Doktor Živago

Doctor Zhivago (1957) is an epochal novel by Russian Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak and one of the most important works of world literature of the 20th century. The plot covers dramatic decades of Russian history — from World War I and the fall of the Empire, through the October Revolution, to the bloody Civil War and the establishment of the Soviet regime. The central character, the physician and poet Yuri Zhivago, is a witness and victim of these violent social fractures that crush the destinies of individuals.

Constructed as an epic chronicle and a deeply lyrical novel, Doctor Zhivago tells the unforgettable love story between Yuri and Larisa (Lara) Antipova. Their intimate, passionate and tragic relationship unfolds against a backdrop of ideological madness, hunger and violence. Zhivago refuses to accept collectivist dogmas, striving at all costs to preserve his own individuality, humanity, artistic integrity and metaphysical understanding of the world.

The novel is given special artistic value by a poetic addition at the very end — a cycle of 25 poems attributed to Yuri Zhivago himself. Through motifs of nature, love, the Passion of Christ and the Resurrection, Pasternak elevates a personal tragedy into a timeless meditation on the meaning of existence, history and the immortality of the human spirit.