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Part 5: Farewell to the Old
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
On his way from the train station, Yuri observes how much the war has changed Moscow, its once bountiful markets now selling more useless luxury goods than food. At home, it takes several rings of the bell for Tonya to open the door. She apologizes for her letters and explains that she has rented out part of the house and let almost all of the servants go. Gordon, Dudorov, and Alexander Alexandrovich, now a district duma member, will soon be home for a celebratory dinner. Markel, drunk and insolent, no longer treats the family with the same respect as before. Yuri and Tonya discuss their plans for surviving the coming winter before she gives him important news: Nikolai Nikolaevich has returned to Russia.
Being on the frontlines or in the hospital, Yuri has missed the wartime transformation of Russia’s great cities into starving and impoverished places where the former elites now sell off their possessions to buy basic goods, which are in short supply. The same is true for the elite’s formerly expansive homes and estates, which are converted into impromptu apartment buildings. All kinds of local assemblies were formed in 1917, and district dumas were the smallest of these. Markel’s new attitude also reflects the breakdown of social norms, though Yuri is unsure whether this is a good or a bad thing.
Themes
Yuri frightens his now two-year-old son, Sashenka, The boy no longer recognizes his own father, was sent to the front before the hospital would allow him into the maternity ward. Yuri is disappointed by his friends too, whom he finds less interesting and original than he had remembered them being. Gordon remains resolutely moralistic. Dudorov, now a professor, speaks in a dull, academic register. Nikolai Nikolaevich has become a dedicated Bolshevik, prompting a fierce political debate with Alexander Alexandrovich. Even Shura Schlesinger 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theory of the revolution as a powerful, mystical, and quintessentially Russian phenomenon, but he remains morose and withdrawn.
Yuri has been absent during a crucial developmental window in his child’s life. As a result, Sashenka does not recognize him as a parent and protector. Yuri’s sense of alienation is typical for veterans returning from war, but it is magnified by the political transformations that occurred in the capital, which have either changed his friends’ beliefs or made them seem irrelevant. Enthusiasm for the revolution (and for the Bolsheviks in particular) was widespread during 1917, as people across society demanded the continuation of the unfinished revolution and an end to the war. Yuri, for his part, remains as withdrawn and unsure as ever.
Themes
By late September Moscow is experiencing an acute lack of winter supplies. Yuri goes back to work at the hospital, where he is caught in the middle of the radical and moderate staff. He busies himself with work and poetry but cannot avoid the inevitable scheming and haggling now necessary to secure basic services like heating and insulation. Strange events quickly become normal: one day Yuri rescues the victim of a robbery. The man turns out to be an important politician who thanks Yuri for his help by protecting the Zhivagos from political persecution. One day later in the fall, Yuri is struggling with the family’s defective stove when Nikolai Nikolaevich enters with important news: supporters of the Bolsheviks and the Provisional Government are fighting in the streets.
While the Zhivagos, Nikolai Nikolaevich, and Gordon are trapped inside by the fighting, Sashenka gets sick. Yuri treats him at home until he is able to go out for medicine after the Bolsheviks gain the upper hand. A few days later, on a nighttime walk, Yuri buys a newspaper and learns that the Bolsheviks 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 Central Asian face who seems to recognize him before walking past. Heading home, Yuri finds some temporarily unguarded firewood and steals it for his family. He shows Alexander Alexandrovich the article and rapturously monologues about the revolutionaries’ bold and transformative vision.
Themes
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The first of three destructive winters arrives, finding Moscow in chaos as new and old ideas and institutions exist simultaneously and vie for power. The Zhivagos eat as simply and cheaply as possible and trade the last of their furniture, including Anna Ivanovna’s wardrobe, for supplies.
Yuri is sent to visit a patient in a far-flung neighborhood, where he finds the residents in the middle of a heated meeting. The patient’s husband explains that she became delirious after their broken grandfather clock chimed unexpectedly. Yuri diagnoses her with typhus and goes to the meeting to arrange transportation to a hospital. At the meeting the residents are debating an 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, and Olya Demina is the chairwoman of the soviet. Speaking privately with Galliulin’s mother, he learns that Galliulin has joined the White Army.
Themes
Back home, Tonya tells Yuri about an eerily similar clock incident, prompting the doctor to joke about getting typhus himself. Some months later his prediction comes true. Yuri is delirious for weeks, often imagining that he sees the Siberian youth at his bedside. As he recovers his health and sanity, Yuri is shocked to be served bread with butter and tea with sugar. Tonya explains that these now-rare foods are gifts from the Siberian youth, Evgraf—who turns out to be Yuri’s half-brother, who is well-connected with the Bolshevik authorities. Evgraf advises the Zhivagos to escape Moscow for the provinces, and so they resolve to leave for Tonya’s family’s former estate of Varykino, outside of Yuriatin in the Urals.
Themes
