Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • About
  • Contact
  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise

LEVEL2

Donate Now Mailing list
  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise
  • Recent posts

    • Introducing the Counter-Currents Book Club

      Greg Johnson

    • The Fear of Writing

      Mark Gullick

    • Obi-Wan Kenobi

      Trevor Lynch

    • The Homeland Institute’s Third Poll, Part Two: Is National Divorce a Solution?

      David M. Zsutty

    • Tommy Robinson: Fakta vs. emoce a nejnovější lži

      Huntley Haverstock

    • The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Jim Goad

      9

    • Lamentations for a City

      Morris van de Camp

      6

    • The Homeland Institute’s Third Poll, Part One: American Democracy in Crisis

      David M. Zsutty

    • Mike Johnson and Diff’rent Strokes: When Liberal Narratives Collapse

      Travis LeBlanc

      1

    • Using Politics to Segregate the Sexes

      Jim Goad

    • Imagine Jim Goad Singing “Imagine”

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • The Union Jackal, November 2023

      Mark Gullick

      5

    • Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      Greg Johnson

      30

    • Jonathan Bowden’s The Cultured Thug

      Margot Metroland

      1

    • Le Manifeste Nationaliste Blanc: Introduction à un livre interdit

      Greg Johnson

    • Little Free Library Book Giveaway!

      Cyan Quinn

      5

    • Using Politics to Segregate the Sexes

      Jim Goad

      35

    • The Boondock Saints and Overnight: Troy Duffy’s Career as Cautionary Tale

      Travis LeBlanc

      6

    • David Zsutty Introduces the Homeland Institute: Transcript

      David M. Zsutty

    • It’s White Wednesday! Shop Our Sale Now

      Cyan Quinn

    • Ahsoka

      Trevor Lynch

      5

    • The US Military Excuses an Anti-White Massacre: Black Soldiers & the Houston Riot of 1917

      Dave Chambers

      2

    • “A Few More Steps and We Were . . . On Some Edge of Things”: Staircases That Lead Nowhere, Part 2

      Kathryn S.

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 561: An All-Star Thanksgiving Weekend Special

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Giving Tuesday at Counter-Currents: Help Us Meet Our Match!

      Cyan Quinn

      5

    • “A Few More Steps and We Were . . . On Some Edge of Things”: Staircases That Lead Nowhere, Part 1

      Kathryn S.

      4

    • The Blacks Next Door

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      7

    • Where the Dissident Right Triumphs

      Lipton Matthews

      2

    • Used to Be a Bad Guy: Carlito’s Way at 30

      Mark Gullick

      3

    • The Worst Week Yet: November 19-25, 2023

      Jim Goad

      21

    • Ridley Scott’s Napoleon

      Trevor Lynch

      28

    • Are We (Finally) Living in the World of Atlas Shrugged? Part 2

      Jef Costello

      4

    • The Suppression of the Maryland Moderates During the Civil War

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • The Anti-Black Plague “Black Death” of 1347-1351 Kills Half of Europe . . . Black Women Most Affected

      Jim Goad

      4

    • We Have Much to be Thankful For

      Greg Johnson

    • All-Star Thanksgiving Weekend Special!

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Black Friday Special: It’s Time to STOP Shopping for Christmas

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • Are We (Finally) Living in the World of Atlas Shrugged? Part 1

      Jef Costello

      12

    • We Get the Crime We Deserve

      Spencer J. Quinn

      8

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha, Capítulo 12: La Cuestión Cristiana en el Nacionalismo Blanco

      Greg Johnson

    • Happy Thanksgiving!

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Anti-Black Plague: “Black Death” of 1347-1351 Kills Half of Europe . . . Black Women Most Affected

      Jim Goad

      24

    • A Veteran’s Thanksgiving Message

      David M. Zsutty

      3

    • Horses and Heavy Hors d’Oeuvres

      James J. O'Meara

    • Let Elon Cook

      Travis LeBlanc

      3

    • Should We Defend Anti-Semitic Literature?

