Doctor Zhivago

Yuri returns to Moscow to find that the city has drastically changed. The bustling market which was near his house is now a “flighty square” (134). He returns to his house, where Tonya notices that he has lost weight. Tonya has leased part of the first floor of the house to the Agricultural Academy. Since money is short, she has released most of the servants. Only the nanny, Nyusha, has been retained. Yuri finds that his friends have become “strangely dull and colorless” (140); their loss of money, power, and privilege has taken a great toll. Even his old friend Misha seems desperate and devoid of his once-frequent witticisms. However, Yuri is pleased to be back with his family. His uncle Nikolai passes through Moscow and reveals that he is now a Bolshevik, having made use of his old connections with revolutionaries. Tonya is displeased with Nikolai's foray into politics, but Yuri still loves his uncle. They spend hours talking about history, politics, and art, delighting in their mutual understanding of the world.

Yuri and Tonya try to throw a dinner party. They roast the duck given to Yuri by Pogorevshikh, but Yuri struggles to enjoy the delicious food when he knows that his neighbors may be hungry. The guests seem out of sorts and unwilling to converse. Misha acts strangely, while Shura Schlesinger is now an ardent Bolshevik. As the evening draws to an unsatisfying close, Yuri stands up to give a speech. He talks about the war and the revolution, speculating about socialism's future in Russia. The topic makes him sad, but the guests applaud, mistakenly believing that his sadness is a joke. In the following days, Yuri returns to work at his old hospital and starts writing again. The “unavoidable” (146) winter is imminent, and he needs to work, as resources are so scarce that people are taking “fences apart for fuel” (149). He also saves a politician who has collapsed on the street. In the future, this unnamed politician becomes “a protector for long years to come” (149). The hospital has also been changed by the revolution.

As the civil war between the revolutionary Reds and the conservative Whites continues to rage in other parts of Russia, people pick sides. Yuri seems to satisfy no one's expectations, appearing Red to White supporters and White to Red supporters. He worries that people such as himself—from the wealthy middle class bourgeoise—are under threat. His family and his job provide him with comfort and motivation.

As October approaches, Yuri struggles on. Nikolai and Misha tell him news about “fighting in the streets” (150). The fighting reaches Moscow and gunfire can be heard in the streets. Yuri braves a snowstorm to walk the streets and buy a newspaper that contains “an official communiqué from Petersburg about the forming of the Soviet of People's Commissars, the establishment of soviet power in Russia, and the introduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat” (153). Slipping into a building to read more of the article, he notices that a young man is watching him. Yuri shouts at the youngster and forces him away. Yuri does not know that the young man is his half-brother, Evgraf. The winter is “dark, hungry, and cold” and Yuri's family struggles to get by (155). They sell the wardrobe given to Tonya's mother in exchange for firewood. Yuri is one of the few doctors remaining at the hospital. During a house call, he treats a woman with typhus. Trying to arrange transport for her to the hospital, he talks to the woman taking care of the house. The building once belonged to Tiverzin, and Yuri discovers that the “loud and fat-bloated” (159) caretaker is actually Yusup's mother, Marfa Galiullina. She complains that her son has lost himself and “gone bad” (161). Yuri then meets Olya Demina, an old friend of Lara, and he is surprised to be inside a building where Lara spent so much time. Olya informs Yuri that Lara only married Pasha “with her head, not her heart” (162). A week later, while walking along the street, Yuri collapses from typhus. He spends two weeks with a terrible fever and experiences intense dreams about composing a poem. His dreams also feature a boy with narrow eyes and a reindeer coat, whom he believes to represent death. The boy is actually Evgraf, who has come to visit his half-brother during the fever. He brings them food to survive. Evgraf urges Tonya to flee the city “for a year or two” with her family (164). He suggests that they could live near Yuriatin, on the Varykino estate that once belonged to Tonya's grandfather.

The Zhivago family plans to move to the Varykino estate. The nanny, Nyusha, and Tonya’s father, Alexander Gromeko, will accompany them. Yuri is unsure about the plan, but Tonya has made up her mind. Navigating “the flow of departing people,” they leave Moscow in April in a packed train carriage (166). The army recruits take the first carriages of the train, the middle carriages are for the regular people, and the final carriages are filled with people “mobilized by labor conscription” (171). Yuri boards his family on a freight car, which they share with lawyers and laborers. He speaks to the men as they travel. He meets Kostoed-Amursky, who has been released from a labor camp and now runs camps of his own; Prokhor Pritulyev, who is travelling with two women who argue about how much they love him; and a 16-year-old named Vasya whose aunt and uncle tricked him into becoming a conscripted laborer. The train moves slowly, and one day it comes to a complete stop in a badly destroyed station. The station was damaged by an armored train which was attacking a nearby village whose inhabitants had refused to supply horses to the Red Army. The notorious Bolshevik commissar, Strelnikov, ordered the attack, and very few people survived. There are so few survivors that a massive snowbank has built up on the train tracks, as there are no locals to clear it. The whole train must disembark and shovel snow, though the military conscripts are spared the effort. Clearing the tracks takes three days.

Once the train is moving again, Yuri is exhausted. He drifts in and out of sleep for days and, by the time he wakes up completely, spring seems to have arrived. Tonya tells him that many of the passengers slipped out of the train during the night. Yuri is more interested in rumors about the civil war. Apparently, the Whites—led by Yusup—are now winning against the Reds in the area around Yuriatin. According to rumors, Strelnikov himself is heading toward Yuriatin to deal with Yusup and to capture the town for the Bolsheviks. A few days later, the train stops in a large station, and Yuri goes for a walk. A Bolshevik guard accosts him, insisting that he is a criminal on the run. The guards drag Yuri in front of their commissar, bringing Yuri face-to-face with Strelnikov. Strelnikov immediately knows that Yuri is not the criminal, but, on hearing that Yuri's surname is Zhivago, he asks for a private discussion. The two men talk, with Strelnikov accusing Yuri of being a deserter. He believes that Yuri’s sympathies lie with the Whites. Yuri cannot disagree but tells Strelnikov that he has spent his whole life wrestling with the ideas which now occupy the two rival armies. He struggles to explain his lifetime of reflection and asks to be released. Strelnikov tells his men to escort Yuri back to the train. As Yuri walks away, Strelnikov thinks about the wife and daughter that he left behind in Yuriatin many years before.