of it all! It's a joy to listen to you."
Pasternak's recital of the broken pledges of October is thus based
on a false premise: The October revolution had never promised to satis–
fy his nostalgia and to "go back to the climate" of 1912-1914, let alone
to that of the nineteenth century. He rests his case on the fact that the
October revolution was not a bourgeois revolution or rather that it did
not content itself with a mildly reformed version of the
ancien regime.
Of all the charges that have ever been levelled against Bolshevism, this is
surely the most archaic one. When it was voiced around 1921 it was still
the echo of a fresh controversy.
In
1958 it comes to us like a voice from
the grave.
III
"Comme
La Guerre et La Paix,
le
Docteur Jivago," writes Francois
Mauriac,
u
ne restitue pas seulement des destinees particulieres, mais
l'histoire politique qui naU Ill'elles et qui,
a
son tour, les injUchiP. ret leur
donne une signification."
