Through the medium of Boris Pasternak's novel, Dr Zhivago, Peter takes us on a nostalgic journey through the political upheavals that occurred within Russian society a little over a century ago, as Communists wrestled power from Czarist Russia. Peter's address focuses on the despair caused when ideals for a better, fairer, more equitable society fall short of expectations. Peter uses the plots and sub-plots within Dr Zhivago, and the life of its author, Nobel Laureate - Boris Pasternak, to dramatise how Czarist hegemony was replaced with one under the guise of "Communism" - but falling well short of the Marxist ideal. Alas, poor Russia! The nightmare of Zhivago continues, much to Russia's, its neighbours' - and the rest of the World's cost. Perhaps Russia's greatest fear has always been its fear of itself: our greatest enemy is always the "enemy within". The exercise of power must also come with liberties: checks and balances that allow dissent to be heard and injustices resolved peacefully and fairly.
Peter's address closes with Janet's reading of Pasternak's hope that "The Power of the darkness, will - in time - be crushed by the Spirit of Light". And today we are bathed in the light of Barry and Brendan's playing of three of Dvorak's short romantic sonatas for violin and piano. And Boris smiled!
Expanding Horizons
Dr Zhivago
Through the medium of Boris Pasternak's novel, Dr Zhivago, Peter takes us on a nostalgic journey through the political upheavals that occurred within Russian society a little over a century ago, as Communists wrestled power from Czarist Russia. Peter's address focuses on the despair caused when ideals for a better, fairer, more equitable society fall short of expectations. Peter uses the plots and sub-plots within Dr Zhivago, and the life of its author, Nobel Laureate - Boris Pasternak, to dramatise how Czarist hegemony was replaced with one under the guise of "Communism" - but falling well short of the Marxist ideal. Alas, poor Russia! The nightmare of Zhivago continues, much to Russia's, its neighbours' - and the rest of the World's cost. Perhaps Russia's greatest fear has always been its fear of itself: our greatest enemy is always the "enemy within". The exercise of power must also come with liberties: checks and balances that allow dissent to be heard and injustices resolved peacefully and fairly.Peter's address closes with Janet's reading of Pasternak's hope that "The Power of the darkness, will - in time - be crushed by the Spirit of Light". And today we are bathed in the light of Barry and Brendan's playing of three of Dvorak's short romantic sonatas for violin and piano. And Boris smiled!
- Duration:
- 34m
- Broadcast on:
- 30 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[Music] You're listening to Expanding Horizons, the podcast of the Unitarian Church of South Australia, a home of progressive spirituality and free religious thought and action since 1854. The views expressed in these podcasts are those of the speaker and are not intended to represent the position of the church itself or of the worldwide Unitarian Universalist Movement. For more information visit UnitarianSA.org.au [Music] Opening words are from Alexander Pushkin. "Hence forward monarchs, learn ye well. No punishment, no accolade. No altar and no dungeon sill can be or steadfast barricade. The first bowed head must be your own, beneath a law's trusty canopy. Then people's life and liberty, forevermore shall guard your throne." This is the story of the large turnip to Russian folktow and the farmer had a large field of turnips which were all fairly ordinary size but one was very, very large and he could not pull it out of the ground. He tugged and he pulled, he tugged and he pulled to no avail. So he called his wife who was in the kitchen and she was baking. She dusted herself down and she took an apron off, she came out with him and she said, "I'm here, I'm here to help." So she held him around the waist and they tugged and they pulled and she shook. Still nothing came out of the ground, there was the turnip. So the wife said, "Look, I can't get the dog." The dog was sleeping over there in the sun and he said, "I'm just going to walk slightly behind her and the three of them pulled, the man, the wife and the dog, pull, pull, etcetera." Nothing happened, that was a very, very stubborn turnip. So the dog said, "Oh, go and get the cat." So he went over to the back door and on the step in the sun was the cat who looked particularly uninterested about being asked to do anything but came along anyway. So we've got the farmer, we've got the wife, we've got the dog and now a bird cat, all nice and sleeky and warm because of the sun, so they all pulled and bald, still that turnip would not budge. What are we going to do next to the cat said, "Oh, I'll get the mouse." It seemed a bit of a silly thing to say, but she did, I wish she went to a pile of leaves and she could hear, spit, spit, spit, spit, and she parted the leaves and there was the mouse. And she said, "Mouse," she said, "dumb, we've got a job for you. Would you like to come and help pull the turnip