Doctor Zhivago is to the Cold War as Gone With the Wind is to the American Civil War. Both stories reduce epochal events to love stories.
Yuri Zhivago and Rhett Butler aren’t much different as characters; neither led brave men in desperate battle, but both engaged in very dangerous activities, showed leadership, and gained respect from the men around them in doing so.
Both Lara and Scarlett had other love interests, Pasha and Ashley. Pasha is the lank-haired, bespectacled intellectual who Lara marries and cheats on; he becomes the Bolshevik general, Strelnikov, who terrorizes the Russian countryside with an armored train and a brigade of Cossack cavalry.
Ashley Wilkes, Scarlett’s true love interest, was an extraordinarily mild-mannered and gentle man, but he serves out his war as a Confederate cavalry officer and lives to walk back home and tell the tale.
In reality, Yuri Zhivago and Ashley Wilkes are much alike, as are Pasha/Strelnikov and Rhett Butler.
Lara and Scarlett are, however, very different. Both are beautiful, charming women; Scarlett is arrogant and demanding, Lara is submissive.
So, that’s the background; love stories in the context of epochal events. Now let’s look to the epochal events.
Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” had to be sneaked out of the Soviet Union, as had his protagonist’s poetry.
The book was published in the West in 1957. I’ll confess to only having given it a scan since it was fashionable, and I’m not much on Russian literature; Russian to English is a difficult and clumsy transition.
I saw the movie as a young and callow fellow when it first came out in 1965 or so, and I didn’t get much out of it, but Julie Christie is stunning, as is the scenery, though none of it is in Russia. I’ve watched it several times since.
Pasternak had a subtle and thorough understanding of popular revolutions and of the communist left; we can learn from it.
To me, the interesting characters in Doctor Zhivago are not the protagonists, wives, lovers, and love interests, but rather the Bolshevik apparatchiks and activists, and the Red Army zealots.
The regular characters just want to get on with their lives; Zhivago and his family are not Bolshevik, in fact, they’re closer to royalists. Lara’s family is petit bourgeois. All the other characters are “working class” Russians, the feeding ground of the Bolsheviks.
Now for some predicates: Bolshevik roughly translates as majority. The Bolsheviks were, perhaps, a majority of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Does that party name ring a bell? The Marxists were a decided minority in Russian politics, but they were loud and violent. The Bolsheviks were the loudest and most violent, but at most the activist and apparatchik cohort number a few tens of thousands in a country of almost 100 million people in 1917.
For me, the central thematic character is Komarovsky, Lara’s wealthy lover. Komarovsky is a detestably corrupt and venal man. He rapes the virginal Lara and then makes her his mistress. He is wealthy, connected, and the sort of apolitical that wealthy and connected people often are; he goes where the wind blows.
In Marxist terms, Komarovsky is the archetypal bourgeoisie, yet he allies with the Bolsheviks and they with him. One of my favorite lines of the movie is when Zhivago asks Komarovsky if the Bolsheviks trust him, and Komarovsky replies: “They trust no one, but they find me useful.”
The essential fact of The Russian Revolution is that the Russian people didn’t become Bolsheviks or even adopt communism; given the chance, the Russians tended their own gardens. The people who became Bolsheviks were the economic, political, and bureaucratic elites, because they wanted to remain useful.
To bring this ramble home to today, we have a few thousand anarchist/communist apparatchiks and a few thousand useful idiots, mostly mind-numbed leftist college students and opportunistic gangstas looking for something to steal. These people are inconsequential.
Unless you own it, nobody cares about a mini-mart in the ghetto getting burned. What is consequential is stupid, linguini-spined politicians deciding that they have to support the Bolsheviks.
Just like America, Russia was a vast and virtually ungovernable country. It is as true today as it was then, if the cops know your name, you should move. That’s what the Zhivagos did; they ran from Moscow to a country estate in the Urals controlled by the White Russians.
The Kerensky government of Russia ceded control of the country to the Bolsheviks because they simply didn’t have the courage to confront them.
