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Part 7: On the Way
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
The Zhivagos soon notice the difference between the Urals and Moscow; the social world here is smaller and more intimate while the rules and institutions are less rigid. Yuri returns to the train expecting his family to be surprised and relieved, only to discover that the sentries have kept them fully informed about his detainment. Tonya introduces Yuri to a new passenger, Anfim Efimovich Samdevyatov. Samdevyatov asks Yuri about his meeting with Strelnikov and tells the doctor that the Red Army commander is a quintessential Muscovite, very unlike the locals, though Samdevyatov is a Bolshevik himself. Tonya asks Samdevyatov if he knows Lara Antipova, but Yuri keeps silent. The Zhivagos are unable to enter Yuriatin because of the ongoing fighting, but luckily their train is rerouted around the city by exactly the right route to Varykino.
During the time of the civil war, Siberian cities were significantly smaller than Moscow and Petersburg and prided themselves on having a more intimate, small-town culture. In Yuriatin, unlike back home, the mechanisms of power still operate mostly through personal connections rather than abstract institutions, a difference that is evident both in the rumors that get back to Tonya and the quick friendship the family strikes up with their new protector Samdevyatov. The coincidences continue to stack up in the Zhivagos’ favor, as Samdevyatov helps them continue onward to Varykino.
Themes
Samdevyatov points out the landmarks of burning, bombed-out Yuriatin in the distance. He tells Yuri that he recognized Tonya’s resemblance to her grandfather at once. Yuri struggles to square Samdevyatov’s irreverent character with his commitment to Marxism. Samdevyatov prepares to disembark and warns the Zhivagos that their stop is next. He explains that he travels the countryside as a lawyer, mostly settling property deals (despite their legal abolition). He is confident that the family can depend on Mikulitsyn to help them.
Yuri’s concerns that Tonya’s family history in Yuriatin will frustrate the family’s plan to keep a low profile is proven true almost immediately, as the family likeness exposes her, though luckily only to the friendly Samdevyatov—so far. Samdevyatov’s character confuses Yuri because a dedicated Marxist should not continue to dabble in now-abolished property law. Out here in the Urals, however, the hard rules and political purism of the capital no longer applies.
Themes
Mikulitsyn, Samdevyatov explains, was exiled to Yuriatin as a young man and married the oldest of the Tuntsevas, four local sisters. Mikulitsyn’s son, the strangely named Liberius, ran off to the war as a teenager and is now the commander of the Forest Brotherhood, a Red Army partisan unit. Mikulitsyn’s first wife died and he remarried a much younger woman, the bookish and insecure Elena Proklovna. Mikulitsyn and his son are now political opponents, as the father was elected to the Constituent Assembly as a member of the Socialist Revolutionary party. Mikulitsyn’s sisters-in-law still live in Yuriatin: Avdotya works in the library, Glafira in various trades, and Simushka is a Christian mystic. Samdevyatov finishes his story as they reach his stop, then he disembarks. Tonya is confident that they have found a friend and ally, but Yuri remains apprehensive about their arrival in Varykino.
Mikulitsyn is an example of yet another kind of old revolutionary, the liberal socialist. Before and during the 1905 Revolution, the Russian left encompassed a diverse political spectrum that gradually coalesced into opposing groups, with the Bolsheviks emerging as the dominant group in 1917. Mikulitsyn’s election to the Constituent Assembly (the parliament) as a Socialist Revolutionary—the largest left party in the Provisional Government, which was later banned by the Bolsheviks—immediately marks him as politically suspect if not necessarily an outright enemy of the Reds. This puts him sharply at odds with his partisan son, Liberius.
Themes
The Zhivagos reach their stop and finally leave the train. Alone at the station, they are stunned by the total silence. The stationmaster comes out to meet them and arrives a cart to transport them to Varykino. The cart driver, Vakkh, uncannily resembles a favorite childhood figure of Anna Ivanovna’s, though Yuri is more interested in the man’s rustic manner of speech. As they approach the Mikulitsyns’ the Zhivagos hear gunshots, but Vakkh explains that it’s just Mikulitsyn scaring off wolves. The cart enters the Mikulitsyns’ yard just as the couple returns home, instantly rousing Mikulitsyn’s ire. He rages against the Zhivagos’ imposition. Mikulitsyn, already disenchanted with a revolution far more radical than he ever expected, sees the arrival of his former landlord’s family to be a cruel joke of fate. Nevertheless he invites the Zhivagos inside and treats their presence and his own hospitality as a foregone conclusion.
Vakkh represents a kind of picturesque, folkloric Russian peasant lifestyle that the Zhivagos, as elite city dwellers, know only from childhood stories and literature. This peasant world is, as Yuri’s ethnographic curiosity suggests, almost entirely foreign to Muscovites, with Vakkh speaking almost another dialect entirely. Samdevyatov’s characterization of Mikulitsyn proves entirely correct, as the former estate manager’s sense of responsibility to others exceeds his own drive for self-preservation. The civil war is a time of a radical exception, leading people to commit both acts of great cruelty and great generosity, depending on their character and circumstances.
Themes
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The Zhivagos settle in for their first night in the countryside. Yuri is already planning ahead and discusses with Tonya how they will renovate the building Mikulitsyn will settle them in and what food they will grow for the coming winter. The Mikulitsyns, they decide, are basically kind and trustworthy people, although Elena Proklovna does indeed aggressively quiz and question them in an attempt to show off her supposedly superior education and wit. Yuri asks Elena Proklovna how she became such an expert in physics, one of her preferred lines of questioning, and she tells him that she was taught by a highly regarded local teacher, Antipov. Antipov volunteered for the war and was killed, she says, though rumors circulate that he is none other than Strelnikov himself.
After the heady political chaos of revolutionary Moscow, Yuri and the Zhivagos are excited to live a simple life of self-sufficiency and isolation in the countryside, which provides them with yet another opportunity for rewardingly straightforward manual labor. They are also lucky to have found the Mikulitsyns, without whose generosity they would not be able to build their new life in Varykino. Yuri’s conversation with Elena Proklovna provides yet more evidence that Strelnikov is indeed Antipov, a rumor that Yuri—not having all the reader’s knowledge—is still not prepared to believe.
Themes
