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

This is a long chapter—some 40 pages—covering a huge amount of ground, both literally and figuratively. The Zhivagos leave Moscow for Varykino in the Urals, travelling through a country in chaos: armed patrols, conscript wagons, blizzards, escaped prisoners, and the slow revelation that the Civil War is closing in around them.

Along the way, we meet the mysterious Strelnikov — revolutionary commander, pride and terror of the region — and Pasternak drops just enough clues for the careful reader to work out who he really is.

I also look at the Pugachev rebellion and its echoes in Russian literature, Pasternak's use of Petersburg rather than Petrograd, the Trotsky parallel, and what Italo Calvino made of Pasternak's relationship to the Revolution.

📖 Follow along with the essay and printable version at https://camscampbellreads.substack.com/p/doctor-zhivago-chapter-7

Sources this week:

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

The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book, Peter Finn, Petra Couvée

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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