Like today’s Republicans and conservatives they liked fighting each other more than fighting their true enemy, but they had the luxury of moving their wealth to a Swiss bank and living well in the café culture of Paris, London, or New York.
We don’t have that option; we have no place to go; we are the last place to go for human liberty.
These stupid children are not a majority; the only people who care what they think are stupid communist mayors in New York, Portland, or Seattle, and, yes, Anchorage.
But their media lackeys tout them as some majority opinion in the country. They have no power to effect anything unless the political “elites” capitulate to them, which they indeed might.
That is what happened in Russia. The Russian people didn’t become Bolsheviks; the ruling elites did, and we’re headed there. There are plenty of Komarovskys who are more than happy to be useful.
What we in America have to confront is that we have almost no place to go.
A couple in Missouri defended their home with legal arms from an armed mob who’d broken into a gated community, and a Soros-funded District Attorney is bringing charges against them. They’ll be acquitted, but they will have to go to the state Supreme Court or maybe even the US Supreme Court to accomplish it; there goes their life savings. How long before I come home to find that Comrade Berkowitz’ Equity Commissar has appropriated my home and installed three homeless families in it because s/he’s concluded I don’t need that much space?
Someone once said that democracy rests on three boxes; the soap box, the ballot box, and the cartridge box. The left has silenced the soap box and is close to silencing the ballot box. That leaves only one box.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
Fantastic article. I was told today by someone who says what’s the harm in acquiescing. This clearly spells it out. He listened to some of my arguments of the dangers then and told me I’m an inspiration. If I got through to him just a little bit causing him to think about everything that is happening I have done something good today. I have always been a peacemaker to both sides of any argument but I’m finding that I can no longer be that peacemaker. I must stand up for truth to save our country for my children and grandchildren. It’s time for all of us who are silent and go about our business making no waves or thinking we are only one voice to find our voice and speak truth!! Together we can change the course they are setting.
Excellent comment, Sheryl. One problem: Your children and grandchildren may be on the other side due to our Leftist public education system. I sure hope not.
Fortunately my children have been taught to think for themselves and are teaching their children the same. It wasn’t until my oldest went into much higher education and got a PhD that unfortunately he became extremely radical. I do walk the middle ground in that relationship but I never back down from my belief system.
One of the finest pieces I have read in a long time. Only you omit one critical group: the Kulaks. They only wanted enough to feed their families PLUS maybe a little to get ahead. Call them the Middle Class. They didn’t care about politics or power, just their families, their communities and often their church. Once securing power, the elites came for them. Neighbor hung neighbor from the nearest tree in hope of pleasing the elites for just a few more crumbs to feed their starving families.
Paul Harvey once said that the time will come in America when neighbor will fight neighbor for a can of peas. These new Bolsheviks are leading us there with the ‘useful idiots’ as their tools.
The Kulaks and the Ukraine Famine were later than the seminal events of the Russian Revolution, and mostly Stalin’s work.
Merely delayed victims as the tyrants consolidated their totalitarian power.
Love my guns, respect my guns, my rights, etc..
But pardon my @#$#, but morons like the couple in Missouri will cost serious gun owners our freedoms.
They bought guns, no training, no idea what , when, or how to use those weapons for protection and safety.
First the should have worn the weapons, sling, holster, never brandish, point or threaten, not toys, not for fun.
Alaska , our folks understand guns, they are tools we need for food and protection. not to play and point. we would have kept them on our persons, ready if needed.
The couple in Missouri, did nothing except fire up the left, it was a stupid display and makes us all ( gun owners ) look bad.
We need to start education of gun owners and demostrate proper care and handling of our weapons in all 50 states, instead of walking out with no plan and starting sh@t just to make a point.
Respond to demonstrators with an open display, sling or holster and then, tell them you are there to protect their rights, as they should protect yours.
That’s how we win…
Wrong. It’s their property. Not brandishing. They can do what the want. Castle doctrine
I don’t know if I agree with your last paragraph, but the rest of your comment is very close to my thoughts, except I was too cowardly to mention training! That won’t go over well with gun owners.
