A soviet was a form of workers’ council first formed during the 1905 Russian Revolution, which eventually came to form the basis of Bolshevik governance. Despite having been suppressed in 1905, the soviets—led by the Bolsheviks—successfully seized power in 1917. Life was soon reorganized along soviet lines, with district, city, and regional soviets replacing old forms of government, and the use of “soviet” as an adjective for the new regime—which would eventually become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR—and the people associated with it.
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The timeline below shows where the term Soviet appears in Doctor Zhivago. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 6: The Moscow Encampment
...is now committed to the revolution and urges Yuri to accompany her to the local soviet. Yuri , moved by the conversation, explains his theory of the revolution as a powerful,...
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...have taken control of Petersburg. Yuri stands in a vestibule to read the decree establishing soviet power in Russia and sees a mysterious young man in Siberian clothes with a vaguely...
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...order to evict them and use the building as a guest house for the district soviet. Yuri is introduced to none other than Galliulin’s mother—he is in the Tiverzins’ old building,...
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Part 7: On the Way
...attacked by commander Strelnikov’s armored train in retaliation for the peasants’ refusal to submit to Soviet power and supply the Red Army with horses and recruits.
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...White sympathizers. Yuri denies this but concedes that his letters of recommendation as a loyal Soviet citizen are exaggerated. He refuses to justify himself, and he instead asks Strelnikov to let...
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Part 16: Epilogue
...how his fiancée sacrificed herself to blow up a fortified German position, allowing the other Soviet soldiers to retake the town. Their units are both under the command of Evgraf Zhivago,...
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