The Bottom Line: This movie does a great job of showing a bourgeois interpretation of the revolution and anyone interested in this time period would love this movie.
This movie is based on Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize winning novel, which follows Dr. Zhivago through the Russian Revolution. Although this movie/book was written for entertainment purposes, it still offers a somewhat valuable historical perspective of the Russian Revolution.
The basic historical message of this movie seemed to be that the Bolsheviks did not rule in the best interests of the people. This view does seem to be a little biased because the story follows the perspective of a bourgeois doctor and other rich Russians. After doing a little bit of research, not surprisingly, I found that Pasternak himself was formerly part of the aristocracy like Zhivago. I also learned that Pasternak’s novel was banned in Russia and they wouldn’t allow it to be published, like many works back then. He wasn’t even allowed to receive his Nobel Prize for Literature. Khrushchev and others perceived Dr. Zhivago as a threat to the party and what it stood for. “The novel was seen as a complete and erroneous presentation of the 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks and the resulting Communist regime.” It is obvious why the party leaders would have a problem with the novel, because so often it focused on the bourgeoisie and made the revolution out to seem much worse than the czarist era. The beginning of the movie starts out as Alec Guinness, a party official, discusses the horrible conditions of the past and Russia’s slave labor, and how that they “don’t do that anymore.” When a Bolshevik military leader, Strelnikov, was told that he had burned down people’s houses who were innocent of assisting the Whites, he replied that it didn’t matter because he made his point. This follows a lot of what we have been studying about how the end justified the means. Nevertheless, this is definitely not a favorable portrayal of the government. Another scene illustrates Pasternak’s negative view of the Bolsheviks when the Red Army slaughtered several military schoolboys. Also, after the revolution, Zhivago’s house was occupied by 13 families and when he welcomed them in, they replied that they did not need his welcome. Throughout much of the rest of the movie Zhivago peacefully submitted to the new demands of the government, while he was treated as a class enemy. This movie focuses on how the main character’s (the good guy’s) possessions and freedoms were taken away from him by these seemingly evil Bolsheviks.
In Dr. Zhivago, Pasternak uses a poetic style to bring out his message of the tragedy and suffering that many Russian people (especially the bourgeoisie) had to go through during the Bolshevik’s transition to power. His purpose was most likely to show others his perspective of the revolution, which had probably not been expressed previously because of governmental restrictions. This story seems to be fictionalized, so it is difficult to evaluate this movie as a historical source because the material could have been based on actual occurrences. Still, this movie does a great job of showing a bourgeois interpretation of the revolution.
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