The 2nd Am. doesn’t say that you have the right to keep and bear arms if you’re smart and well-trained. Anybody with any firearms experience knows that neither of them had any firearms training or experience, of if they did, it didn’t take. That said, they were still within their rights and brandishing doesn’t qualify as deadly force. You can respond to brandishing with deadly force, but you might find yourself before a jury that doesn’t like you deciding whether your decision was a reasonable belief.
I don’t think that the rabble who are protesting/rioting give a damn about the rights of anyone who is not “with” them.
The St Louis case will never see a court room. They were on their own property with is protected by castle. All they did was stop the bunnies from looting and burning their house. Perfectly within their rights.
Darn it Greg, “bunnies” is beneath you. You’re educated, there’s no reason to get in the ditch with them. Besides, in battle it’s always better to maintain the high ground. As for St. Louis…You know, it’s not until I started commenting on MRAK that I realized God has had me witness alot of things in my life, which if I keep telling you about, them you will surely think I’m lying. Let’s say I have some practical experience in this regards. If this couple had been cops, they could have gotten away with opening fire and claiming they felt threatened. It wouldn’t matter if the people were black, white, or disabled. However, when it comes to civilians, the law seems to make a distinction between “perceived threat” and actual threat. I can’t explain why, I’m just telling you what I’ve observed. St. Louis falls under the “perceived threat”. In the footage I saw, the man stands on the porch holding the AR across his chest. If that’s all he did then he would not have been charged at all. However, the wife was over a line. You can’t actually point a gun at somebody unless they are an ACTUAL threat. An actual threat would have taken that pistol from her in two seconds flat and shot both of them with their own gun. I’m not explaining it well, but I know she could be charged with multiple counts of reckless endangerment, misdemeanor or even felony assault. Then they’d hit him with ‘accessory’. Like you, the shop teacher, I want and need everything to be precise…but that is not the law! And as far as “rights”, the only rights you have are the ones you’re willing to fight for. In my case; 11 YEARS of fighting the State in court. It sucks Greg, but that’s the way it is.
You are right. When it comes to burning private property and cops being falsely accused, and statues being torn down, along with our gutless politicians turning the other cheek for the sake of reelection, I tend to want to get down in the muck and along it out. Fighting the govt hasn’t got us anything. It never does. This time, this day, I fear we will need to fight or forever be willing to shutup. At this point, I almost welcome the fight and that is bad.
I think the threat was there. They had broken in, a people were scared. That is pretty much all it takes.
One of the main reasons I told this story was because it actually happened. I had the moral high ground, their being here was wrong, wrong, wrong. Then there’s an under current to all this. I taught the punk to hunt, and my teacher is actually considered the greatest big game hunter of all time (that era is long over!). It was like he was hunting me, and in his head it made him better than my teacher? Point is I know how it feels to want to pick up that gun and wipe that smirk off that scumbag face. It wasn’t just about him though…there were a dozen armed people there. By picking up that gun I would have been committing them to an actual war! Though no one on MRAK is advocating a war, it’s clear that you ‘guys’ see the possibility of one coming. So my overall point is, make sure you understand that when you pick up that “cartridge box” it will drag a whole lot of people in with you. It wasn’t time back then, but if it’s time now you’ re going to want to be able to say: I (we), tried everything in our power to avoid this…for the sake of your own conscious that statement needs to be true.
I have the movie on video cassette. Watched the Doctor Z movie several times. Time for another viewing. A gentle reminder. I’ve recommended watching the movie to several people if they want to really know what’s going on. But now that I’ve read this I’ll have that theme in my head for the next 2 days. Thanks Art.
A disturbing read !! Little room for optimism or the existence of a great nation whose strengths are many. Nonetheless a great “divide” seems to be occurring which is difficult for me to understand or accept.
I recommend you buy a gun and learn how to use it if you don’t already.
Not only learn how to use it, be not afraid to use it.
