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Just a few words, on the outside chance that I might tip a potential reader or two into reading this marvelous oh-so-Russian novel of lives caught up in the Great October Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath. Either you read Big Russian Novels (primarily of the 19th century) or not. If you do, you've probably already read, or tried to read, Zhivago. If you don't, I can offer a few reasons why you might want to read this one, in the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation or the earlier, less literal (but reportedly more graceful and poetic) Hayward-Harari version. Pasternak's cast of principal characters are to a person layered, complex, deeply conceived individuals swept up in the massive surge of events, struggling to keep their heads above water while, all around them, friends, family, and nameless millions of others are drowning in the turbulence. The arc of Yuri Zhivago alone - from enthusiastic, humanistic supporter of "regime change" to mordant skeptic of divisive ideas imposed as orthodoxy-driven policy - is typical of the evolutions and surprises Pasternak has written into the novel. His characters ruminate far and wide over imputed glories and horrors of Marxism, Bolshevism, Soviet Communism, the New Economic Policy (NEP), etc., and it was for precisely these candid criticisms of Soviet ideology and practice that Pasternak's novel was condemned (although unpublished) in the USSR - despite the deStalinization still underway at the time of Zhivago's publication, first in Italy then around the world (Soviet readers couldn't legally purchase a USSR/Russian edition until 1988). Needless to say, Pasternak was obliged to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature he won in 1958, mostly for Doctor Zhivago.

For me - I spent most of my adult life as an analyst of foreign political, economic, social, and military affairs - Doctor Zhivago is particularly brilliant in its depiction of the horrors and dislocations war and civil war inflict on populations, and especially those segments with little or no recourse to "safety nets" of  any variety - personal, familial, governmental, church-, religion-, or community-based, or other. Pasternak depicts the range of human ingenuity in such circumstances, as individiuals cobble together the means of extracting brief moments of small pleasure from the tractor-pull of events. But through an accumulation of hundreds of small details, often in asides and parenthetic observations, Pasternak conveys the epochal common misfortunes and hardships of those whose accident of history made them Russians born around and after 1900. The novel compels us to consider that, at some point in the 20th century, such horrors of remorseless privation, despotism, and brutal inhumanity were visited upon the majority of humanity - the Europe of the World  Wars, China for most of the century, and on and on - and how  fortunate those spared such travails (and their descendents) are.

Throughout, Pasternak's characters comment on the flow of events, the political struggles, the conduct of, first, the World War and later the Civil War, the states-of-play at various key junctures, the putative winners and losers, the impositions of what must seem arbitrary policy (and then policy reversals), all in the name of advancing to some  formless Communist Utopia but, to the  cynically incisive observations of Zhivago and other perceptive observers, simply a Soviet variation of high-stakes politics of power-seeking  individuals. THIS is how depotism and deprivation of freedom looks, and it's an experience alien to most American readers and one worthy of serious contemplation. Zhivago is filled with long, philosophical digressions that in general weigh humanism and spirituality against ideological politics; many found these passages tedious and a drag on the narrative. Suffice to say, I did not. Moreover, I found even Pevear-Volokhonsky's more literal translation filled with beautifully poetic moments, as were the translations of "Yuri Zhivago's poetry" that forms an appendix to the novel.

In short, I found Doctor Zhivago a transporting literary experience and a profound reflection on Soviet Communism. And a book I will reread, soon, in the Hayward-Harari translation.

This was my second reading of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. My first was about forty-three years ago, when I read it as part of a college course of Russian literature in translation (we also read Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, et al). About all I remembered from then was that the novel did not strike me as one of the greats of world literature, or even Russian literature. My overall response now is much the same, although I am glad I re-read it.

Most everyone knows the basic story from having seen David Lean's magnificent film. But Lean's "Doctor Zhivago" is not Pasternak's. The film deviates too much from the novel for seeing the movie to be a substitute for reading the book. The biggest discrepancy is in the character of Zhivago, who in the book is less heroic and more feckless than he is in the movie. In turning such a sweeping novel as DOCTOR ZHIVAGO into a film, numerous cuts and simplifications are of course necessary. But, for me, the movie's omission of Zhivago's third wife Marina, the daughter of a house porter, is inexcusable. And hence, in the book, Zhivago abandons not only his "legal" wife Tonya and their children -- for Lara, the natural, irrational love of his life -- but he also abandons his third wife Marina and their children -- because family life becomes too much for him (in other words, he is too selfish).

The centerpiece of the story, of course, tracks the tumultuous times in Russia of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and then the Russian Civil War. There is violence, rebellion, famine, and typhus. Families are splintered and lives are transformed . . . and many end prematurely.

To me, the story sprawls too much. Worse, it relies too much on extraordinary, almost divine, coincidences. I marked seven such coincidences, and in doing so I did not count such things as the improbable multiple roles of Kamorovsky -- as the lawyer who drove the boy Yura Zhivago's father to suicide, who also was the lawyer for Lara's mother who then seduced Lara, and who in later years suddenly showed up to save Lara and her daughter. And then there is the feckless character of Zhivago.

What redeems the novel, for me, is its exploration of "the accursed questions" ("prokliatye voprosy" in Dostoevsky's phrase), namely, the ultimate questions of human existence--the nature of man, the existence of God, the problems of evil, the looming omnipresence of death, and the meaning of life. Some of Pasternak's philosophizing seems fatuous to me, and some of it is inscrutable. But much of it is more or less on the mark, and at least he is writing in the grand tradition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Another notable aspect of the novel is its meditations on the Russian Revolution. Paternak was ambivalent about it, and sufficiently critical of it and the Communist state it brought about that the novel could not be published in the Soviet Union until thirty years after it first was published in 1957 (in an Italian translation). Moreover, he was not allowed to accept the Nobel Prize when it was awarded him in 1958. What, then, did Pasternak think of the Russian Revolution? In the words of one of his characters, "History will sort it all out."

A few words about this edition, in which the translation is by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky: The prose is among the most "modern" that I have encountered in my ongoing traversal of Russian literature in translation (a reprise of sorts of that college course decades ago). As much as Pasternak reminds me, alternately, of Dostoevsky and then of Tolstoy, his prose, at least as rendered here, is more straightforward, more modern. Is that because of Pevear and Volokhonsky? Or is it Pasternak? This edition is footnoted, with twenty pages of endnotes collected at the back of the book. They are excellent, not only because they are informative but also because they are judicious, in that P&V do not go overboard annotating everything that might not be known to the average high school graduate. In addition, however, I for one would have appreciated a listing of the numerous characters (a who's who or dramatis personae), including all the variations of each character's Russian name.

I just finished Boris Pasternak’s novel, “Doctor Zhivago,” and I’m a bit wrecked. I had to lie down after finishing. This was a re-reading after too many years. It is one of my all-time favorites, so highest recommendation! I’d forgotten how excellent it is. I always enjoy a good nexus, and here the nexus is my love of history, especially the end of the Romanov Dynasty, Russian Revolution of 1917, and gorgeous writing. This translation is from 2014 and it is wonderful. Yes, the movie is sublime, but the book is even better. I want to run away to Siberia now. Forward my mail to Varykino.