Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
So excited to be here! By way of an introduction, I’m starting a Sunday evening book club.
Something unheard-of, something unprecedented is approaching. Before it overtakes us, here is my wish for you. When it comes, God grant that we do not lose each other and do not lose our souls.
This excerpt comes from the most recent, and in my opinion the best, English translation of Boris Pasternak’s epic novel Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak was a poet and that is clear in many passages, but he also portrays in terrifying prose the gritty, gruesome reality of life in Russia during and after the First World War when communism supplanted a people’s entire mode of existence.
While I would recommend this literary work to anyone (because it changed my life and set me on the course I am now on), I believe that it has particular value for a class of people we know well: the seemingly well-meaning, socialism-idealizing liberals. The open secret of my life is that I was a Democrat at the start of college. I soon soured on the party and on the principles of progressivism and I’ve never really looked back. So, I know how a lot of liberals think, or tell themselves that what they’re doing is thinking. And if they took the few evenings it would require to read Doctor Zhivago, I believe it could change their lives too. I’ll offer a few examples.
The title character Yury Zhivago is conscripted into the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. He is forced to stay in their camp, divided from the people he loves.
Despite the absence of fetters, chains, and guards, the doctor was forced to submit to his unfreedom.
While this might be too subtle for the casually Marxist left-winger, I think every human being shudders a bit at the word “unfreedom.” It’s not a word in any dictionary, but we all know what it means. And the idea that a person can be unfree without chains only makes it that much more frightening. Liberty takes centuries to preserve and seconds to steal.
Then untruth came to the Russian land. The main trouble, the root of the future evil, was loss of faith in the value of one’s own opinion. People imagined that the time when they followed the urgings of their moral sense was gone, that now they had to sing the general tune and live by foreign notions imposed on everyone. The dominion of the ready-made phrase began to grow—first monarchistic, then revolutionary. This social delusion was all-enveloping, contagious.
If we’re talking about ready-made phrases, I would hope that “Yes, we can” would pop into our readers’ heads, not necessarily from any sense of self-awareness, but more because it’s hard-wired into their nervous system now from believing so fervently in it.
The ban on private enterprise was lifted, and free trade was permitted within strict limits. Deals were done on the scale of commodity circulation among junkmen in a flea market. The dwarf scope of it encouraged speculation and led to abuse. The petty scrambling of the dealers produced nothing new, it added nothing material to the city’s desolation. Fortunes were made by pointlessly selling the same things ten times over.
Even aspiring wealth redistributors have to understand this devastating and absurd result of subverting the economy, disrupting the market, and spending years making “profits” a dirty word to where people no longer understand it.
And finally, not to deprive you or our nannying friends of a glimpse of the central love story, here is how Lara thinks of Yury:
She wanted, with his help, to break free, if only for a short time, into the fresh air, out of the abyss of sufferings that entangled her, to experience, as she once had, the happiness of liberation.
Pasternak uses the language of freedom throughout the novel. The point he makes is that love and a personal, private existence are more powerful life-giving forces than the cold, cruel mechanisms of the state, even and especially when the state claims to be benevolent. We should be thankful we don’t live in a Soviet society and we should be wary of people touting the same supposed ideals of enforced egalitarianism.
So, here’s my question for our club: What work of fiction (not all Ayn Rand, please) would you recommend for those with more collectivizing tendencies? Are there enough works of fiction out there?
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Comments:
Feb '11
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
It's not a novel, but Eugenia Ginzburg's story of her arrest and exile to Siberia reads like one. There are two books: Into the Whirlwind, and Within the Whirlwind.
Sep '10
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Maura Pennington, Guest Contributor
It's not a coincidence that I've ended up on Ricochet with Diane Ellis after studying Russian together. There's something about the literature of a people who never experienced life free from an autocrat. They understand the human condition with more devastating accuracy than anyone else. There's a message of freedom in all of it.
