Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [299]
PART FIVE
1. black earth region: The region of rich black soil (chernozem) extending from the northeast Ukraine across southern Russia.
2. Provisional Government: When the February revolution of 1917 (February 23–27/March 8–12) brought about the abdication of Nicholas II and the end of imperial Russia, a provisional government was created, composed of an alliance of non-Communist liberal and socialist parties headed by Prince Georgi Lvov (1861–1925), who was a Constitutional Democrat. In July 1917, Prince Lvov was replaced by the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970). The intent of the Provisional Government was to create a democratically elected executive and assembly, but its program was opposed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and in October 1917 the Provisional Government was brought down by the Bolshevik revolution.
3. the Time of Troubles: The period in Russian history from the death of the last representative of Rurik’s dynasty, the tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, in 1598, to the election in 1613 of the tsar Mikhail Romanov (1596–1645), founder of the new dynasty. The government was taken over by Boris Godunov (1551–1605), brother-in-law and chief adviser to the late tsar. His rule, from 1598 to 1603, was a time of great unrest, famine, factional struggles, international conspiracies, and false claims to the throne.
4. Raspou … Trease: As the author has just said, Mlle Fleury swallows the endings of Russian words, including in this case the name of Grigory Rasputin (1869–1916), a bizarre holy man who attached himself to the imperial family, and the word “treason.”
5. death penalty was reinstated: Among the first acts of the Provisional Government (see note 2 above) was the abolition of the death penalty. But in July 1917, owing to difficulties in the continuing war with Germany and the problem of mass desertions, special military courts were established and the death penalty was reinstated. It was abolished again by the Bolsheviks, and again quickly reinstated.
6. Pechorin-like: Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, the protagonist of the novel A Hero of Our Time (1839–1841), by Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841), is a world-weary, cynical, coldhearted, but also courageous, sensitive, and melancholic army officer.
7. State Duma: See part 2, note 1. The Fourth Duma sat from 1912 to 1917. During the February revolution, it sent a commission of representatives to replace the imperial ministers, leading to the creation of the Provisional Government (see note 2 above).
8. People’s Will Schlüsselburgers: People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya) was a revolutionary terrorist organization of the later nineteenth century, responsible among other things for the assassination of the emperor Alexander II in 1881. Their program was non-Marxist, aimed at a peasant revolution bypassing capitalism. Some of its members, released from prison in the early twentieth century, helped to form the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party. The Schlüsselburg Fortress, on the Neva near Lake Ladoga, was used as a political prison.
9. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks: See part 4, note 1.
10. Balaam: The story of Balaam and his ass is told in Numbers 22:21–35. The Moabite prophet Balaam fails to see the angel of God barring his way, but his she-ass does see the angel and finally cries out to warn him.
11. Lot’s wife: Ustinya has confused the story of Balaam with the story of Lot, who was saved by the Lord when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, but whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the cities (Genesis 19:1–26).
12. the land question: One of the major questions facing the Provisional Government was the redistribution and continued cultivation of land seized from the former landowners, made especially urgent by the decline in farm production during the war years. In May 1917, Izvestia, the newspaper of the Petrograd Soviet, expressing Menshevik