of Vladivostok, though the last pocket of White resistance in the Far East capitulated only in June 1923. The events of the civil war form the backdrop of most of book 2 of Doctor Zhivago.
13. Mary Magdalene: One of the followers of Jesus, and, according to all four Gospels, the first or one of the first to see him after his resurrection (Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–10; Luke 24:1– 11; John 20:1–18).
PART SEVEN
1. coupons … distribution center: As a result of the acute shortages that followed the war and the revolution, the authorities of the first socialist republic created closed stores where the privileged could obtain supplies in exchange for special coupons. The practice continued throughout the Soviet period.
2. kerenki: A nickname for banknotes issued by the Provisional Government in 1917 and by the Russian state bank until 1919, from the name of Alexander Kerensky (see part 5, note 2).
3. labor conscripts from Petrograd: By a decree issued in December 1918, all able- bodied citizens of the RSFSR were obliged to work on state construction projects. The name of St. Petersburg was changed to Petrograd in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. In 1924 it became Leningrad, and in 1991 it became St. Petersburg again.
4. stormy petrels: In 1901, Maxim Gorky (see part 2, note 7) published a poem entitled “The Song of the Stormy Petrel,” in which the petrel symbolizes the working class as a revolutionary force. He was arrested for publishing it but soon set free. The poem, which was one of Lenin’s favorites, became a battle song of the revolution.
5. Pugachevism … Pushkin’s perception … Aksakovian: Emelian Pugachev (1742– 1775) was a Don Cossack who led a rebellion in 1773–1774, claiming the throne under the pretense that he was the tsar Peter III. Alexander Pushkin wrote The History of Pugachev (1834) and a fictional treatment of the same events in his short novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836). The Aksakov family, the father Sergei (1791–1859) and his two sons, Konstantin (1817–1860) and Ivan (1823–1886), were writers belonging to the group known as Slavophiles, who favored the native and local traditions of Russian life as opposed to Western influences. Sergei Aksakov, who was born in Ufa, the capital of Bashkiria, over a thousand miles east of Moscow on the border of Asia, gives a detailed description of Russian patriarchal life, hunting, fishing, flora, and fauna in his Family Chronicle (1856).
6. kulaks: The word kulak, Russian for “fist,” was a derogatory name applied to well-off peasants who owned their own land, a group that emerged after the agricultural reforms of 1906. The Bolsheviks declared them the “class enemy” of poor peasants and subjected them to various forms of persecution and extermination.
7. ataman: A general title given to Ukrainian military leaders, related to the word hetman, and possibly derived from the German Hauptmann. During the Russian Civil War it was used as a title for various Cossack leaders and acquired a negative tone.
8. the Greens: See part 6, note 12.
9. the Cheka: An abbreviation of the Russian words for Extraordinary Commission (the full title was All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage), the first Soviet state security organization (secret police), founded in December 1917 and headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, known as “Iron Felix” (1877–1926). By 1921 the Cheka numbered 200,000 men. In 1922 it became the GPU (State Political Administration).
Book Two
PART EIGHT
1. St. Akulina’s day: St. Aquilina of Byblos (281–293), martyred during the reign of Diocletian, is commemorated on April 7/20.
2. a Social Democrat: See part 4, note 1.
3. the Demidovs: The family of the Demidovs was one of the most distinguished in Russia, second only to the imperial family in wealth and known for its philanthropy. Anatoli Nikolaevich Demidov (1813–1870) acquired the Italian title of Prince of San Donato and built a villa in Florence.
4. Blessed is the man …: The first half of the sentence is from the opening of Psalm 1 (“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked …”); the rest is a jocular rhyme.
5. Suvorov: Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov (1729–1800) was reputed never to have lost a battle. He was only the fourth man in Russian history to be awarded the highest rank, that of generalissimo. The fifth and last was Joseph Stalin.
6. SR … Constituent Assembly: On November 12, 1917, an All-Russian Constituent Assembly was democratically elected to draw up a constitution for Russia. The SR Party won a large majority of the seats, almost twice as many as the Bolsheviks. After meeting for one day on January 5, 1918, the assembly was dissolved on orders from Lenin.
7. our White-Stoned Mother: Moscow was known endearingly as “the White-Stoned Mother” of the Russian people, because of the white stone used in building the churches of the Kremlin.
8. Hebrew youths … Mazeppa: The book of Daniel 3:8–30 tells the story of the three Hebrew men thrown into the fiery furnace by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar for refusing to worship his golden idol. Mazeppa (1644–1709) was a hetman of the Cossacks in the Ukraine, who first served Peter the Great and then joined the Swedes against him. The name came to be a general derogatory epithet.
9. the dark waters … secrecy: The phrases and rhythms are loosely based on Psalm 18:11: “He made darkness his covering around him, his canopy thick clouds dark with water.”
10. the year of Griboedov’s death: Alexander Griboedov (b. 1795), Russian poet, playwright, and diplomat, author of the verse comedy Woe from Wit, was killed on February 11, 1829, while on an official mission to Persia.
PART NINE
1. Tyutchev: Pasternak felt a strong affinity with the work of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–1873), whose poem “The Summer of 1854” Zhivago slightly misquotes from memory.
2. Dostoevsky’s Demons … the Communist Manifesto: Dostoevsky’s 1872 novel was, among other things, a forceful attack on the radicals and nihilists of the later nineteenth century. The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and published in 1848, set forth the revolutionary program of the German Communist League.
3. Pray fervently … he is her glory: The first words come from an Orthodox prayer to the Mother of God; the rest are from the Song of the Mother of God (the Magnificat), Luke 1:46–55.
