Skip to main content

The Forest Brotherhood


Much of the second half of the novel plays out during the civil war that ravaged Russia from 1918 to 1922.  Yury found himself a captive of Liberius Mikulitsin's Red Army faction, which was fighting against Kolchak's White Army.  Life was pretty miserable for Yury during this time, as Liberius' faction pretty much housed themselves in earth huts in the great Russian taiga, hoping to hold out against the advances of the White Army until reinforcements came.  Yury tended to the wounded as best he could given the limited supplies.  He had support from a Czech paramedic who had joined the Communists and a couple of other interns.

Pasternak uses these chapters to highlight the ravages of the civil war, noting the towns that were under siege, in particular Holycross.  All these towns along "The Highway" found themselves torn between the Red and White Armies, with split allegiances.  Many had been burned by one faction or the other, and morale among the armies was low as they came across the burnt-out remnants of their former villages.

Yet Liberius remained hopelessly optimistic.  The young commander, son of Mikulitsin who guarded the state, had chosen Yury to confide in.  Yury was unconvinced that any good will come out of this war, but as long as he found himself captive he had to pay deference to the commander.

Yury had twice tried to escape, only to be run down each time.  He had become ever more fatalistic in his views.  He was asked at one point to counsel an ailing soldier, one of Liberius' subordinate officers, who was suffering from "the creeps," a sense of morbid doom, which ultimately led him to butcher his family rather than have them fall victim to Kolchak's forces.

Yury was also forced to witness an execution of soldiers who had operated an illicit distillery, only to have the distillery rebuilt as to have alcohol for medicinal purposes.  Liberius himself had become addicted to cocaine, depleting Yury's much needed supply.

One can see how the Soviet censors wouldn't have been pleased at all with these passages, as Pasternak painted the revolutionary army in anything but heroic terms.  Instead, he painted a bleak portrait of chaos, confusion and ever diminishing morale until Kolchak's army is finally defeated and these red factions finally emerged from their forest hideouts.

Comments

  1. Gintaras, thanks for these beautiful posts. I finally received my book yesterday -- I think it had to come all the way from Russia. I'm sort of booked up as it were right now, but look forward to reading this as time allows.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks av. Will post two more posts on the remaining chapters. Not quite sure what to make of the poems. A bit odd to see them all placed at the end. Would have preferred to see at least some of them woven into his chapters at Varykino, where Zhivago penned them. Coming at the end, they come across as an Epitaph.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ward No. 6

Ward No. 6 is a short story written by Chekhov in 1892.  It has appeared in various collections of Chekhov short stories, including The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories translated by Constance Garnett in 1921.  In this story, Chekhov explores the inner working of a run-down lunatic asylum in a provincial town.  He  introduces the readers to a coarse porter who speaks mostly with his fists, various patients, a doctor who presides over this ward, and expresses his thoughts with a local postmaster.  It was recently made into a movie , featuring Vladimir Ilyin.  Here's a clip . There's also this very recent short film (30 min.) by Suzana Purkovic, with English subtitles.

Light and Dark

I'm still trying to sort out the ending.  The story had to end tragically but was surprised that Rogozhin actually sought forgiveness in Myshkin after what he had done to Nastya, although I think that Dostoevsky intended the two to be read as one, along similar lines as The Double .  He kept Rogozhin a shadowy figure throughout the novel, ever lurking in the dark of the Prince's soul.  Try as he might, Prince Myshkin could not alter events and thus the fantasy world he had lived in upon returning to Russia crumbled before his eyes, leaving him at a total loss as how to reconcile himself with it. Once again, Dostoevsky plumbs great depths of the human soul.  This is a psychological drama told in theatrical terms, perfectly suited for the stage.  Characters appear and disappear as if moving from the shadows of the stage.  I can see the "green bench" as the central stage piece.  In the final part, one gets the sense that Lebedev is orchestrating events, and may even

The Morning of Our Motherland

I was watching a History channel special on Socialist Realism art of the Soviet Union and this was one of the grand canvases that is now stuffed away in the Tretyakov State Gallery .  The painter was Fyodor Shurpin and he had a wonderful eye for detail, right down to the secret service black car on the road to Stalin's right.  To the left, one sees a row of combines turning over the field of golden wheat, which became symbolic of Stalin's Soviet Union.  Утро нашей Родины is from 1949, with Stalin radiating a post-war confidence.  It is also known as  Dawn of our Fatherland and other titles. Shurpin was one of the better artists to carry over from the pre-war years.  The narrator pointed out how socialist realist art changed dramatically as a result of the war, becoming much more static and propagandist in appearance.  He pointed to two stops along the Moscow subway as an example of this divide.  Here, Shurpin essentially transposes Stalin for an earlier "Mother"