Welcome to week six of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.

Yury returns to Moscow after two years at the front to find a city — and a country — transformed. The February Revolution has happened, and possibly the July Days too. His friends are dimmer than he remembered, his son doesn't know him, and the October Revolution is about to land on his doorstep.

In this episode I look at the dual-power struggle between the Provisional Government and the Soviets, the rise and fall of the Socialist Revolutionaries, and why a throwaway quip from the servant Markel turns out to be historically interesting. I also look at what Mayakovsky's relationship with the Revolution tells us about Pasternak's, and what it cost Pasternak personally to grit his teeth and stay in Russia while his family got out.

📖 Follow along with the essay and printable version at https://camscampbellreads.substack.com/p/doctor-zhivago-chapter-6

Sources this week:

A People's Tragedy, Orlando Figes (The Bodley Head, 2017)

Lara: The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago, Anna Pasternak.

It's also available as a YouTube video here.

All quotations are from the Hayward/Harari translation. Buy the Everyman's Library edition from Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones or Bookshop.org with this affiliate link: https://geni.us/bZsI

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