Doctor Zhivago

NOTES

The notes that follow are indebted to the commentaries by E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak in volume 4 of the Complete Collected Works in eleven volumes published by Slovo (Moscow, 2004). Biblical quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from the Revised Standard Version.

Book One

PART ONE

1. Memory Eternal: The chanted prayer of “Memory Eternal” (Vechnaya Pamyat), asking God to remember the deceased, concludes the Orthodox funeral or memorial service (panikhida) and the burial service. Pasternak places it here to introduce the central theme of the novel. Psalm 24:1 (“The earth is the Lord’s …”) and the prayer “With the souls of the righteous dead, give rest, O Savior, to the soul of thy servant” come at the end of the burial service.

2. The Protection: Dating events by church feasts was customary in Russia (as elsewhere) until the early twentieth century, and even later. Pasternak alternates throughout the novel between civil and religious calendars. The feast of the Protective Veil (or Protection) of the Mother of God falls on October 1. The Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian state until 1917, followed the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, which have a difference of thirteen days between them. Thus October 1 by the Julian calendar is October 14 by the Gregorian calendar, and the October revolution of 1917 actually broke out on November 7.

3. The Kazan Mother of God: This feast, which commemorates the miracle-working icon of the Virgin found in Kazan in 1579, is celebrated on July 8/21.

4. zemstvo: A local council for self-government introduced by the reforms of the emperor Alexander II in 1864.

5. Tolstoyism and revolution: “Tolstoyism,” an anti-state, anti-church, egalitarian social doctrine of the kingdom of God on earth, to be achieved by means of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, was developed in the polemical writings of Leo Tolstoy and his disciples in the last decades of the nineteenth century. A number of revolutionary movements appeared during the same period in Russia, some more or less Marxist, others populist.

6. Soloviev: Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900) was a poet, philosopher, and literary critic. His work, of major importance in itself, also exerted a strong influence on the poetry of the Russian symbolists and the thinkers of the religious-philosophical revival in the early twentieth century.

7. the capitals: The old capital of Russia was Moscow; St. Petersburg, founded by the emperor Peter the Great in 1703, became the new capital and remained so until the 1917 revolution. Exclusion from both capitals was a disciplinary measure taken against untrustworthy intellectuals under the old regime and again under Stalin.

PART TWO

1. The war with Japan …: The Russo-Japanese War (February 10, 1904—September 5, 1905), fought for control of Manchuria and the seas around Korea and Japan, ended in the unexpected defeat of Russia at the hands of the Japanese. The Russian situation was made more difficult by increasing social unrest within the country. On January 22, 1905, which came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” the Orthodox priest Gapon led a large but peaceful procession to the imperial palace in Petersburg to present a petition asking for reforms in the government. The procession was fired upon and many people were killed. Further disturbances then sprang up all across the country and spread to the armed forces. In August 1905 the emperor Nicholas II allowed the formation of a State Duma (national assembly). But the Duma’s powers were so limited that it satisfied none of the protesting parties, and in October came a general strike, as a result of which the emperor was forced to sign the so-called October Manifesto, which laid the foundations for a constitutional monarchy. This satisfied the Constitutional Democratic (CD) Party and other liberals, but not the more radical parties.

2. Yusupka … Kasimov bride: It was common until recently for Tartars like Gimazetdin Galiullin to work as yard porters in Russian apartment blocks. Gimazetdin’s son Osip (Yusupka) will play an important role later on. The Kasimov Bride (1879) is a historical novel by Vsevolod Soloviev (1849–1903), brother of the philosopher (see part 1, note 6). In the fifteenth century, the town of Kasimov, now in Riazan province, was the capital of the Kasimov Tartar kingdom.

3. Wafangkou: At the battle of Wafangkou (June 14–15, 1904), the Russian forces of General Stackelberg, who was attempting to relieve Port Arthur, were roundly defeated by the Japanese under General Oku.

4. Your dear … boy: An altered quotation from Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades (1890), with a libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the story by Alexander Pushkin.

5. a manifesto: The October Manifesto of 1905 (see note 1 above).

6. a papakha: A tall hat, usually of lambskin and often with a flat top, originating in the Caucasus.

7. Gorky … Witte: Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), a major figure in Russian literature and in the radical politics of the time, was one of a group of writers who wrote to inform the chairman of the council of ministers, Count Sergei Witte (1849–1915), of the peaceful character of Father Gapon’s demonstration on January 22, 1905 (see note 1 above). Witte, who brilliantly negotiated the peace with Japan in September 1905, was also the author of the October Manifesto.

8. The Meaning … Sonata: Leo Tolstoy’s story The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), a study of sensuality and jealousy, is a violent attack on the relations between the sexes in modern society. The Meaning of Love (1892–94), by the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (see part 1, note 6), is an affirmation of the physical-spiritual union of sexual love.

9. fauns … ‘let’s be like the sun’: Vyvolochnov refers to some of the favorite motifs in fin de siècle poetry and book design. One such book was Let’s Be Like the Sun (1903), the best-known work of the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942).

10. Lev Nikolaevich … Dostoevsky: In his polemical treatise What Is Art?, Tolstoy (Lev Nikolaevich, i.e., Leo) attacks the “all-confusing concept of beauty” in art, and replaces it with the notion of “the good.” The phrase “Beauty will save the world” is commonly but wrongly ascribed to Dostoevsky. In fact, it comes from Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (1868), where it is attributed to the hero, Prince Myshkin, by Aglaya Epanchina. Vassily Rozanov (1856–1919), philosopher, diarist, and critic, was one of the major figures of the period leading up to the revolution. He was deeply influenced by Dostoevsky.