out in the mouse or or anything for life?" So off she went and they all pulled together. So we've got the farmer, we've got his wife, his son cooking, his burning by the way, but we won't worry about that, and then this dog and the cat and the mouse and they all pulled and they pulled and the turnip went, and they pulled it out of the ground, that very big turnip. Now, what's the moral of that story? What does it say? Okay, I'll say, if we all pull together, the task will be achieved. Thanks everybody. Thank you, Jenna. And this is an extract from a speech by Yovetti, Yev Jishekko, in 1997, six years into the post Communist transition under President Boris Yeltsin. Ideas tossed into the air of humanity prematurely at great risk to their authors who do not vanish without trace. They turned into magnets, as it were, hovering in the air and gradually attracting more souls. So it was in the ancient Roman stone quarries in early Christian times, and later in those soviet asylums of freedom. The cramped, communal kitchens where the Russian intelligentsia used to huddle over faded, tattered, typescript copies of Pasternak's band novel. This clandestine read is not only inhaled a novel with the air they breathed, they also exhaled it. And its thoughts became increasingly part of the air of Russia as the country prepared itself for change. Thank you, Jenna. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Dr. Gervago, that's what that says, up there. If you can read the Cyrillic Russian script, it is Boston Boris Pasternak's Magnet Opus. And it's in the tradition of novels by the great Russian novelist Tolstoy Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Pushkin, Turgenev. It captures the ongoing agony of the Russian people, oppressed over centuries by Tsarist, Bolshevik, and now the Putin hegemony. On the one hand, Dr. Gervago, the novel, is a great love story. On the other, it's a stand against the authoritarian forces which prevailed in the Soviet Union. Pasternak was a key figure of passive resistance during the Stalin and later the Khrushchev era, when any opposition covert or otherwise would attract the unwanted attention of the Soviet secret police. The story set on a broad canvas which mirrors the sweep of the vast geographic extent of the land from the Baltic to the Pacific. It's a huge country. It takes a week to traverse by train. I know, because I've done it. It took Pasternak well over a decade to write the novel. The book was a bestseller in many countries, outside the Soviet Union, to the Chagrinos Khrushchev and the Communist Party. I wanted to talk this morning not only about the story, but about Pasternak himself, and how his quiet resistance to the oppressive authoritarian Soviet regime was expressed quite subtly in the book. He had great courage to stand up in his own way for truth against what he saw as the official deceit and mendacity, which sought not to improve the lot of the common people, as was professed, but to entrench the power of the ruling Communist elite. A former Australian diplomat who had spent the early 70s in the Australian mission in Moscow, writing in 2017, which credits the book and the David Lean film, which came out in 1965, as being significant in the event which later brought about the collapse of the Soviet regime. Doctors Vago's story is complex. It covers the period from the turn of last century when Russia was ruled by the Tsars, through the First World War and the 1917 October Revolution, concluding with the aftermath of the Second World War, or the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians call it. The period coincides with the span of the life of Pasternak himself, although in the novel, his protagonist, Zivago, dies of a heart attack on a Moscow tram in the late 20s. Pasternak himself died at 70 in 1960. It's clear that Pasternak saw himself in the character of Yuri Zivago. The heroine of the story Lara Antipova was modeled on Pasternak's great love, his mistress Olga in Vanskaya. Pasternak was born in 1890 to a liberal and cultured secular Jewish family. This was a troubled period in Russia. Poverty was widespread. The average life expectancy was 32. Compare that at the same time in Australia it was 54. Probably a bit more now. In fact, I'm probably living proof that it is. Not surprisingly, there were constant rumblings of those at the bottom of the social ladder. However, life for the middle classes and the nobility was reasonably comfortable. The Pasternaks were quite well off, and were aware of the undercurrent of socialist revolution amongst the deprived working classes and the peasants. Many of the middle classes sympathized with the revolutionaries to the extent of joining in street demonstrations. Such an event in January 1905 resulted in a massacre when a crowd approached the Winter Palace in St Petersburg to present a petition to the Tsar. This was January 5th, Bloody Sunday, when the Palace Guard cut down the demonstrators with a huge loss of life. In the novel, Zhivago, as a young teenager, witnesses such an event, albeit set in the streets of Moscow. As a young man, Pasternak