      Jason Kessler

      8

    • G. Gordon Liddy’s When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • Aleister Crowley jako politický teoretik, část 2

      Kerry Bolton

    • The Spanish Protests of 2023

      Asier Abadroa

      8

    • We Told You So, Again

      David M. Zsutty

      11

  • Classics Corner

    • A Heroic Vision for Our Time: The Life and Ideas of Colin Wilson

      John Morgan

      12

    • Remembering J. Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943–October 2, 2012)

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Herman Husband, Eighteenth Century White Nationalist Pioneer

      Spencer J. Quinn

      10

    • Remembering Henry Williamson (December 1, 1895-August 13, 1977)

      Greg Johnson

    • Black Friday Special: It’s Time to STOP Shopping for Christmas

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • The Holy Mountain, Part 1

      Derek Hawthorne

      1

    • The Holy Mountain, Part 2

      Derek Hawthorne

      2

    • Remembering Krzysztof Penderecki (November 23, 1933-March 29, 2020)

      Alex Graham

    • Thanksgiving Day as a Harvest Festival

      Andrew Hamilton

    • Thanksgiving: The Only Holiday Unique to the American Ethny

      C. F. Robinson

      9

    • The Importance of Believing: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

      Howe Abbott-Hiss

      6

    • Remembering Madison Grant (November 19, 1865-May 30, 1937)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Remembering Wyndham Lewis (November 18, 1882-March 7, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Sir Oswald Mosley (November 16, 1896-December 3, 1980)

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Revolution of the Nation

      Sir Oswald Mosley

    • The Feminine Sexual Counter-Revolution and Its Limitations, Part 1

      F. Roger Devlin

      2

    • The Feminine Sexual Counter-Revolution and Its Limitations, Part 2

      F. Roger Devlin

      41

    • America and Israel: United in Struggle

      Alexander Jacob

      16

    • Zionism vs. White Nationalism

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • Debate on Christianity

      Jonas De Geer and Greg Johnson

      42

    • In Defense of Populism

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 3: Israel and the Bomb

      John Morgan

      30

    • For Leo Yankevich: October 30, 1961 to December 11, 2018

      Juleigh Howard-Hobson

      3

    • The Heresy of Christian Zionism: Israel, Christianity, & Genesis 12.2-3

      Irmin Vinson

      31

    • Philosemitism & Brutality

      Andrew Hamilton

      57

    • Charles Ives, American Composer

      Alex Graham

      8

    • Remembering Friedrich Nietzsche
      (October 15, 1844–August 25, 1900)

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • Remembering Aleister Crowley (October 12, 1875–December 1, 1947)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Remembering Ralph Vaughan Williams (October 12, 1872–August 26, 1958)

      Alex Graham

      3

    • Archeofuturist Fiction: Frank Herbert’s Dune

      Greg Johnson

      23

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Never the Twain: Notes on Logic and Morality

      Mark Gullick

      18

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 557: New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Heil Honey, I’m Home

      Travis LeBlanc

      2

    • Management and Working Remotely

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • The Protocols of Zion Today, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Protocols of Zion Today, Part 1

      Beau Albrecht

      8

    • The Rise and Fall of Ibram X. Kendi

      Beau Albrecht

      14

    • Remembering the Great White Hopes of Boxing

      Travis LeBlanc

      10

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 5

      Arthur Jensen

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 10: El Peso de Hitler

      Greg Johnson

    • Gerald P. Nye: American Patriot and Midwestern Isolationist, Part 2

      Morris van de Camp

    • Gerald P. Nye: American Patriot and Midwestern Isolationist, Part 1

      Morris van de Camp

    • Looking for Mr. Goodbar: A Tale of Disco-Era Debauchery

      Travis LeBlanc

      26

    • Race & IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 4

      Arthur Jensen

    • For Lesbians Only

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Why Cartoons Have Potential: A Response to Travis LeBlanc, Part 2