11. Faust … Hesiod’s hexameters: Faust, a monumental cosmic drama in two parts, is considered the masterwork of the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Part 1 was published in 1808 and part 2 in 1832. Pasternak translated the two parts of Faust between 1948 and 1953, in alternation with his work on Zhivago. The ancient Greek poet Hesiod, author of Works and Days and The Theogony, is thought to have lived in the later eighth century BC.

12. Katerina’s in The Storm: The Russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky (1823–1886) wrote and staged his play The Storm in 1859. The heroine Katerina says, in a famous monologue in act 5, scene 4, “Where to go now? Home? No, whether home or the grave, it’s all the same to me.”

13. The psalm: Psalm 103, which opens with the words quoted here, is sung as the first of three antiphons at the start of the Orthodox liturgy.

14. the nine beatitudes: The beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3–12) are sung as the third antiphon of the Orthodox liturgy.

15. Presnya days: The armed riots of workers in the Presnya district of Moscow during December were the last incidents of the 1905 revolution.

16. bashlyks: A bashlyk is a hood of Tartar origin with long tails that can be tied around the neck like a scarf.

17. The Woman or the Vase: The title of a painting by G. I. Semiradsky (1843–1902), which depicts a market in ancient Rome, where a customer is trying to decide whether to buy a slave woman or a costly vase.

18. dacha: The word dacha, in its broadest sense, refers to a country dwelling, which can be anything from a rented room in a cottage, to a privately owned country house, to a complex of buildings as significant as the Krüger estate referred to here.

19. Theosophist: The spiritual teaching known as Theosophy (“God-wisdom”), first propounded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), is an esoteric doctrine of human perfectibility through communion with a “Spiritual Hierarchy” drawn from all of the world’s religions. It was especially popular in intellectual circles during the later nineteenth century, in Russia, Europe, and the United States.

20. Cui’s nephew: César Cui (1835–1918), Russian composer, was one of a group of composers known as “the Five” or “the Mighty Little Bunch” (Moguchaya Kuchka), the other four being Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin.

PART THREE

1. “Askold’s grave” … Oleg’s steed: The actual grave is said to be the burial place of the Kievan prince Askold, still to be seen on the steep bank of the river Dnieper. Askold was killed in 882 by Oleg, the successor to Rurik, founder of the first dynasty of Russian rulers. These events were the subject of an opera composed by Alexei Verstovsky (1799–1862). It was predicted that Oleg’s death would be caused by his favorite horse. As it turned out, he died from the bite of a snake that hid in the skull of his horse long after its death.

2. John the Theologian: St. John, the author of the fourth Gospel, known as John the Theologian in Orthodox tradition, was also the author of the book of Revelation, from which Zhivago quotes (“and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more,” Revelation 21:4).

3. vodka and pancakes …: In the week before the beginning of the Great Lent, the forty-day fast period preceding Holy Week and Easter, it is the Russian custom to eat pancakes (bliny) with all sorts of fish and cream toppings, accompanied by vodka.

4. Egyptian expedition … Fréjus: The ultimately unsuccessful expedition of the French army in Egypt lasted from 1798 to 1801, but Napoleon led it only until August of 1799, when news of unrest in Paris drew him back to the capital. He landed at the port of Fréjus in the south of France on October 9, 1799, and a month later led a bloodless coup against the then-ruling Directoire and set up the Consulat, with himself as first consul.

5. Blok: Alexander Blok (1880–1921), one of the greatest Russian poets, was a leader of the symbolist movement. In an autobiographical sketch written near the end of his life, Pasternak noted: “A number of writers of my age as well as myself went through the years of our youth with Blok as our guide” (I Remember, translated by David Magarshack, New York, 1959). Blok is an important presence in Doctor Zhivago, where he is referred to a number of times.

6. panikhidas: See part 1, note 1. During the prayers over a dead person before burial, the panikhida may be repeated several times.

7. “Holy God … have mercy on us”: This prayer, known as the trisagion, is sung repeatedly after the funeral service as the coffin is carried out.

PART FOUR

1. Erfurt Program … Plekhanov: The Erfurt Program was a plan of action adopted by the German Social Democratic Party at its conference in Erfurt in 1891, based on a simplified or “vulgar” Marxist analysis. Presented a year later in The Class Struggle, by Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), one of the authors of the program, it became widely influential in the years before the 1917 revolution. Georgi Plekhanov (1857–1918), revolutionary activist and Marxist theorist, was one of the founders of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. At the second party conference in 1903, Plekhanov broke with Lenin, who headed the Bolsheviks (“Majority”), and joined the Mensheviks (“Minority”), who tended to be more moderate.

2. mad Gretchen: In the first part of Goethe’s Faust (see part 2, note 11), Faust sees the young Gretchen (Margarete) in the street and asks Mephistopheles to procure her for him. Gretchen’s purity makes the task difficult, but Faust succeeds in the end. Gretchen becomes pregnant, drowns her baby, is condemned to death, and awaits execution in prison, where Faust sees her for a last time.

3. Eruslan Lazarevich: A hero of so-called lubok literature. A lubok is a folk woodcut or steel engraving, a form of broadside combining illustrations and text, produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and later.

4. the Gypsy Panina: Varya Panina (1872–1911) was a famous Gypsy singer, whose voice had great depth and musicality. She began singing in Moscow restaurants and gave her first public concert, which was a huge success, in 1902, at the Hall of the Nobility in Petersburg. Alexander Blok called her “the celestial Varya Panina.” The words “led under the golden crown” refer to the Orthodox wedding service, during which the bride and groom stand under crowns held by their attendants.