You missed a step there Jerry, right in the middle…know when to use it.
You said it.
Great column Art. I watched Dr. Zhivago, again, on a ride back from a Germany two years ago. Julie Christie and Omar Sharif do such a great job they tend to overshadow the story line. Marxism sucks and socialism isn’t much better.
About the only thing that is clear to me is that many of us need to get MUCH more passionate and assertive in our defense of the American experiment/experience and Western civilization. The “fundamental transformation” envisioned by many of the Left is nothing more than totalitarianism. The culture war is a fight to the death. The “critical race theory” babble is absolute nonsense. I will fight, physically if necessary, for my family history, culture and country. The gloves are off. The fight is real; hearts and minds are being won and lost right now. Time to go into battle.
Good job Art. I might add or expand a bit upon your thought. Yuri and his family escape the insanity in Moscow and travel to their Dacha in the countryside. This works for a time….
Many in the US today ascribe to the Hank Williams Jr. School of thought ” country boy can survive” . Trouble is , even in vast Russia the Bolsheviks eventually managed to bring their destruction to far flung Dachas. There really isn’t anyplace to hide. Fight or Flight are primal options, sadly we really have only one option here.
No place to run to? The big mouth elitists who told the country that if Trump or some other Republican wins election they would leave are still here!
We are at war with these marxists, so all is fair right? There can be no nice war. It is our history and way of life we are defending. All we are doing right now is sizing each other up before we cross that line in the sand. People better decide which side they are on.
Spot on, Art. America Has reached a crucible in governance with parallels to the 1917 Russian Revolution. Led by a small group,of elitists that seemed to concentrate power at the expense of the people. They succeeded. The end result was over 23 million killed by Stalin. One should watch the 2017 movie, The Death of Stalin, to see how it all ends. Not good. America is the beacon of liberty to the world. We must not allow a small, power-hungry groups of anarchists destroy our freedoms. Art tells it like it is, there is no place left to go. We must stand for America and we must do it now.
It’s quaint that you think the left is the only, or even major, threat to our freedom and way of life. As also is the notion of many MRAK readers that the fight against the threat has only just started. You’re like people who have finally woken up to a fire in our house when I (and others) have been screaming at you for years; “FIRE”. Now that you’ve FINALLY woken up to the threat, do you guys help put the fire out? No. You: I told you them damn commies was going to set our house on fire, didn’t I say that Mabelov ? And: We need to buy more guns and ammo to fight this fire!
So lets get real, no more fictional characters, no far away places like Moscow or St. Louis.
Some years my only income was from dealing coins. In Alaska it was “Northern Treasures”, but I went back to Ohio in 96 and it was “Curiosity Shop”. Like any business owner, I kept receipts for everything, including my inventory. In Ohio I discovered ‘Antique Malls’ and quickly expanded my business, to the point I had to hire a CPA to do the books/taxes.
In 2000, my teacher wife and I returned to Alaska and built our dream home, right on the Yukon River in new Eagle Village. As happens, we were separated a year later, etc. She let a French-Canadian stay there who had a history/record of armed robbery and so naturally my coin inventory disappeared. In 2008, a member of Conoco/Phillips pipeline survey crew comes to me; We found your coins in the woods out near the Canadian border and turned them over to the Troopers. YAY, my way to make a living is restored, no more being poor. Wrong.
Trooper “Bad”, whom I’ve known his whole life and is not very bright, got it in his head that some poor broke hitchhiker lost that $40,000 (my cost!) worth of coins on the side of the road!!! So he thought no one would miss a few of the really expensive ones. The reality was Mr. French-Canadian has to leave the country every 6 months and didn’t want to carry them both ways over the border.
When I show up to claim my coins, Trooper Bad won’t let me see my coins, nor will he look at my briefcase full of receipts. There being past history between Bad and I, he’s been ordered by Sgt. Not So Bad to stay away from me. But 24 hours after realizing he’d been caught he shows up here with his buddy, Sgt. Bad, thus circumventing the chain of command.