      White Lion Movement

    • Fictionalizing the Right

      Clarissa Schnabel

      5

    • Jack Hinson’s One-Man War

      Spencer J. Quinn

      2

    • The 12 Black Years Since Jared Taylor’s White Identity

      Mark Gullick

      4

    • Exercise Tips for the Anxious

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      3

    • Race & IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 3

      Arthur Jensen

    • It’s Not All About You

      Spencer J. Quinn

      5

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 554 How Often Does Pox Think About the Roman Empire? . . . & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • White Altruism Revealed

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      4

    • The Captivity Narrative of Fanny Kelly

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 2

      Arthur Jensen

      3

    • The Unnecessary War

      Morris van de Camp

      3

    • Marx vs. Rousseau

      Stephen Paul Foster

      4

  • Recent comments

    • Will Williams

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      Greg: Kwanzaa is supposed to be a Negro alternative to Christmas. It is a seven-day feast,...

    • Richard Smith

      Imagine Jim Goad Singing “Imagine”

      First time I heard Jim singing "White Room" above, it's damn good!

    • Josephus Cato

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      I was hoping he would have succeeded in his appeal to SCOTUS.  I'm wondering if it was declined due...

    • DarkPlato

      Lamentations for a City

      I’ll wager Bovarian Motor Works has a large percentage of it by now!

    • Gallus

      Lamentations for a City

      That was a superb article. Thanks for sharing the link to the documentary, I shall watch that with...

    • Fyrdman

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      Interesting article, with interesting reader responses. Here in England, the mercantile Christmas tv...

    • Hamburger Today

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      The 'divine mother and child' is a pre-Christian tableu.Innana, the ‘mother’ figure in the Egyptian...

    • ncleapyear

      Lamentations for a City

      I read somewhere that George Wallace referred to Humphrey as a "pointy head" in the 1968...

    • Kök Böri

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Тurscak is either an Ukrainian, or a Pole.

    • DarkPlato

      Lamentations for a City

      Great article. Of course it was all to get whites back for electing Trump. As were the Covid...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Victims of black on white violence are just experiencing diversity.  Or experiencing cultural...

    • Anne Frank Rizzo

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Not only has the Mexican Mafia had white members https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_%22Pegleg%...

    • Gyromite

      Using Politics to Segregate the Sexes

      In my final paragraph, I said a possible way to raise white fertility is via technology that would...

    • Yours Truly

      Lamentations for a City

      Hmm.  Now this is interesting, but also incredibly depressing.  Lisa Bender began her political...

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      Mike Johnson and Diff’rent Strokes: When Liberal Narratives Collapse

      Different Strokes aside, I’d like to hear more about Mike Johnson’s black son. The fact that Johnson...

    • J Webb

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      The rest of Nardo Wick’s lyrics go on about references to 7.62 shell casings, killing, some more...

    • Antipodean

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      In Spain the nativity scene (Belin as they call it) is a major feature of the pre-Christmas period....

    • AdamMil

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      It's true that Christianity ripped off many European pagan traditions, but it's also beside the...

    • Enoch Powell

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Jim reminds me weekly that it is astounding that one country can have so much human vermin in its...

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      Lamentations for a City

      My favorite meme after the George Floyd riots was “ What do you think George Floyd’s family would...

  • Book Authors

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • Savitri Devi
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Julius Evola
    • Jim Goad
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Charles Krafft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Multiple authors
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • About
  • Contact
Sponsored Links
Spencer J. Quinn CC Giving Tuesday Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener IHR-Store American Renaissance Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Print September 27, 2021 7 comments

Doctor Zhivago

Trevor Lynch

2,418 words

David Lean’s epic anti-Communist romance Doctor Zhivago (1965) is a great and serious work of art. Doctor Zhivago was initially panned by the critics — probably not because it is a bad film, but because it was very bad for Communism. Nevertheless, it was immensely popular. It is still one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, adjusted for inflation. It also won five Oscars — for Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Bolt), Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre), Best Cinematography (Freddie Young), Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. (It was nominated for five other Oscars, but The Sound of Music won four of them, including Best Picture and Best Director.) Over the years, critics have also warmed to Doctor Zhivago, routinely including it in their “best” lists.