5. second autumn … action: The Eighth Army under General Alexei Brusilov (1853–1926) had occupied Galicia in 1914, but had been forced to withdraw during a general retreat. In 1915, the Eighth Army entered the Carpathians and moved towards Hungary, but again was forced to withdraw due to circumstances elsewhere.

6. the Lutsk operation: Also known as the “Brusilov Offensive,” this was the liberation of the city of Lutsk, in northwest Ukraine, by four Russian armies under the command of General Brusilov on June 4–7, 1916.

7. Krestovozdvizhensky Hospital: The hospital is named for the feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross (Krestovozdvizhenie), which falls on September 14/27 and commemorates the finding of the true cross in Jerusalem by the empress Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, in AD 326. Hospitals in Russia before the revolution were often named for church feasts.

8. friend Horatio: Cf. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, act 1, scene 5, lines 165–66: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” After an abandoned earlier attempt in 1923–24, Pasternak translated Hamlet in 1939 at the request of the famous director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Meyerhold was arrested and shot before he could produce the play. A production in 1943 at the Moscow Art Theater was canceled owing to the death of the director, the venerable Nemirovich-Danchenko, and the first performance finally took place in 1954, at the Pushkin Theater in Leningrad. Pasternak’s work on the play over the years (there were twelve versions among his papers) left a deep mark on Doctor Zhivago. In his essay “Translating Shakespeare,” Pasternak wrote: “From the moment of the ghost’s appearance, Hamlet gives up his will in order to ‘do the will of him that sent him.’ Hamlet is not a drama of weakness, but of duty and self-denial … What is important is that chance has allotted Hamlet the role of judge of his own time and servant of the future” (translated by Manya Harari, in I Remember, New York, 1959).

9. Brusilov … on the offensive: See note 6 above.

10. St. Tatiana’s committee: A benevolent association formed at the beginning of the war, under the honorary chairmanship of the grand duchess Tatiana Konstantinovna Romanova, to aid those at the front and the families of the wounded or dead.

11. Wilhelm: Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941) ruled as the last German emperor and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, when he was forced to abdicate.

12. Dahl: Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl (1801–1872) was an eminent Russian lexicographer, compiler of the four-volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Great Russian Language (1863–1866). He was a proponent of native as opposed to imported vocabulary.

13. equal before God: A reference to Paul’s epistle to the Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

PART FIVE

1. black earth region: The region of rich black soil (chernozem) extending from the northeast Ukraine across southern Russia.

2. Provisional Government: When the February revolution of 1917 (February 23–27/March 8–12) brought about the abdication of Nicholas II and the end of imperial Russia, a provisional government was created, composed of an alliance of non-Communist liberal and socialist parties headed by Prince Georgi Lvov (1861–1925), who was a Constitutional Democrat. In July 1917, Prince Lvov was replaced by the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970). The intent of the Provisional Government was to create a democratically elected executive and assembly, but its program was opposed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and in October 1917 the Provisional Government was brought down by the Bolshevik revolution.

3. the Time of Troubles: The period in Russian history from the death of the last representative of Rurik’s dynasty, the tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, in 1598, to the election in 1613 of the tsar Mikhail Romanov (1596–1645), founder of the new dynasty. The government was taken over by Boris Godunov (1551–1605), brother-in-law and chief adviser to the late tsar. His rule, from 1598 to 1603, was a time of great unrest, famine, factional struggles, international conspiracies, and false claims to the throne.

4. Raspou … Trease: As the author has just said, Mlle Fleury swallows the endings of Russian words, including in this case the name of Grigory Rasputin (1869–1916), a bizarre holy man who attached himself to the imperial family, and the word “treason.”

5. death penalty was reinstated: Among the first acts of the Provisional Government (see note 2 above) was the abolition of the death penalty. But in July 1917, owing to difficulties in the continuing war with Germany and the problem of mass desertions, special military courts were established and the death penalty was reinstated. It was abolished again by the Bolsheviks, and again quickly reinstated.

6. Pechorin-like: Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, the protagonist of the novel A Hero of Our Time (1839–1841), by Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841), is a world-weary, cynical, coldhearted, but also courageous, sensitive, and melancholic army officer.

7. State Duma: See part 2, note 1. The Fourth Duma sat from 1912 to 1917. During the February revolution, it sent a commission of representatives to replace the imperial ministers, leading to the creation of the Provisional Government (see note 2 above).

8. People’s Will Schlüsselburgers: People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya) was a revolutionary terrorist organization of the later nineteenth century, responsible among other things for the assassination of the emperor Alexander II in 1881. Their program was non-Marxist, aimed at a peasant revolution bypassing capitalism. Some of its members, released from prison in the early twentieth century, helped to form the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party. The Schlüsselburg Fortress, on the Neva near Lake Ladoga, was used as a political prison.

9. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks: See part 4, note 1.

10. Balaam: The story of Balaam and his ass is told in Numbers 22:21–35. The Moabite prophet Balaam fails to see the angel of God barring his way, but his she-ass does see the angel and finally cries out to warn him.

11. Lot’s wife: Ustinya has confused the story of Balaam with the story of Lot, who was saved by the Lord when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, but whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the cities (Genesis 19:1–26).

12. the land question: One of the major questions facing the Provisional Government was the redistribution and continued cultivation of land seized from the former landowners, made especially urgent by the decline in farm production during the war years. In May 1917, Izvestia, the newspaper of the Petrograd Soviet, expressing Menshevik and SR views, published a lead article headlined “All land to the people.”