had originally sought to pursue a career in music and attended the Moscow Conservatory School, then realising that his talents were limited, he studied neo-county in philosophy for four years at the University of Marsburg in Germany. During World War I, he worked at a chemical factory in Perm, an industrial city in the Ural Mountains about 1200 kilometres east of Moscow. Perm became the model for the fictional town of Yuriatan, where Lara lives and is later visited by Zhivago. In the novel, Zhivago, by this time a qualified doctor, works in an army field hospital during the war, treating wounded soldiers. Here he meets and works with Lara, who is a nurse. She has joined the medical service to look for her husband, Pasha Antipov. Pasha had joined the army, but during fighting had been reported missing. At war's end, Lara returns to a home in Yuriatan. Zhivago returns to his wife Tonya and his young family in Moscow. In the meantime, the revolution has occurred and he finds Moscow in an uproar. There is violence, oppression and destruction. In a scene from the book, Zhivago's uncle Nikolai bursts into the house, shouting, they're fighting in the street, the cadets are fighting for the provisional government against the garrison soldiers who are backing the Bolsheviks. They're skirmishing all over the place. You can't count the focal points of the insurrection. At that time, people were either trying to keep a low profile and passively accepting the revolutionary struggle going on around them, or they were reinventing themselves to make sure that they are allied with the strength at any given time. Society is an estate of collapse, with severe food and fuel shortages. Middle-class houses are requisitioned by the government. Zhivago and his family are reduced to living in three rooms in their own house. They are forced to scavenge for firewood and bargain clandestinely for potatoes brought into Moscow illegally from the country by peasants who face severe punishment of court by the authorities. The political situation in Russia in 1918 at the end of the war was indeed chaotic. Several disparate socialist parties attempted to seize power. The Tsar abdicated. There was a short-lived provisional government. Lenin arrived from Switzerland and organized the Bolsheviks into a strong political force, advocating violent revolution. Opposed to them were the Mensheviks, originally of Marxist ideology, but more moderate, and the whites who were supporting the return of the Tsarist government. There was open civil war right across Russia. Country side was laid waste. Villages destroyed. Opponents massacred. The situation had settled somewhat by 1921. At that time, Lenin gave middle-class citizens, including Pasternak's parents, two options. They could either commit to the new communist society or emigrate. Together with Pasternak's two daughters, they chose exile and moved to Berlin, then later in the thirties to Britain. Pasternak and his brother Alexander never saw them again. The Zhivago story describes many such partings and separations, not the least between Zhivago himself and his family, and again between him and Lara, his great love. Zhivago and his young family decide that life in Moscow is fraught, and so they leave by train for an old country estate called Verikino, somewhere near Yuri Azen. Verikino had been formally owned by his wife, Tonya's parents, whose name was Kruger. On the train, Zhivago talks with one "costaied", a fellow traveler, making the observation that everything seems normal along the railway line. He says, "Look at all these stations we stop at. The trees and fences are still standing. They haven't been chopped down for fuel. At least some life is still going on, and people are pleased by it." But Kostao says, "Allow me to differ. The peasant knows very well what he wants, better than you or I do, but he wants something quite different." When the revolution came and woke him up, he decided this was the fulfillment of his dream, his ancient dream of living anarchically on his own land by the work of his own hands, in complete independence, and without owing anything to anybody. Instead of that, he found his only exchange the old oppression of the Tsarist regime for the new, much harsher yoke of the revolutionary super state. Can you wonder that the villagers are restless and can't settle down? I suggest that such an observation would have greatly annoyed the Soviet hierarchy. The long-term train journey takes several weeks. The train is stopped and checked by various local militant groups who are fighting in the countryside. On one such stop, Zhivago is apprehended by armed partisans. They are the henchmen of one Stjolnikov, their belligerent and ruthless leader who travels in an armored train, wreaking havoc amongst those opposing the revolution, even though he is not himself a member of the Bolshevik party. Stjolnikov regards Zhivago with suspicion since he is a doctor and of the middle class. He suspects him of desertion from the army, but Zhivago reassures him that he was wounded and invalidated out. Stjolnikov notes that Zhivago is going to