He claims he was just walking past and “smelled what could only be over a quarter pound of budding marijuana”. This justified the State using a helicopter to take pictures from the air of my opaque greenhouse and getting a search warrant. There was NO budding marijuana, and the Troopers, DA, and Judge would all say on record that what was here was LEGAL…if it was found in my house, but it was found in my greenhouse. The State of Alaska’s position IS your outbuildings do NOT enjoy the same rights. Which means my problem was/is your problem, regardless of how you feel about MJ. Greg F is going on about “castle”, unless you live in the 4th Judicial you better not be shooting someone in your shed, or greenhouse, or detached garage. If you do, your lawyer will be pointing to Jordan vs State in your defense! (you’re welcome!)
I knew Sgt. Bad since he was a kid. I taught him how to hunt and as he admits to on search audio, I was with him when he got his first moose. He’d take his Trooper buddies out there every year and tell them how he’d been taught to hunt by one of the “River People”, who had spent ten years hunting with the greatest big game hunter in history (by Safari Club Int.)…yet he never told them who. Why the falling out? He found out I had Jewish blood! How dare I!!! How dare I not tell him before we became friends! Maybe I should have some identifying symbol sewn on to my clothes?!!!
So you got a thief and an anti-Semite with badges in your house with no lawful reason wanting to take MORE of your property and your freedom…what do you do? Time for all those guns and bullets right? As I it turns out I didn’t need my own. Sgt. Bad set his M-16, my favorite anti-personnel weapon, right there next me so he could put more loot in his thieves sack. For 45 minutes I was so tempted to take them all out with their own weapon. Also, someone saw the four Troopers turn into my secluded driveway and a dozen armed people started showing up. The three the Troopers became aware of were ordered to leave but they refused! All I had to do to start the revolution was pick up that gun.
ALL of you put yourself into this story as me. You really think you can pick that gun up? Against people you’ve known for years? I decided to try to fight it with a pen, and during that eleven years I sometimes regretted not picking it up.
In that epic battle, my brothers and sisters in Christ, and fellow Conservatives abandoned me because they couldn’t see how my right to smoke marijuana on my property had any bearing on them. You want to know what it cost US that you didn’t join me in battle 12 years ago? Mc Cain as President! You think I can’t possibly connect the dots between my “Trooper troubles” and Mc Cain but I CAN. Not today though. You better start realizing the enemy has been inside the gates for twenty years now and you don’t even recognize it or them, because you guys and gals have this habit of automatically taking a position 180* off of whatever a democrat or liberal says. Now the liberals have tapped into this problem, that you refuse to admit even exists, and they are turning the masses on us. Now instead of dealing with the real problem of bad cops in a rational manner, we have “defund” and BLM on one side and I have you guys being hysterical and screaming, guns, more guns and definitely more ammo. I probably just wasted my whole Saturday morn trying to save you guys. You REALLY don’t want to go where all this is heading.
Yes. No need to protect your tools or your dope with deadly force. Only your castle and/or your life. This isn’t new news.
In fact, the Missouri couple is soooooo guilty, the Governor says if convicted, he will give them a full pardon. Back to law school for you.
The couple are both attorneys so pretty sure they knew where their constitutional rights started and stopped. Opinions are like butts….
Antonio! Take a breath!
Aaaahhh….that’s me taking that breath you recommended. Good advice. So don’t think I have anger towards you, personally. That long rant was just the tip of the iceberg regarding the damage these ‘people’ have done. I want you to really try to imagine, oh wise OTA, if they did this to you. Took away your way to make a living (the coins OTA!) and then to cover up the crime came onto your property, into your face and stole more from you. Then when you complain about it, they retaliate and charge you with crimes and the expensive, time consuming legal battles last ELEVEN YEARS! Maybe that’s nothing to someone as old as you(!), but that’s a quarter of my adult life! On and on and on. I don’t think you’d be so calm if this happened to you! Thing is, Old, this is not some esoteric concept or distant thing, it’s here and now! Think about it, I inadvertently witnessed a Trooper commit a crime and they came for me. Planning on driving/walking around with your eyes closed? If you don’t do more than “Take a breath” it’ll be you or a loved one saying “I can’t breathe”.
