Artistic works oftentimes reflect the times in which they are created.
Music, books, films, and the like, particularly those that endure the test of time, may serve as vessels of information, entertainment, and enlightenment for a culture.
Some artistic works may reveal truths that governments with malicious intent would rather suppress.
“Doctor Zhivago” is a 1957 novel penned by Russian author Boris Pasternak.
Pasternak’s book made its debut on the big screen in 1965 under the same title. The film was produced by Carlo Ponti, directed by David Lean, and stars Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, and Geraldine Chaplin, among others.
The widely read best seller is actually one of the most famously censored pieces of literature.
The author embedded in his work the notion that every person is entitled to a private life and deserves respect as a human being. This was fundamentally irreconcilable with the communist maxim that the individual must be sacrificed to the collective.
Consequently, the book was banned in the old Soviet Union, and the movie was not allowed to be made there. Instead it was filmed mostly in Spain.
The then-Soviet government hid the book from the Russian people, because the “Doctor Zhivago” story explicitly reveals the dark truths of communist tyranny.
The communists censored anything that had the capacity to hinder their despotic drive for political power.
Like those who preceded them, the Soviet tyrants did nothing to restrict individuals that parroted the establishment narrative.
However, when it came to those whose speech constituted a threat to their power, they routinely demonized, silenced them, or worse.
According to a book by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée called “The Zhivago Affair,” Pasternak thought his novel would never be published in the old Soviet Union, because of the manner in which authorities viewed it. So the author gave the manuscript to an Italian publishing scout, which ultimately led to Pasternak’s book becoming a global best seller.
De-classified documents have revealed that, during the late 1950s, the CIA actually distributed copies of his novel to Soviet citizens in order to spread the word about communism’s inherent dangers.
Providentially, the movie became one of the top-grossing films of all time and ranks high on most of the lists of best movies ever made. In 1966 it was awarded five Oscars.
It is the backstory of “Doctor Zhivago,” though, that makes the book and film so notable and amazingly timely.
It tells the story of a Moscow physician-poet, who struggles to cope with the changing landscape of his homeland as a group of communist commissars literally take over the country.
The film stars Sharif in the title role, while Julie Christie portrays his love interest Larissa “Lara” Antipova.
“Doctor Zhivago” uses a flashback technique, with the main character’s half-brother narrating the tale of his search to find his niece, who is the daughter of Lara and Yuri.
Early in the movie young Yuri is orphaned. His only earthly possession is a Russian stringed instrument that he inherited, the balalaika, which weaves its way through the film’s musical score.
The youth is taken in by friends of his family, Alexander and Anna Gromeko, and is subsequently moved to Moscow.
He grows up to become a doctor and soon takes Tonya, daughter of the Gromekos, as his wife.
During World War I, Yuri provides medical care to soldiers fighting on the battlefield. Lara enlists as a nurse. She eventually encounters the love of her life.
For the next six months they serve together at a field hospital, while unrest foments in Russia, following the return of exiled Vladimir Lenin.
Yuri and Lara fall deeply in love. The doctor initially remains faithful to wife Tonya, but passions eventually prevail.
One particularly meaningful scene in the movie occurs after Russia exits WWI. Yuri returns to his Moscow home only to find that the residence has been taken over by the Soviet government and now houses a large group of strangers.
Yuri’s dream of a privately-owned home has vanished. Now a dozen other families live in the space that the good doctor once had for himself and his family.
The chairman of the residence committee, Comrade Kaprugina, tells Yuri, “There was living space for 13 families in this one house.”
“Yes,” Yuri says. “Yes, this is a better arrangement, comrades. More just.”
His words, of course, are a lie that he is forced to say out loud. No longer does he have control over who lives in what was once his home.
He knew his poems had been condemned. He also knew the sheer ruthlessness of his nation’s captors. Now he lives in a place where truth no longer is permitted to be spoken in public.
“Doctor Zhivago” is worth watching and re-watching, not only because it is a great movie, but because it pertains to the present in a way that aptly illustrates how top-down government control can so easily slip into full-blown communism.
The Russian revolution divided the populace, pitting neighbor against neighbor, poor against rich, rural against urban, faith-filled against secular, and so on.
Community organizers consolidated power and eventually seized total control.
Media outlets joined forces in protection of the almighty state, working undercover as allies of the government in the public indoctrination business.
Children in schools were propagandized too, and parental rights were methodically stripped away.
Hundreds of millions were deprived of the right to speak, worship, and travel freely.
Under communism and its other unholy titles, people the world over have been subjected to man-made famines, forced labor, deadly purges, show trials, extrajudicial executions, lethal gulags, and outright genocide.
The infamous track record of communism speaks for itself.
Americans used to fight against the political leviathan with everything in them, rushing to rescue citizens of other nations in peril as well.
In the end, we pray that we will still be able to say, individually and collectively, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)
James Hirsen 