If Doctor Zhivago had been the work of most directors, it would have been hailed as their greatest film. But Doctor Zhivago was directed by David Lean, who had just completed one of the greatest films of all time, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), so Doctor Zhivago was bound to suffer somewhat from the comparison. But what’s really remarkable about Doctor Zhivago is how little it disappoints.

The greatness of Lean’s film comes into even sharper focus when you read Boris Pasternak’s original novel. Pasternak was born in Imperial Russia in 1890 to a cultivated, upper-class Jewish family. His father was a painter, his mother a pianist. He achieved fame as a poet but fell out of favor with the Soviet Communist Party, found publication blocked, and ended up supporting himself as a translator, writing during his off hours “for the drawer.”

Pasternak started Doctor Zhivago in the 1920s and finished it in 1956. It was smuggled out of the USSR by a dissident Italian Communist and published in 1957 in Italian translation. The first Russian edition of Doctor Zhivago was published in 1958 by the US Central Intelligence Agency, which sought to embarrass the Soviets by painting them as repressive cultural philistines who refused to publish one of those great Russian novels that few people manage to finish. Pasternak and Zhivago became a liberal cause célèbre. In 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he refused under duress from the Soviet government. He died in 1960.

As a lover of the film, I expected to like the novel. I wanted to like the novel. But I found it surprisingly boring: a sprawling, flaccid story cluttered with useless and forgettable characters and digressions. Everything goes on much too long. It also seems unstructured. Good stories are unified from end to end. They have spines. But Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is a spineless blob, held together with a tissue of increasingly unlikely accidents, as the main characters — in a Moscow of millions, in an empire of tens of millions — keep bumping into one another.

As a critique of Communism, Pasternak’s novel is unfocused and superficial. We gather that Communism created chaos and unleashed ugliness and nihilism. But we don’t really get a sense of why. Pasternak renders surfaces in a wordy, impressionistic blur. But when he tries to go deep, he comes out with lines like this: “Art is always, ceaselessly, occupied with two things. It constantly reflects on death and thereby constantly creates life.” It sounds profound, but it is verbose, woolly-minded, and just isn’t true.

Finally, the main character of Yuri Zhivago, a doctor and poet, is not particularly likeable. Thus it comes as a shock when one learns that Zhivago was Pasternak himself in thin disguise. The man must have loathed himself.

But I can’t justly review Pasternak’s novel, because like many readers, I tapped out before the end. On second thought, that is my review.

A great deal of the credit for turning Pasternak’s mediocre novel into a great movie goes to screenwriter Robert Bolt, who also wrote the screenplay for Lawrence of Arabia, as well as the stage play and screen adaptation of A Man for All Seasons. Bolt removes needless characters and digressions, giving the story more of a spine. He also renders the horrors of Communism more crisply, giving greater insight into why they happened –and what the alternative is.

I will sketch out the film’s basic plot, but I will skip over most of the details, leaving much to first-time viewers to discover. Yuri Zhivago is an orphan raised in Moscow by his wealthy godparents, the Gromekos. He is a gifted poet who has chosen medicine as a career. Just before the First World War, Yuri marries Tonya, the Gromekos’ daughter, with whom he grew up. When the war begins, Yuri becomes a doctor at the front. After the Revolution, Yuri returns home to find the Gromekos living in one room of their mansion, the rest of which has been given over to seedy proletarians. Moscow is in the grip of the Red terror. Typhus and starvation are rampant.

