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PARTISAN REVIEW
of the issues agitating it: war and peace, Brest Litovsk, the German
threat to Petrograd, the move of Lenin's government from Petrograd to
Moscow, the attempts of the counter-revolution to rally, the hopes for the
spread of revolution in Europe, the uprising of the Left Social Revolu–
tionaries, the final dissolution of the old army, the emergence of the new
one, not to speak of the distribution of land amonjg the peasants, workers'
control over industry, the beginnings of socialization, the attempt on
Lenin's life, the first outbreaks of the Red terror, etc., all occurring dur–
ing the months of Zhivago's stay in Moscow. We get no inkling of the
severe pathos of these months, of the mass enthusiasms and the soaring
hopes, without which the shocks to the hopes remain meaningless. We
are hardly able to guess that Moscow is already being cut off by the
Whites from food and fuel bases in the south: and so famine and chaos
appear as the results of an apocalyptic breakdown of moral standards.
By coincidence I have read simultaneously with
Doctor
Zhivago
the manuscript of memoirs written by an old worker who, himself an
anarchist, took part in the Bolshevik uprising in Moscow. Without lit–
erary pretensions, very plainly, he describes the same period with which
Pasternak deals; and he too is now bitterly disillusioned with the out–
come of the revolution. But what a difference between the two pictures
of the same city (even the same streets!) seen at the same time. Both
writers describe the famine and the sufferings. But the old anarchist
draws also unforgettable scenes of streets which, as far as he could see
from a crossroads, were filled with Red workers, hastily arming them–
selves, and even with war cripples begging for arms; and then-the same
streets changed into a battlefield; and he brings alive the inspired and
tense heroism of Moscow's working class, an atmosphere of which Pas–
ternak conveys not even a whiff. Again, it is as
if
Tolstoy had brought
Pierre Bezukhov to burning Moscow only to let him bemoan the hunger
and the ruins, without letting him (and us) feel how the great and
tragic conflagration illumines Russia's past and present. To Tolstoy the
fire of Moscow and the cruel deeds and sufferings of 1812 are no mere
atrocities-if they had been, Tolstoy would not be himself, and
War and
Peace
would not be what it is. To Pasternak the revolution is primarily
an atrocity.
Zhivago's resentment swells in him during his long and weary jour–
ney to the Urals. He travels in an overcrowded goods train, packed with
human misery. Here are some of Pasternak's best descriptive pages. The
scenes and episodes are true to life-the literature of the 1920's is full
of similar descriptions. Zhivago's chief preoccupation is still with his and
his family's well-being, although he tries to "defend the revolution"
in