13. the accursed questions: Dostoevsky coined this phrase (prokliatye voprosy) for the ultimate questions of human existence—the nature of man, the existence of God, the problem of evil, the meaning of life, the riddle of death—“the great Russian questions,” as Nicolà Chiaromonte called them, which Pasternak raises again in Doctor Zhivago, “when it seemed that history … had suppressed them forever” (“Pasternak’s Message,” in Pasternak: Modern Judgements, edited by Donald Davie and Angela Livingstone, Nashville and London, 1970).

14. in Paul … “interpretation”: The reference is to Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians 14:5 and 13: “Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy … Therefore, he who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to interpret.”

15. Petenka Verkhovensky … the Futurists: Pyotr (“Petenka”) Verkhovensky is the young radical organizer, theorist, and mystificator in Dostoevsky’s novel Demons (1872), who came to signify the empty babbler and demagogue. The Russian Futurists were a group of poets and artists who embraced the ideas of the Italian writer F. T. Marinetti (1876–1944) in his Futurist Manifesto of 1908 and shared his enthusiasm for dynamism, speed, and machines. In 1912, David Burlyuk, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and others issued their own manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.

16. mushroom rain: A warm rain with sunshine that is thought to encourage the growth of mushrooms.

PART SIX

1. annexates and contributses: “Annexations” and “contributions” were controversial terms in discussions of the Brest-Litovsk treaty of March 1918 between the new Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and Germany, Austria, and Turkey, ending Russia’s participation in World War I. The Russian negotiators, headed by Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein, 1879–1940), wanted no annexations of Russian territory and no payments of war reparations, but eventually agreed to both. The treaty was broken eight and a half months later.

2. Saint-Just: Louis de Saint-Just (1767–1794) was a French revolutionary and a close associate of Robespierre, with whom he was executed on 9 Thermidor (July 17, 1794), bringing an end to the Reign of Terror.

3. War and Peace … The Backbone Flute: These and Man, mentioned a little later, are titles of books of poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) published during the years of the war and the revolution. Pasternak had great admiration for these early poems and for their author.

4. Ippolit … The Adolescent: Ippolit is the consumptive rebel in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Raskolnikov is the hero of Crime and Punishment; the first-person narrator-hero of The Adolescent is Arkady Dolgoruky. They are all rootless young intellectuals in great inner turmoil.

5. Mme Roland’s before the Convention: Manon Roland (1754–1793), an ardent republican and admirer of Plutarch, kept a salon in Paris that had considerable political influence and was frequented mainly by the party of the Girondins, who opposed the violent measures of the Montagnards. She was executed along with other Girondins on October 31, 1793. Her Memoirs are an important record of the time. The revolutionary National Convention governed France from September 1792 to October 1795.

6. two left SR names: That is, the names of two left-leaning members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (see part 5, note 8). The pseudonyms themselves are absurd, as was often the case at that time.

7. to a victorious conclusion: A watchword of Kerensky and the Provisional Government, who pledged to continue the war with Germany after the February revolution. The more radicalized workers and armed forces were aligned with the Bolsheviks in opposing the war.

8. Antaeus … an old Bestuzhevist: The mythological giant Antaeus kept his immense strength as long as he touched the earth. Hercules, who was unable to defeat him by throwing him to the ground, discovered his secret, held him up in the air, and crushed him to death. The historian Konstantin Bestuzhev-Riumin founded the St. Petersburg Higher Women’s Courses, which opened in 1878 and were named for their director. This was the first institution of higher education for women in Russia.

9. the days following the Dormition: The feast of the Dormition (in the West the Assumption) of the Mother of God falls on August 15/28, which in Russia is already the beginning of autumn.

10. Hegel and Benedetto Croce: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a philosophical idealist and the creator of an integral philosophical system that was of great influence on nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought. Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) was an Italian philosopher and critic, an idealist deeply influenced by Hegel, and politically a liberal.

11. the October fighting: That is, the outbreak of the October revolution of 1917 (see part 1, note 2, and part 5, note 2).

12. the time of the civil war: The Russian Civil War (1918–1923) broke out after the Bolsheviks assumed power and withdrew from the alliance opposed to the Central Powers in World War I. The Red Army was confronted by various forces from the former empire, known collectively as the White Army, made up of army officers, cadets, landowners, and foreign forces opposed to the revolution. The main White leaders were Generals Yudenich, Denikin, and Wrangel and Admiral Kolchak. Their units fought not only with the Red Army, but also with the Ukrainian nationalist Green Army and the Ukrainian anarchist Black Army led by General Nestor Makhno. The Whites eventually lost on all fronts, and the major fighting ended in 1922 with the Red Army’s capture of Vladivostok, though the last pocket of White resistance in the Far East capitulated only in June 1923. The events of the civil war form the backdrop of most of book 2 of Doctor Zhivago.

13. Mary Magdalene: One of the followers of Jesus, and, according to all four Gospels, the first or one of the first to see him after his resurrection (Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–10; Luke 24:1–11; John 20:1–18).

PART SEVEN

1. coupons … distribution center: As a result of the acute shortages that followed the war and the revolution, the authorities of the first socialist republic created closed stores where the privileged could obtain supplies in exchange for special coupons. The practice continued throughout the Soviet period.

2. kerenki: A nickname for banknotes issued by the Provisional Government in 1917 and by the Russian state bank until 1919, from the name of Alexander Kerensky (see part 5, note 2).

3. labor conscripts from Petrograd: By a decree issued in December 1918, all able-bodied citizens of the RSFSR were obliged to work on state construction projects. The name of St. Petersburg was changed to Petrograd in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. In 1924 it became Leningrad, and in 1991 it became St. Petersburg again.

4. stormy petrels: In 1901, Maxim Gorky (see part 2, note 7) published a poem entitled “The Song of the Stormy Petrel,” in which the petrel symbolizes the working class as a revolutionary force. He was arrested for publishing it but soon set free. The poem, which was one of Lenin’s favorites, became a battle song of the revolution.