varikino, which he knows was previously owned by the Kruger's, who had been wealthy landowners. He asks Zhivago if he's related. Zhivago begins to explain about his wife, but Zhivago says, "If you're feeling nostalgic for the whites, I'm going to disappoint you. We've cleared the district." You can only imagine what that meant. These are apocalyptic times, my dear sir. This is the last judgement. This is a time for angels with flaming swords or wing beasts from the abyss, not for sympathisers and loyal doctors. Stjolnikov, nevertheless, frees Zhivago and sends him back to his own train. Zhivago feels that he has met Zhivokov before. Some weeks later, when Lara, with whom he reunites in Yuri Assen, tells him that Zholnikov is a nom digurf adopted by Pasha Antipov, her husband, whom Zhivago had known as a mild young man in Moscow before the war. As mentioned before, Pasha had joined the Russian army, had been reported missing in action, and had disappeared some years earlier. I said that the story is complex. The reader is also challenged by the book's characters with names difficult for non-Russians to get the grips with. Pasternak uses several names for many of the characters, proper names, diminatives, and patronimics. Pasternak more formally borrows Lyon Nidovich. That's the patronimic. The Russians take the second name of the father's name and add a "vitch" on the end of it. That's a common custom. He, himself, led a complicated life. He had a son by his first wife, Evgeny, after they married in 1922. Ten years later, he fell in love with Zaneida, a married woman with two sons. They married in 1934. Just after World War II, he began an affair with Olga Avincikaya, who worked as a writer for the publishing house, "Nove Mier", in English "New World". Zaneida knew of the affair, but chose to ignore it. In the 1930s, Pasternak was widely read as a revolutionary poet, and apparently found some favour with Joseph Stalin. Stalin, particularly like Pasternak's translations of Shakespeare and of Georgian poetry. Stalin himself was a Georgian, not a Russian. In the mid-30s, Maxim Gorky, who was president of the Soviet Writers' Union and a committed communist, suggested the establishment of a writers' colony at Paradolchino, not far from Moscow. Around 50 duchess or country houses were let for low rental to selected members of the writers' union. Pasternak was one so favoured, and he lived there from 1935 until his death in 1960. The cynic in me suggests that the Soviet authorities, by having all the writers' housed in one location, would find it pretty easy to keep an eye on them. Originally in favour of the revolution, Pasternak, after the great purges of the 30s, when many artists, writers and members of the intelligentsia, were arrested, became disenchanted with the Soviet system. In the novel, Zhivago's observations made to a local partisan leader attest to the disenchantment. He says, "The idea of social betterment, as it is understood since the October Revolution, doesn't fill me with enthusiasm. Secondly, it is so far from being put into practice, and the mere talk about it has cost such a sea of blood that I am not sure if the end justifies the means. And lastly, and above all, when I hear people speak of reshaping life, it makes me lose my shelf control, and I fall into despair." Nevertheless, Pasternak tried to remain aloof from politics and kept a low profile. But he knew the security of his tenure at Paradulchino was ephemeral. It could have been rudely ended, at any time, by the dreaded knock on the door. In 1934, Pasternak's friend, the poet Ozak Mandelstam, recited a satirical poem which he'd written. It was called "The Stalin Epigram." I haven't quoted it today, but when you read it, you'll see why it was a pretty dangerous thing to do. Reciting this to Pasternak and a group of friends on a street corner. Pasternak alarmed, said, "I didn't hear this. You didn't recite it to me because you know very strange and terrible things are happening now. They're picking people up. I'm afraid the walls have ears, and perhaps even these benches on the boulevard may be able to listen and tell tales." So let's make out that I heard nothing. Ironically, some years after Pasternak's death, the poet Yevgeny Yevtashinko mentioned a story that a garden bench was placed near his grave. This was ostensibly for the convenience of visitors, many of whom were like-minded dissidents. This bench was found later to have a microphone concealed in a hollow leg, presumably by the secret police. Mandelstam was indeed later arrested, and shortly after this, Pasternak took a phone call. A voice said, "Comrade Stalin would like a word." Pasternak, taken aback, was totally unprepared for such a conversation. Stalin said, "Tell me, what are they saying in your literary circles about the arrest of Mandelstam?" Pasternak, groping for words, denied that there was any such discussion that there were indeed any literary circles left in Russia. Stalin went on to ask him for his own opinion of Mandelstam's poetry, hesitatingly, Pasternak said that he and Mandelstam had different philosophies