Doctor Zhivago: Part 3: The Christmas Party at the Sventitskys’ Summary & Analysis

Alexander Alexandrovich buys Anna Ivanovna an antique wardrobe. While trying to help their porter Markel assemble it, she falls and injures her back, setting of chain of health issues culminating in pneumonia. By 1911 Anna Ivanovna is bedridden. Yuri, Misha, and Tonya are all in their last year of university, studying medicine, philology, and law, respectively. Yuri chose medicine over the humanities, which he also loves, because he believes in practical, useful work. He writes poetry on the side, expressing his more esoteric interests in verse. Nikolai Nikolaevich, who now lives in Switzerland, has become a prominent advocate of socialist Christian mysticism. Nikolai Nikolaevich’s thinking influences Yuri and especially Misha, who to Yuri’s annoyance is increasingly more preoccupied with philosophy than empirical reality.

Anna Ivanovna sends for Yuri as her condition takes a turn for the worse. He attempts to comfort her with an elaborate lecture expressing his belief in resurrection. Moved by Yuri’s speech, Anna Ivanovna starts to recover. She frequently tells Yuri and Tonya about her childhood in the Urals. Yuri and Tonya begin to entire high society and attend balls and other nightlife. Yuri, on the cusp of adulthood, renounces his inheritance to the Zhivago fortune. Yuri’s father accumulated enough debts and had so many children—including Yuri’s half-brother, Evgraf—that any money Yuri would receive would go toward lawsuits to settle the will. Despite her apparent improvement, Anna Ivanovna’s coughing fits continue worsen. After one particularly bad episode she implores Yuri and Tonya to stay together after her death, urging them to marry each other.

In the spring of 1906 Lara decides her relationship with Komarovsky must end. During a thunderstorm at school she realizes the way out and asks her classmate Nadya Kologrivova to help her find work as a tutor so that she can live independently. Nadya invites her to tutor her sister instead, and so Lara moves in with the Kologrivovs, a kind and politically progressive family; Nadya’s father, Lavrenty Mikhailovich Kologrivov is a strong supporter of the workers’ movement despite his wealth. Four years later, in 1910, Lara’s brother Rodya visits her. Rodya, a military cadet, has gambled away money entrusted to him by his classmates. Komarovsky refused to help him but hinted that Lara might change his mind. Lara prepares to face him and even borrows Rodya’s revolver to bring with her, but Kologrivov generously offers to loan Lara the money instead.

Lara, still living with the Kologrivovs, finishes her education. She and Pasha Antipov fall in love, and he starts university. Lara dreams of moving to a quieter city in the Urals and working as teachers. Lara feels increasingly guilty about the way the Kologrivovs support her financially, but they generously insist that she stay and continue to take a salary, though her tutoring services are no longer truly needed. Worried that she has no control over her own life, Lara comes to a decision: she will ask Komarovsky for money to live on her own. Once again packing the revolver, she sets off through the winter weather to visit Komarovsky, her dark thoughts at odds with the Christmas celebrations taking place around her. Komarovsky is at the Sventitskys’ Christmas party, but the agitated Lara is determined to speak to him immediately.

Passing by Pasha’s apartment on Kamergersky Lane, Lara breaks down. She enters in tears, worrying Pasha. Pasha, following Lara’s instructions, lights a candle by the frost-covered window. Lara rambles and cannot bring herself to tell Pasha the full truth, but she urges him to marry her immediately. Yuri and Tonya, also on their way to the Sventitskys’ party, pass by Pasha’s apartment. Yuri is struck by the image of the candle in the window—he too is preoccupied, both by his literary and scientific pursuits and by Anna Ivanovna’s failing health. Yuri finds that all of these ideas are connected, expressing the same mystical essence deep down.

The Sventitskys’ Christmas parties are renowned as raucous all-night affairs. The ballroom is buzzing with excitement, but Yuri and Tonya avoid it, preferring to spend the evening in the side rooms with the children and elderly guests. Lara also arrives, dressed improperly for a ball and eyeing Komarovsky, who is buy busy playing cards and ignores Lara completely. Lara recognizes one of his card partners as a prominent prosecutor responsible for repressing the railroad workers’ uprising in 1905. As the night drags on, Yuri still avoids dancing, though he is happy to watch Tonya dance. Their domestic intimacy slowly becomes romantic, which pleases and confuses them both. Suddenly, a gunshot disrupts Yuri’s thoughts—Lara, aiming for Komarovsky, shoots the prosecutor Kornakov instead. Luckily the bullet only grazes him, but while Yuri is bandaging the wound, he and Tonya learn that they are urgently needed at home.

Anna Ivanovna is already dead by the time Yuri and Tonya return. Tonya is distraught, while Yuri, long since accustomed to losing a parent, stoically supports her through her mourning. Yuri falls asleep in the library and almost misses Anna Ivanovna’s funeral procession, but Shura Schlesinger finds him just in time. Anna Ivanovna is buried in the same cemetery as Marya Nikolaevna was, and Yuri visits her grave for the first time in years. Yuri walks around the monastery and is moved to find it so similar yet changed, as the strong impression it made on him during the blizzard many years ago has become an almost fantastical memory.