5. Pugachevism … Pushkin’s perception … Aksakovian: Emelian Pugachev (1742–1775) was a Don Cossack who led a rebellion in 1773–1774, claiming the throne under the pretense that he was the tsar Peter III. Alexander Pushkin wrote The History of Pugachev (1834) and a fictional treatment of the same events in his short novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836). The Aksakov family, the father Sergei (1791–1859) and his two sons, Konstantin (1817–1860) and Ivan (1823–1886), were writers belonging to the group known as Slavophiles, who favored the native and local traditions of Russian life as opposed to Western influences. Sergei Aksakov, who was born in Ufa, the capital of Bashkiria, over a thousand miles east of Moscow on the border of Asia, gives a detailed description of Russian patriarchal life, hunting, fishing, flora, and fauna in his Family Chronicle (1856).

6. kulaks: The word kulak, Russian for “fist,” was a derogatory name applied to well-off peasants who owned their own land, a group that emerged after the agricultural reforms of 1906. The Bolsheviks declared them the “class enemy” of poor peasants and subjected them to various forms of persecution and extermination.

7. ataman: A general title given to Ukrainian military leaders, related to the word hetman, and possibly derived from the German Hauptmann. During the Russian Civil War it was used as a title for various Cossack leaders and acquired a negative tone.

8. the Greens: See part 6, note 12.

9. the Cheka: An abbreviation of the Russian words for Extraordinary Commission (the full title was All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage), the first Soviet state security organization (secret police), founded in December 1917 and headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, known as “Iron Felix” (1877–1926). By 1921 the Cheka numbered 200,000 men. In 1922 it became the GPU (State Political Administration).

Book Two

PART EIGHT

1. St. Akulina’s day: St. Aquilina of Byblos (281–293), martyred during the reign of Diocletian, is commemorated on April 7/20.

2. a Social Democrat: See part 4, note 1.

3. the Demidovs: The family of the Demidovs was one of the most distinguished in Russia, second only to the imperial family in wealth and known for its philanthropy. Anatoli Nikolaevich Demidov (1813–1870) acquired the Italian title of Prince of San Donato and built a villa in Florence.

4. Blessed is the man …: The first half of the sentence is from the opening of Psalm 1 (“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked …”); the rest is a jocular rhyme.

5. Suvorov: Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov (1729–1800) was reputed never to have lost a battle. He was only the fourth man in Russian history to be awarded the highest rank, that of generalissimo. The fifth and last was Joseph Stalin.

6. SR … Constituent Assembly: On November 12, 1917, an All-Russian Constituent Assembly was democratically elected to draw up a constitution for Russia. The SR Party won a large majority of the seats, almost twice as many as the Bolsheviks. After meeting for one day on January 5, 1918, the assembly was dissolved on orders from Lenin.

7. our White-Stoned Mother: Moscow was known endearingly as “the White-Stoned Mother” of the Russian people, because of the white stone used in building the churches of the Kremlin.

8. Hebrew youths … Mazeppa: The book of Daniel 3:8–30 tells the story of the three Hebrew men thrown into the fiery furnace by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar for refusing to worship his golden idol. Mazeppa (1644–1709) was a hetman of the Cossacks in the Ukraine, who first served Peter the Great and then joined the Swedes against him. The name came to be a general derogatory epithet.

9. the dark waters … secrecy: The phrases and rhythms are loosely based on Psalm 18:11: “He made darkness his covering around him, his canopy thick clouds dark with water.”

10. the year of Griboedov’s death: Alexander Griboedov (b. 1795), Russian poet, playwright, and diplomat, author of the verse comedy Woe from Wit, was killed on February 11, 1829, while on an official mission to Persia.

PART NINE

1. Tyutchev: Pasternak felt a strong affinity with the work of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–1873), whose poem “The Summer of 1854” Zhivago slightly misquotes from memory.

2. Dostoevsky’s Demons … the Communist Manifesto: Dostoevsky’s 1872 novel was, among other things, a forceful attack on the radicals and nihilists of the later nineteenth century. The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and published in 1848, set forth the revolutionary program of the German Communist League.

3. Pray fervently … he is her glory: The first words come from an Orthodox prayer to the Mother of God; the rest are from the Song of the Mother of God (the Magnificat), Luke 1:46–55.

4. Arzamas … adolescent: Arzamas was a literary society formed by a group of friends in Petersburg in 1815, which the young Pushkin, who was then fifteen himself, soon joined. From 1821 to 1823, he lived mainly in Kishinev, the capital of the recently annexed Bessarabia, where he was in military service.

5. Nekrasov: Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–1877), the major poet of the “prose age” of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, was a man of radical leanings and deep social conscience. His best work often captures the style of the folk song.

6. I am a bourgeois … my fine self: Zhivago refers to Pushkin’s poem “My Genealogy” (1830), where the words “I am a bourgeois” are repeated as a refrain. The second passage is from stanza 18 of “Onegin’s Journey,” a section that Pushkin later cut from his novel in verse Evgeny Onegin (1823–1830).

7. Nightingale the Robber: A monstrous figure, part bird, part man, who appears in the medieval Russian epic Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber, from which Zhivago proceeds to quote.

8. In Turgenev somewhere: Turgenev’s late collection, Literary Reminiscences (1874), includes a piece entitled “About Nightingales.”

9. Chekhovian schoolboys …: In an early story, “Boys,” Chekhov describes the scheme of two schoolboys to run off to America and become Indians.

