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Part 9: Varykino
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Doctor Zhivago, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History and Agency
Destiny
Social Differences and Social Change
Love and Responsibility
Russian Culture and Christianity
Summary
Analysis
East of Yuriatin, towns and villages line the old imperial highway, which for centuries was the only means of transport to Siberia. All along the highway the Bolsheviks have been deposed, replaced first by the Provisional Government and now by Admiral Kolchak’s dictatorship. The road leads directly to the Vozdvizhensky Monastery and the town of Krestovozdvizhensk. Nightfall finds the shopkeeper Galuzina slips out of church, worrying that her son Teresha will be conscripted. Galuzina pines for better days and like her husband Vlasushka blames Jewish people for Russia’s condition. A nearby building houses several Jewish businesses, including a photography studio with a laboratory shed in the back yard. A dog barking in the yard interrupts Galuzina’s reflections and she mutters angrily about “the cabal” and their nighttime activities.
Russian expansion eastward into Siberia happened in two stages, first in early colonization by road and by boat, and then the building of modern railroads, which were still relatively new at the time of the civil war. While modern, industrial cities developed on the railroads, the highway is lined with much older and smaller cities which give Siberia its provincial character. The antisemitic Galuzins are paradigmatic examples of this ignorant small-town elite who blame Jewish conspiracies for all their problems, even though the only Jewish people they know are shopkeepers like them. By this point in the war the Whites are no longer nominally democratic, with the liberal coalition replaced by a military dictatorship led by extreme right monarchists.
Themes
Inside the shed, a clandestine meeting is taking place. In attendance are Liberius, Tiverzin, Pavel Antipov, and the anarchist Vdovichenko, all of whom listen to a lecturer from the Central Committee: Kostoed-Amursky. The haughty Liberius treats Kostoed with scorn, prompting an argument until Vdovichenko derails the conversation with his own political concerns. At dawn the meeting is adjourned, and its members slip off one by one through a secret exit outside the town walls.
Coincidentally, Galuzina’s paranoid antisemitic delusions are in this case true, as the Jewish photographers host a secret Bolshevik meeting. Kostoed has reinvented himself as a committed Bolshevik, having proven his loyalty by refusing to escape. The demands of war force the Bolsheviks to cooperate with a broader political spectrum than usual, as the anarchist Vdovichenko joins them despite their political differences.
Themes
Farther along the highway, the town of Kuteiny Posad gives an Easter feast for newly conscripted White Army recruits. The local merchant Vlas Galuzin oversees the event, and he rises to give a speech. He rails against the Bolsheviks, describing them as agents of foreign capital who have stolen and sabotaged the revolution. His son Terenty is in the audience. Terenty and his friends are impressed by Galuzin’s speech, but they struggle to grasp the meaning of many of the words. Suddenly, an explosion in the adjacent village of Maly Ermolai interrupts the celebration. As White troops search for the culprit through the town and village, locals run and hide. Terenty hides in the crawl space under a hut, only to find many other young men already there. They narrowly avoid being caught but, unable to return lest the Whites suspect them, they decide to escape to the forest.
The White Army styles itself as the defender of Russia’s Christian identity and traditions against the atheist Bolsheviks, as the elaborate Easter feast suggests. Still, there is a dark irony to celebrating Christ’s rebirth before sending the young men present off to kill and be killed. Vlas Galuzin parrots a typical conspiratorial White argument, which claims that the Bolsheviks (who agreed to give up large swathes of territory in order to exit World War I) are in fact German agents. The cause of the explosion remains unclear, but the ensuing chaos reveals that the new recruits are more prisoners than volunteers, running from the White army at the first opportunity.
Themes