I meant to raise this point before: I read a fair whack of Dostoevsky all at once only when I knew what I was looking for and had access to the Richard Pevear translations. Without a Russian studies background like you and Diane have, I doubt I would have attempted them unless Richard John Neuhaus had mentioned them at First Things. And I found Demons a freakier novel than Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov.
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Flashback is scifi writer Dan Simmons's dystopian look into a near future where the citizenry of a debt-ridden United States never bothered to look up the definition of the word "unsustainable" until it was too late.
An interesting wrinkle: most U.S. citizens are addicted to a drug, Flashback, that permits the user to relive with perfect fidelity any past experience. Think of the addictiveness of crack cocaine and then crank the dial up to eleven.
A perfect antidote to "yes, we can," Flashback extends the current sovereign debt trend line past the point of inevitable collapse and details a possible aftermath.
Dec '10
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Lord of the Flies freaked me out as a kid and made me wary of mobs of young people. Reading it again as a teenager destroyed any notions of wisdom in youth or wisdom in group-think (thankfully) which inoculated me before going to college. I do see how a different lesson might be taken away from that book; that credentialed managers are necessary to heard the masses least they devolve into the racist, sexist, bigoted troglodytes they really are.
As to your second question, Steinbeck immediately comes to mind. He could powerfully paint a picture of suffering and misery and make the case for the inhumanity of profit driven capitalism.
Jack London also attempted this, but not as successfully in my opinion. His work Martin Eden tried to argue the life of individualism was lonely and not fulfilling and lead to only one logical conclusion (I wont give away the ending).
I am torn as to whether fiction could actually change my world view or political philosophy. Appeals to emotion, while they may tug on the heart-strings, have never made me challenge my own fundamental beliefs.
May '10
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Now, hang on. Great literature is not "appeal to emotion". It touches a human depth deeper than superficial reasoning, but it is eminently rational.
Dec '11
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Milan Kundera's The Joke.
Oct '11
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Dr. Zhivago is indeed impressive. A novel I personally would consider on a similar plain is Quo Vadis.
For non-fiction that resemble novels some conservative nominees are Frankl's memoirs, Man's Search for Meaning and McKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
Oct '11
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Since we are also doing movies, then "THX 1138" by George Lucas depicts the ultimate progressive society. The book that set me free was "Half Past Human" by T. J. Bass, published in 1969. Again, an egalitarian society carried to its ultimate extreme. Yes, I cast the first vote of my life for Johnson, an act I rue to this day. Who wants to live in a hive where everyone is equal and shares equally, but are no more at liberty than ants. Evidently, the OWS people.
May '10
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Maura Pennington, Guest Contributor
I think fiction can enlighten people in non-political ways and it works for both men and women.
Agreed. Great fiction has a way of sneaking by a person's defenses.
Maura Pennington, Guest Contributor
It's not a coincidence that I've ended up on Ricochet with Diane Ellis after studying Russian together. There's something about the literature of a people who never experienced life free from an autocrat.
Let me turn the question around. As someone with such a strong interest in Russian literature and (I presume) culture, what stories might help Russians to rekindle all that Soviet domination stamped out of them? From the outside, Russians seem like a people who have succumbed to despair and cynicism.
Jul '10
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Fiction should be a last resort.
Have them read actual works by Those Who have actually experienced it: "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzenitsyn to name One. If actual experiences, reality, don't change minds nothing will.
Perhaps suggest a "vacation" to North Korea to "Witness" their ideas.
Edited on December 5, 2011 at 2:52amMay '11
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Perhaps slightly off topic, but still in the ballpark is Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. That's the one I always think of when the socialist left starts making their benevolent plans. (I still wonder how the guy who wrote one of the most libertarian-leaning stories in history became such a left-wing fanatic at the end... Go figure.)
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
We've got a lot of dystopian lit going on here, but we've forgotten the quintessential tract: Zamyatin's "We." It's a very quick read by Russian novel standards and was openly the inspiration for Orwell and Huxley.