10. My soul … sleeping: The words, which Pasternak gives in Church Slavonic, come from the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete (650–712), an Orthodox penitential canon sung during the Great Lent (see part 3, note 3).

PART TEN

1. Kolchak: Admiral Alexander Kolchak (1874–1920) supported the Provisional Government after the February revolution and opposed the Bolsheviks. In 1918 he became a member of the Siberian Regional Government (White), and when it was overthrown by a military coup, he was appointed head of state with dictatorial powers and given the title of Supreme Ruler. Kolchak’s brutal repressions and mass executions aroused dislike even among potential allies, including the Czech Legion, the British, and the Americans. When the Regional Government was taken over by a pro-Bolshevik faction, Kolchak was condemned and executed, despite orders to the contrary from Moscow.

2. Vozdvizhensky Monastery … Great Lent: The monastery, like the town and the hospital earlier, is named for the feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross (see part 4, note 7). The words quoted are the start of one of the hymns of the feast. Holy Week follows the forty days of the Great Lent and leads to Easter.

3. church time: The time of day in the church is reckoned as in Jewish practice, the day starting at nightfall (6:00 p.m.).

4. Holy Thursday … the Twelve Gospels: Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper and the betrayal and arrest of Jesus. On the night of Holy Thursday, the matins of Holy Friday are served, including a reading of twelve composite passages from the four Gospels describing the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.

5. Leibochka’s little tricks: In March 1918, Trotsky (see part 6, note 1) was made People’s Commissar for Army and Navy Affairs and Chairman of the Supreme Military Council—that is, the commander in chief of the Red Army at the start of the civil war. Galuzina uses the diminutive of Leib, Trotsky’s first name in Yiddish.

6. Kubarikha … Medvedikha … Zlydarikha: Fanciful nicknames suggestive, respectively, of a spinning top, a she-bear, and a wicked person.

7. Kirghiz and Buryat: Peoples from Central Asia. The Kirghiz, a Turkic people living in the area of the Tian Shan mountains, were brought under Soviet power in 1919. The Buryat are a northern Mongolic people who live in Siberia.

8. the former cooperative laborist: That is, a member of the Labor Group (Trudoviki) in the Duma, affiliated with the SR party and headed by Kerensky, part of whose program was the idea of cooperative farm labor.

9. Convention … Thermidorians: The French revolutionary National Convention, which sat from 1792 to 1795, held executive power during the First Republic, with Robespierre, Marat, and Danton among its prominent members and the Reign of Terror as its political means. It was brought down by the so-called Thermidorian reaction (see part 6, notes 2 and 5) and replaced by the Directoire.

10. kulichi … paschas: Foods traditionally eaten in celebration of Easter. A kulich is a tall, cylindrical cake, usually decorated with fruit and icing, and pascha is a molded sweet dish made from fresh white cheese, butter, sugar, eggs, and cream, with various dried fruits, nuts, and flavorings.

11. Many years: The prayer wishing a person “Many Years” is sung on name days or for congratulations on various occasions.

12. Miliukov: Pavel Miliukov (1859–1943), statesman and liberal historian, and a prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, was elected to the Duma, became a member of the Provisional Government after the February revolution, and served as foreign minister from March to May 1917. He was known to be a powerful orator.

13. the Black Hundred: The name of a counterrevolutionary movement in Russia, formed in 1900 from conservative intellectuals, officials, landowners, and clergy, with a reputation for being anti-Semitic and anti-Ukrainian. It grew weaker after 1907 and was finally abolished following the February revolution.

PART ELEVEN

1. Kappel’s formation: General Vladimir Kappel (1883–1920), who sided with the Constitutional Democratic Party after the February revolution, was put in command of the so-called Komuch White Army Group in 1918 (“Komuch” is an abbreviation of Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly). After the execution of Admiral Kolchak (see part 10, note 1), he commanded the remnants of the White Army in Siberia and led them in a retreat across the frozen Lake Baikal, an episode known as the Great Siberian Ice March. He died of frostbite.

2. the law on food requisitioning: In January 1919, a decree was issued calling for the requisitioning without compensation of what was described as “surplus agricultural produce.” The procedure was open to abuse and resulted in great unrest among the peasants, which was brutally suppressed.

3. Church Slavonic … Russian: The language of the Russian and some other Orthodox Churches is Church Slavonic. Ultimately derived from Middle Bulgarian, it differs from Russian, which leads to misunderstandings such as those that follow here. The lines quoted are from Psalm 91 in the King James Version.

4. Dukhobor community … Tolstoyism: The Dukhobors (meaning “Spirit-Fighters,” a name coined by their opponents) emerged as a Christian sect in Russia in the eighteenth century, but may go back further. They rejected the authority of state and church, the Bible as divine revelation, and the divinity of Christ, lived in egalitarian farming communities, and refused military service, for which they were repeatedly persecuted. Their beliefs are close to the teachings of Tolstoyism (see part 1, note 5), and in fact Tolstoy contributed money to their cause when they petitioned to move to western Canada in the late nineteenth century.

5. You are angry, Jupiter … the Moor can go: The saying about Jupiter, which is proverbial in Russia, comes from the Latin: Iuppiter iratus ergo nefas (“Jupiter is angry, therefore he is [it is] wrong”), which is attributed to Lucian of Samosata (ca. 125–180 AD). The phrase about the Moor, also proverbial, comes from The Conspiracy of Fiesco in Genoa (1783), a play by the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805).

6. Darwin met with Schelling: Charles Darwin (1809–1882) formulated the principle of natural selection in the process of biological evolution in his Origin of Species (1859). The German idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854), a friend and later a critic of Hegel, proposed the idea, in his Philosophy of Nature (Naturphilosophie, 1797), that the ideal springs from the real in a dynamic series of evolutionary processes. Zhivago’s thoughts thus unite naturalist and idealist notions of evolution.

