Doctor Zhivago

The Russian Revolution of 1917 centered around social class. The early chapters of Doctor Zhivago, prior to the outbreak of the revolution, depicted a society defined by extreme social and economic inequality. Yuri's family may have lost their fortune, but he is part of a privileged class that is willing to offer him help and protection. He grows up in the Gromeko household as the ward of another wealthy family, wanting for nothing. This comfortable existence contrasts with the plight of neighbors such as Lara (who is forced to endure Komarovsky's affections to support her family) or the nearby laborers (who work long and hard for the rich, suffering in much worse living conditions). In these early chapters, it’s easy to see the roots of the dissatisfaction that grows into violence as the story progresses. The 1905 revolution failed to address these issues, and characters like Mikulitsyn and Tiverzin bear the physical and emotional scars of that conflict while feeling that they have nothing to show for it. As the novel opens, social inequality persists in Russia and, with the rise of Marxist ideology, communism, and Bolshevism, the working-class people of Moscow and Russia are equipped with the ideological to forcibly disrupt the social order.

The social order depicted in Doctor Zhivago collapses slowly and then all at once. The outbreak of the revolution in 1917 turns Yuri’s prior privileges into marks against his character. Yuri does not believe in the revolution. He has not endured the suffering of the working class, and the status quo has only served to benefit him throughout his life, even if he has his own personal traumas. Yuri struggles to empathize with those for whom the social order of tsarist Russia was intolerable. As a result, he sees the war only as a source of violence and chaos—the implacable force that robbed him of the happy life he could have had. The novel itself presents an agnostic view of the value of revolution. This is a key reason why it was banned in the Soviet Union for many years. The pre-revolutionary social order, as depicted in the novel, was deeply unjust, but its collapse means the collapse of all social restraint, and atrocities are committed on both sides. Yuri criticizes the Bolsheviks for lacking a cohesive plan for life after the revolution. Though the chaos of the civil war justifies Yuri’s argument, it is notable that the novel’s working-class characters generally do not agree with him. Yuri never argued for social change; he was insulated from the perils of working-class life until the moment that the working-class people decided that they would take no more. Yuri’s criticisms of the revolution are not without merit, but given that Yuri has no apparent interest in any other form of social change, his objections function as a tacit endorsement of the prior, unjust social order.

If the tsarist social order is characterized by a profound lack of empathy for the working class on the part of the wealthy, the revolution ushers in a reversal. For men like Yuri, the ideal conception of social class is distant and intellectual. He was raised by his revolutionary uncle, and knows how to discuss egalitarian political ideals in theory, but he does not connect those ideas with actual people—either members of the proletariat or people like himself. Even when he returns to Moscow in the wake of the revolution, Yuri does not comprehend anything that his uncle is saying. Instead, he sides with men like his father-in-law, who complain about their loss of privilege and status. This complete lack of empathy is one of the most persistent features of Yuri’s character: He wants to remain apolitical and detached and from events. However, this is not possible given the scale of the social collapse that is taking place. Yuri, like many of the wealthy bourgeois characters, cannot conceive of the desperation and the fear of the working-class people. This lack of class empathy permeates the bourgeois and leads them to perceive the revolution as some unwieldy, monstrous force that is impossible to comprehend. Since Yuri and his ilk are primarily concerned with maintaining their own privileges, they can never empathize with the Bolsheviks, whom they see as conspiring to take from them what is rightfully theirs. The lack of empathy from the rich toward the poor is then reflected in the brutal aftermath of the revolution, in which a person's social class can make them a target for the Bolshevik authorities. The profound inequality of tsarist Russia has eroded nearly everyone’s capacity for empathy. The collapse of the social order does nothing to reverse that erosion. Instead it means that the violence that previously had flowed from the top down in legalized ways now flows in all directions and affects everyone.