Damn, Art, you can really write! Thanks for the great read, which tied the past, both historically and metaphorically, into a storyline fit for our times. Keep it up, dude!
Thank you for the kind words.
Yes, a very good article Art. I look forward to each column.
I apologize Art, if I hijacked your wonderful history lesson. You should know I don’t hang out at MRAK of my own will. Most of my time in Alaska has been happily spent without electricity or running water. I certainly didn’t want to be hooked up to that ‘evil’ internet! God insisted though, that I had to have internet in 2020!!! When I came across MRAK He said: “Here”. When I asked why, He replied : “The American election doesn’t go well, for ANYBODY”. This was in February, and it was hard for me to know exactly what He was talking about. However, knowing God was involved I tried to get you ‘guys’ to be accurate with your comments. Also, “American” made it clear to me that He wants you to be SEPARATE from the lower 48 Conservatives. You are not to be as they are.
It became increasingly evident to me what the Father meant. Your column, especially the last paragraph, was independent confirmation, from someone who wasn’t crazy or eager for it, that indeed the American election will not go well!!! It will not matter who wins, the other side will accuse the winner (if it even gets that far!) of cheating and it descends into violence. Each side blaming the other for the anarchy that follows. The table is being set as I write. Thing is, ‘we’ are not as righteous as some of us like to think! I am aware that, like me, you cannot compromise with the other side based on religious grounds, yet we must avoid hatred, untruths, and love of violence. Let God take care of it!
God loves me a great deal. He does so because when He tells me to drop everything and go live off the land in the wilderness of Alaska, I say “When do I leave?” And when He tells me to write something like this, which will cause some to think I’m crazy and others to hate me…I say OK. But the way I KNOW that God loves me is that people who attack me…die! No I’m not talking about you guys arguing with me, I’m talking about real threats. It has happened on a regular basis in my life, and though it sounds like ‘yeah right’…
In Eagle Village my immediate neighbor was an evil manipulative woman who was a contributing factor in the failure of my marriage. The same woman then became my neighbor in Tok where she upped her game and just outright tried to kill me! (7/12/14 AST). Her last attempt was in in February 2016. In May 2016 she was shot in the back with a hi-power rifle and then executed by her son.
Do you understand who ‘Sgt, Bad’ WAS, now? I complained all the way up the chain of command all the way up to multiple Governors…crickets. I then went to the other Troopers, told them the story and that Sgt. Bad’s arrogance was going to get them killed. They agreed, “The Karate Kid should not get in Mr Myagi’s face’. THEY caused his transfer…two months later his arrogance caused him to rush into a place without watching his flanks and (SAME as my evil neighbor). He took a descent Trooper down with him, one who hadn’t been AST long enough to understand why the other Troopers avoided going out with Trooper Bad.
The last filing I made in that court case was November of 2018. I wrote, God’s had enough of the States’ attack against me and if you don’t cease and desist AND restore my life to what it was, it’s going to go badly for you. I suggested that perhaps He’d “level the courthouse with an earthquake” or “cause Juneau to slide into the sea”! Certified copies to all parties, various State agencies and the Gov’s office. About five business days after all received, the earthquake. Including footage of courtroom being damaged.Coincidence? A major earthquake under an American city with NO deaths and NO serious injuries! Sounds like a gentle wake up call from God. Pretty sure now He’s more than a little upset about this Trooper thing because there’s one left, and he, and by extension, the Troopers, are still a threat to me. Unless those of you reading this become INVOLVED, then you will probably become part of the collateral damage in whatever is about to come. God will do whatever it takes to protect me, it’s that simple.
I. personally want nothing from you. I have no debt and only three small bills. I have happily not left my property in over a week and if I wanted I could remain here for a year. You guys want to start a civil war, it’s OK with me, I’ll watch from the porch!
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