7. Razin and Pugachev: Stepan (“Stenka”) Razin (1630–1671) was a Cossack who led a band of robbers in the late 1660s. He was joined by discontented peasants and non-Russian peoples like the Kalmyks and in 1670 went into open rebellion against the Russian state. After some successes, he was defeated and captured, and in 1671 he was executed in Moscow. For Pugachev, see part 7, note 5.

PART TWELVE

1. Oprichniki: An order of special troops organized by Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584), loyal to him alone, living on their own separate territory (the name comes from an old Russian word meaning “apart” or “separate”), and opposed to the traditional nobility (boyars). They were given unlimited power and used it ruthlessly. Their number increased from 1,000 in 1565 to 6,000 in 1572, when the tsar abolished the order.

2. a heretic witch from the Old Believers: The Old Believers, also known as Raskolniki (from the Russian word raskol, “schism”), separated themselves from the Russian Orthodox Church in protest against the reforms introduced by the patriarch Nikon in 1653. Women among the Old Believers sometimes took the role of “Mothers of God” or “Brides of Christ.”

3. A little hare … my beautiful one: According to the commentary of E. B. and E. V. Pasternak, this “folk song” is entirely the work of Pasternak himself.

4. Kolchak … Ivan Tsarevich: For Kolchak, see part 10, note 1. Ivan Tsarevich (“Ivan the Prince”) is a hero of Russian folktales, often the third of three sons, who struggles with Koshchei the Deathless, goes to catch the Firebird, and eventually marries the princess.

5. Or else, for instance … the Novgorod or the Ipatyev …: Kubarikha’s speech, as well as what she speaks about, is drawn from texts collected by Alexander Afanasiev (1826–1871) in his Poetic Notions of Nature Among the Slavs (1865–69). The Novgorod Chronicle, covering the years from 1016 to 1471, is the oldest record of the Novgorod Republic; the Ipatyev Chronicle contains material going back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is a major source for the early history of southern Russia.

6. the book of the living word: The verse comes from a hymn from the service for the Nativity of the Mother of God, but Kubarikha connects the Slavonic word zhivotnogo (“living”) with the Russian word zhivotnoe (“animal”) and applies it to the cow.

7. He cut down … Flenushka: Pasternak based the stories of the butchered man and of Pamphil Palykh on published accounts of partisan life during the war with Kolchak.

PART THIRTEEN

1. O Light … presence?: The first line of the fifth hymn of the canon in the eighth tone, sung at matins. Zhivago repeats it along with the second line a little further on.

2. the Gajda uprising: Radola Gajda (born Rudolf Geidl, 1892–1948) joined the Czech Legion in Russia in 1917. During their evacuation across Siberia in 1918, violence broke out between the Czechs and the Bolsheviks, and Gajda and his troops combined with Kolchak’s forces, but in July 1919, after a falling out with Kolchak, he was dismissed. He then involved himself in a mutiny of SRs, which came to be known by his name, and when it failed, he escaped from Siberia and made his way back to Czechoslovakia, where he later took up the cause of fascism.

3. Romeo and Juliet: The words are spoken by Romeo in his last speech (act 5, scene 3, line 82). Pasternak quotes from his own translation, made during the early years of World War II.

4. a man in a case: Lara is referring to the hero of Chekhov’s story “The Man in a Case” (1898), who for Russians typifies a man physically and mentally trapped in his own narrow views and inhibitions.

5. Rosa Luxemburg: The political writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (see part 4, note 1), and in 1914, with Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919), founded the antiwar Spartakusbund (“Spartacus League,” from Liebknecht’s pen name, Spartacus), which on January 1, 1919, became the German Communist Party. She was shot along with Liebknecht and others after the crushing of the Spartacist uprising later that same month, and thus became one of the first martyrs of the Communist cause.

6. Goethe’s … neo-Schellingism: In his Naturphilosophie, Goethe, like Schelling (see part 11, note 6), sought to establish a universal order of metaphysical as well as pragmatic validity.

7. In the Red Sea … remained intact: The quotations come from the Dogmatik (Hymn to the Mother of God) in the fifth tone, sung at vespers. The earlier references are to the Old Testament books of Exodus, Daniel (see part 8, note 8), and Jonah.

8. to make Adam God: The quotation comes from verses sung in the second tone at the vespers of the Annunciation. The essential notion that “God became man so that man could become God” is attributed to several early church fathers, among them St. Irenaeus of Lyons (second century) and St. Athanasius of Alexandria (293–373).

9. Christ and Mary Magdalene … God and a woman: This entire passage is based on the traditional identification of Mary Magdalene with the woman taken in adultery in John 8:3–11, and with the unnamed woman who anoints Christ’s feet from an alabaster flask and wipes them with her hair in Matthew 26:6–13, Mark 14:3–9, and Luke 7:36–50. In John’s version of this incident (12:1–8), the woman is Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who is neither a prostitute nor the Magdalene. Sima mentions this confusion herself. St. Mary of Egypt was indeed a repentant prostitute, but she lived in the fourth century. Sima goes on to quote hymns from the matins of Holy Wednesday, the middle of Holy Week, in which the woman with the alabaster vessel confesses to having been a harlot. The longest of these hymns, from which Sima quotes most fully, known as “The Hymn of Cassia,” is attributed to the Byzantine abbess and hymnographer Cassia (ca. 805–867). Zhivago’s two poems about Mary Magdalene follow the same tradition.