Worse yet, Yuri is “not liked.” His attitudes “have been noticed.” His poetry has been deemed too “private” and “bourgeois.” He does not conform to the party line, which increasingly consists of managing Communism’s failures through lies, excuses, and scapegoating. Yuri’s half-brother, Yevgraf, is a Bolshevik secret policeman. He knows Yuri and his family will not survive what is coming (we are now around the winter of 1919) and arranges for them to leave Moscow for the Urals, where they live in a cottage on the Gromekos’ former estate.

While in the Urals, Tonya becomes pregnant with their second child, while Yuri begins an affair with Larissa (“Lara”) Antipova, a young woman he met in Moscow and again at the front. Yuri is then torn away from both women by a band of Red partisans, who need a doctor and simply kidnap him. Two years later, Yuri manages to return to find the Gromekos have left Russia. He is reunited with Lara briefly but separated again. Lara, it turns out, is carrying his child. Both die some years later without ever being reunited, just two of the many millions of lives blighted and destroyed by a monstrous ideological enthusiasm.

The cast of Doctor Zhivago is uniformly strong. Casting an Egyptian Arab, Omar Sharif, as a Russian poet seemed odd to some. He doesn’t look like Hollywood’s idea of a typical Russian. (Originally, the role was offered to Peter O’Toole.) But the character of Zhivago was based on Pasternak, who didn’t look typically Russian, either.

The main problem bringing the character of Zhivago to the screen is conveying that he is a poet without actually including any of his poetry. Lean solved this problem brilliantly, perhaps by borrowing a bit from Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes, where composer Julian Craster suddenly goes blank while we hear the music in his head. Lean asked Sharif to look as detached and absent-minded as possible — a pure spectator — while Maurice Jarre’s brilliant music (his greatest score) communicates Yuri’s flights of poetic imagination.

Julie Christie as Lara is so beautiful I don’t think that the cast had to pretend to be in love with her, and her performance is excellent. Alec Guinness as Yevgraf, Tom Courtenay as Pasha, Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie’s daughter) as Tonya Gromeko, Ralph Richardson as her father Alexander, and Siobhán McKenna as her mother Anna all turn in strong performances. Klaus Kinsky has a memorable bit part as an anarchist turned into a slave laborer. But the most compelling performance is Rod Steiger as V. I. Komarovksy. He has many of the film’s best lines. I wouldn’t exactly call him a villain, although he’s far from pure. Let’s just say that he’s very much alive.

Even though Doctor Zhivago portrays ugliness and horror, it is still a David Lean film, which means that it is a feast for the eyes. Some images are simply unforgettable: a vast throng of workers emerging from a tunnel under a red star; a vase of sunflowers weeping; the Goyaesque horrors of the civil war; the ice palace of Varykino.

You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Part Four of the Trilogy here.

But what sets Doctor Zhivago apart from most cinema is its fusion of powerful images and emotions with a philosophically insightful critique of Communism.

Before the revolution, Doctor Zhivago is constructed out of brilliant contrasts: between the grand boulevards and dirty side streets of Moscow; between the glittering world of high society and the drabness and desperation of the common people; between the healthy, neatly-uniformed men heading toward the front and the starved and ragged deserters fleeing it.

But once the Revolution happens, these contrasts are leveled — downwards, of course — until everyone is cold, starving, dirty, and terrified. The Communist slogans promising freedom, bread, and brotherhood all turn out to be lies. Communism delivered famine, not food — slavery and terror, not freedom. Communism did not ennoble mankind. It empowered cynicism, envy, and pettiness.

But many things didn’t change. Russia was still governed by autocrats whom the masses feared. There were still haves and have-nots. Both before and after the Revolution, one had to ask people, “Can you read?” As the civil war ground on, those caught in the middle could no longer tell Red from White.

But the Soviets recreated the old autocracy on a much lower level, in part due to the sheer chaos and cost of the Revolution, in part because the Bolsheviks being materialists were blind to the essence of the civilization they seized, so they were capable of recapitulating it only as a brute farce. It was the old despotism stripped of all aristocratic magnanimity and refinement and infinitely more violent and cruel.

Four main issues separate the Bolsheviks from the old order.