of poetry. Finally Stalin said, "In a mocking tone, I see you aren't able to stick up for a comrade," and ended the phone call. Pasternak refused to sign a writer's union denunciation of his friend, thereby bringing unfavourable attention to himself. His own name had been included in a list of artists recommended for arrest, but Stalin has said to have overruled it, saying, "Leave that cloud dweller in peace." Pasternak waited in trepidation for the midnight knock on the door, but it never came. Nevertheless, although he was allowed to continue to live at Peridokino, Pasternak was vilified by the Soviet writer's establishment. Olga, his mistress, was arrested and suffered severe interrogation at Moscow's Lubyankar prison, as a result of which she miscarried Pasternak's child, but she also refused to say anything incriminating about him. She was sent to the Gulag for ten years, being released only after Stalin's death four years into the sentence. All this time apart from his poetry, Pasternak was secretly working on Dr. Zhivago, his magnum opus, completing it in 1956. However, the manuscript was rejected by all the publishers he approached. No one would touch it. No they mere rejected it on the grounds that it showed more concern for the welfare of individual characters than for the progress of society. Sensors considered some passages as anti-Soviet, especially the criticisms of Stalinism, the great purge and collectivization. Eventually, Pasternak was persuaded to allow a visiting Italian journalist to smuggle the manuscript out of the Soviet Union and back to a Communist publisher in Milan. It was translated into Italian and published in 1957. The Soviet authorities tried in vain to have it suppressed, but a concerted campaign by the CIA saw thousands of copies distributed worldwide, including, in a pocket edition, back into the Soviet Union. But Pasternak's vilification continued into his home country. The literary institute in Moscow demanded that his students sign a petition denouncing Pasternak in the novel, and join a demonstration demanding his expulsion from the country. Several of Pasternak's literary friends and colleagues were forced to censor him. There was an organized anti-Pasternak campaign. Pasternak was attacked in Pravda, the official organ of the Communist Party, the name ironically means truth. Thousands of angry letters from ordinary Russian workers who had not even read the book were published in the paper. In 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize, but he declined to travel to Stockholm to receive it. As he knew, he wouldn't be allowed back in the country if he did so. He died at Peridolchino in 1960. Some 29 years later, with the drawing of the Cold War, his son, Yevgeny, traveled to Stockholm to collect the prize. The award of the Nobel Prize had taken the country by storm, not only the country, but the war at the world, and had enraged, but had enraged the Soviet government, then under the heavy hand of Nikita Khrushchev. In retaliation, the KGB harassed Pasternak for the last two or three years of his life. Then following his death, Olga was again arrested and was jailed for another four years. But in spite of the views of treatment she endured at the hands of the KGB, she never denounced him. For his part, grieving mightily at the time of her first arrest, he never expected to see her again, yet went on stoically to complete the novel in secret. I leave the last word to prominent Russian philosopher Valenson Azmus, who spoke at Pasternak's funeral. He said, "A writer who has died, who together with Pushkin Daskyevsky and Tolstoy, forms part of the glory of Russian literature. Even if we cannot agree with him in everything, we nonetheless owe him a debt of gratitude for setting an example of an unswerving honesty for his incorruptible conscience and for his heroic view of his duty as a writer." Now, last Janet to read the closing words, which were a poem by Boris Pasternak on the occasion of the Nobel Prize. Pasternak wrote this emotional valedictory poem in 1959, a year before his death. It epitomizes how he felt at the time of the Nobel Award. Nobel Prize, like a beast in a pen, I am cut off from my friends, freedom the sun, but the hunters are gaining ground, I have nowhere else to run. Dark wood and the bank of pond, trunk of a fallen tree, there's no way forward, no way back, it's all up with me. Am I gangster or murderer? Of what crime do I stand condemned? I made the whole world weep at the beauty of my land. Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, the powers of darkness will in time be crushed by the spirit of light. [Music] We hope you've enjoyed this expanding horizons podcast. These podcasts are the intellectual property of the presenter. They can be used only with the express permission and appropriate acknowledgement of the presenter. This permission can be obtained by emailing admin@unitariansa.org.au. Please feel free to leave a comment or visit us on Facebook or Twitter by searching SA Unitarians or by visiting our website at unitariansa.org.au. [Music] (gentle music) [MUSIC PLAYING]