10. Several well-known social figures … deported from Russia: Tonya’s letter mixes real people with the fictional Gromeko family: S. P. Melgunov (1879–1956) was a historian, a Constitutional Democrat, and an outspoken opponent of the Bolsheviks; A. A. Kiesewetter was also a historian and a leader of the CD Party; and E. D. Kuskova was a journalist and member of the Committee to Aid the Hungry. Deportation became Lenin’s preferred way of dealing with prominent ideological opponents. In the fall of 1922 he loaded some 160 intellectuals, including the philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev, Semyon Frank, Sergei Bulgakov, Ivan Ilyin, and Fyodor Stepun, on the so-called “Philosophy Steamer” and shipped them to Europe.

PART FOURTEEN

1. In Primorye … the remaining time: Primorye, more fully the Primorsky Krai, or “Maritime Territory,” is the extreme southeast region of Russia, bordering on China, North Korea, and the Sea of Japan, with its capital at Vladivostok. The remnants of Kappel’s forces (see part 11, note 1), with other White groups, set up a government there, known as the Provisional Primorye Government, which lasted from late May 1921 to October 1922, when the Red Army took Vladivostok and effectively ended the civil war.

2. Egory the Brave: The name for St. George in Russian oral epic tradition. The image of St. George slaying the dragon figures on both the Moscow and the Russian coats of arms, and in Zhivago’s poem, “A Tale.”

3. Tolstoy … generals: Zhivago is thinking of Tolstoy’s commentaries on the moving forces of history in War and Peace, particularly in the second epilogue to the novel.

4. Tverskaya-Yamskaya Streets: Four parallel streets north of the center of Moscow.

5. Herzen: Alexander Herzen (1812–1870), the illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner, was a pro-Western writer and publicist, often called “the father of Russian socialism.” In 1847, having inherited his father’s fortune, he left Russia and never returned. Abroad he edited the radical Russian-language newspaper Kolokol (“The Bell”) and wrote a number of books, the most important of which is the autobiographical My Past and Thoughts (1868).

6. a clanging cymbal: A phrase from Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians (13:1): “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

PART FIFTEEN

1. the NEP: That is, the New Economic Policy, established by a decree of March 21, 1921, which allowed for some private enterprise on a small scale, following the ravages of War Communism, which had tried to remove the market economy entirely. Peasants were also allowed to sell their surplus, which previously had been requisitioned without compensation (see part 11, note 2). The policy was abandoned by Stalin in 1928, in favor of the first Five-Year Plan and the forced collectivization of agriculture.

2. the eve of St. Basil’s: The feast of St. Basil of Caesarea (330–379), a major Orthodox theologian and author of a liturgy that is still in use, is celebrated on January 1/14, the day of his death.

3. They changed landmarks: The reference is to a movement of liberals in the White Russian emigration named for a collection of essays entitled Smena Vekh (“Change of Landmarks”), published in Prague in 1921, which proposed a resigned acceptance of the October revolution and the Soviet regime and called on émigrés to return to Russia.

4. Tikhon: Tikhon (Vassily Bellavin, 1865–1925), elected patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, was the first patriarch since the reforms of Peter the Great eliminated the position in 1721 and brought the Church under state control. The Bolsheviks did not welcome Tikhon, who protested against many of their acts, and he was imprisoned from 1922 to 1923. He was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1989.

5. The custom … was widespread by then: Cremation, which was not an Orthodox practice, was introduced after the revolution. But Zhivago’s acquaintances follow the old practice of laying out the body at home, in an open coffin on a table, surrounded by flowers.

6. She … the gardener: See John 20:1–18, the account of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Christ.

7. the last kiss: From a hymn sung near the end of the Orthodox burial service, which speaks in the voice of the dead person: “Come, all you who loved me, and kiss me with the last kiss. For nevermore shall I walk or talk with you.”

8. making … the song: Alleluia: Words of a hymn from the funeral or memorial service: “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Whither we mortals all shall go, making our funeral dirge the song: Alleluia.”

PART SIXTEEN

1. the Kursk bulge … Orel: This major battle, fought in July 1943, ended in a decisive Soviet victory and set the Russian army on the offensive for the duration of the war. The city of Orel was liberated on August 5 of that year.

2. Ezhovshchina: The period of the most intense purges of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, in 1937–1938, named for Nikolai Ezhov (1895–1940), head of the NKVD, including the internal security forces, which ran the prisons and labor camps.

3. I never saw her again: The story of Christina Orletsova is based on the life of an actual girl named Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, an account of which was preserved in Pasternak’s archive.

4. Blok’s ‘We, the children …’: See part 3, note 5. The poem, written on September 8, 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, begins: “Those born in obscure times / Do not remember their path. / We, the children of Russia’s terrible years / Are unable to forget anything.”

NOTES TO THE POEMS OF YURI ZHIVAGO

6. A Final Talk

The Manège is a large, rectangular, neoclassical building in the center of Moscow, near Red Square, built in the early nineteenth century, which originally served as a riding academy and later became a concert and exhibition space.

9. Hops

The Russian word for hops, khmel, also means intoxication.

11. A Wedding

A chastushka is a form of Russian folk poetry, usually quatrains in trochaic meter with alternating four and three stress lines, rhyming ABCB, often racy, political, or nonsensical, sung to the accompaniment of the accordion or balalaika.

14. August

The Feast of the Transfiguration (see Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36) is celebrated on August 6/19, when there are already signs of autumn in Russia. It is popularly referred to as the “Second Savior.”

20. Miracle

See Matthew 21:18–22, Mark 11:12–23.

23. and 24. Magdalene

See part 13, note 9.

25. The Garden of Gethsemane

See Matthew 26:36–46, Mark 14:32–42, Luke 22:39–48.