Feb '11
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Lord of the Flies was mentioned. There's an interesting counterpoint to this book, written at about the same time: Robert Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky," in which a group of adolescents are stranded on a faraway planet and actually establish a functioning society.
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Fantastic question! Here's the funny thing: Russians know their own literature. They are known for being able to quote whole passages of Pushkin. Can any random person on the street here recite the whole "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy? They were censored under tsars and then more fiercely under soviet regimes, but they had a good network of underground publishing. Their literature is very important to them.
And I think the trend of controversial lit is continuing. Have you heard of the best-selling Nightwatch series by Sergei Lukyanenko? They're full of twists and turns and are profoundly Russian in spirit. But they criticize the current upside-down state of capitalism there now.
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Mike Visser:
I am torn as to whether fiction could actually change my world view or political philosophy. Appeals to emotion, while they may tug on the heart-strings, have never made me challenge my own fundamental beliefs. · Dec 4 at 4:51pm
Case in point from my life: When I read "Jane Eyre" as a fifteen-year-old I fundamentally changed my belief in babysitting being boring.
Dec '11
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
I read that short story in middle school and to this day, vividly remember the image of the ballerina in chains. Great choice.
Jimmy Carter:
Have them read actual works by Those Who have actually experienced it: "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzenitsyn to name One. If actual experiences, reality, don't change minds nothing will.
On that note, I would suggest anything written by the tenacious Natan Sharansky.
Sep '10
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Maura Pennington, Guest Contributor
Fantastic question! Here's the funny thing: Russians know their own literature. They are known for being able to quote whole passages of Pushkin. Can any random person on the street here recite the whole "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy? They were censored under tsars and then more fiercely under soviet regimes, but they had a good network of underground publishing. Their literature is very important to them.
And I think the trend of controversial lit is continuing. Have you heard of the best-selling Nightwatch series by Sergei Lukyanenko? They're full of twists and turns and are profoundly Russian in spirit. But they criticize the current upside-down state of capitalism there now. · Dec 4 at 6:55pm
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Chekhov.
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
EThompson
Jimmy Carter:
Have them read actual works by Those Who have actually experienced it: "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzenitsyn to name One. If actual experiences, reality, don't change minds nothing will.
On that note, I would suggest anything written by the tenacious Natan Sharansky. · Dec 4 at 7:04pm
Another unsolicited non-fiction book to add to the list:
How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic
Powerful, life-changing book. And it made me weep at parts.
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
Jimmy Carter: Fiction should be a last resort.
Have them read actual works by Those Who have actually experienced it: "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzenitsyn to name One. If actual experiences, reality, don't change minds nothing will.
Perhaps suggest a "vacation" to North Korea to "Witness" their ideas. · Dec 4 at 5:51pm
Edited on Dec 04 at 05:52 pm
Jimmy, I respectfully disagree. Many years ago I made it through nearly two volumes of The Gulag Archipelago solely by gritting my teeth and taking my medicine. On the other hand, Solzenitsyn's novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brought the grim reality of the gulag home to me via a gripping narrative that I found impossible to put down.
If I could I would novelize medical textbooks. Facts are more easily remembered when connected to emotions and, for me, stories do the trick.
Edited on December 5, 2011 at 4:47amNov '10
Re: Lesson for Liberals: Doctor Zhivago
I believe that the novel to which Mr. Caleb Taylor refers is C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, and I agree with him that it is a damning indictment of "advanced", that is, progressive thinking.
I wish that I knew more of the fiction of G. K. Chesterton, for I feel almost certain that he touches on this subject somewhere in that body of work.
In both Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien (the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) there is salvation from the approaching scythe of "social science", i. e., progressivism, and the march of the totalitarian socialist state through attention to the simple things of ordinary life, such as the the focus of the inhabitants of the Shire.