First, they reject private life. “The private life is dead in Russia. History has killed it,” says the Red commander Strelnikov. Private life is disdained as “bourgeois,” as if men had never sought their own homes, their own families, and their own happiness before capitalism came along.

The problem with killing private life is that most of life happens in private, which brings us to the second contrast between the Bolsheviks and their enemies: theory versus practice, idealism versus life.

The Bolsheviks are idealists. They are theorists. So is Yuri, for that matter. Although he does choose general practice over medical research, he is by inclination a spectator, always gazing at the world, always trying to clear away the frost and fog to see more clearly.

Perhaps true theories never conflict with practice. But we mere mortals have to make do with half-baked theories, which inevitably clash with the mess of life. Fastidious idealists and dogmatic ideologues think they have the truth, however, which puts them on a collision course with practical life, which has lessons of its own to teach.

The conflict between theory and practice throws light on the climax of the movie, in which Yuri chooses to abandon Lara to Komarovsky. It is a perverse and self-defeating choice, but it is not inexplicable. Yuri is theory. Komarovsky is the mess of life. Yuri is so repulsed by Komarovsky that he is willing to abandon the woman he loves rather than go with him. He may even be condemning himself to death.

What does Yuri do when he decides not to follow Lara? He retreats indoors to watch her through a window. Then he smashes out the window to see her more clearly.

When private life is suppressed, so are freedom of speech and truth-telling, which is the third gulf between Communism and the old order. Who are you to contradict the Party, which is the avatar of universal truth? And since truth is relative to history, and the party is the historical vanguard, truth becomes identical to whatever lie the party declares expedient. When the Party denies starvation and typhus are in Moscow, but Yuri sees them with his own eyes, he believes his eyes. That makes him a thought criminal. But it is truth-tellers, not liars, who pave the upward path for humanity.

(Robert Bolt clearly admired men who were willing to speak their minds and stand by their convictions, even at the risk of their own lives. Hence his depictions not just of Yuri Zhivago but of T. E. Lawrence and Sir Thomas More. Today, people would place all three heroes on the autism spectrum.)

The real center of the story is not Zhivago but Lara, who is loved by the three principal male characters: Zhivago, Pasha Antipov, and V. I. Komarovsky. But the affair between Zhivago and Lara only happens in the last half of the movie. To give the audience an idea of where the whole story was going, Bolt invented a frame for the story, set sometime in the 1940s, after the Second World War.

Yevgraf has come to a construction site. He is looking for his niece, Yuri and Lara’s daughter, who had been lost some time in the 1920s. He is convinced that one of the workers, Tanya Komarova, is the girl he seeks. Then he narrates the whole film to her. At the end, Tanya denies she is his niece. “Don’t you want to believe it?” he asks. This is the voice of the Party speaking, the party that set up wishful thinking as truth and coerced millions to go along with it. Tonya’s reply is: “Not if it isn’t true.” Yevgraf’s only comment is: “That’s inherited.”

This brings us to a fourth divide between Communism and the old order: hereditary gifts versus blank-slate egalitarianism. At the beginning of Doctor Zhivago, we learn that Yuri’s dead mother had the “gift” of playing the balalaika. The Gromekos wonder if young Yuri has special gifts as well. At the end of the film, as Tanya walks away, Yevgraf learns she has a talent for the balalaika. “Who taught her?” he asks. “No one taught her,” comes the reply. “It’s a gift, then,” says Yevgraf. These are the last words of the movie. In a way, they are the last words on Communism too. Empowering the gifted, not the mediocre, is the upward path for humanity.

Much of the best anti-Communist literature is actually Left-wing: Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, for example. But a critique of Communism that spotlights hereditary inequality belongs objectively to the Right. I have to credit this to David Lean, whose instincts and convictions were Rightist, since there are only the barest traces of this theme in the novel, and Bolt was a card-carrying Communist.

I find the end of Doctor Zhivago deeply moving because it offers a ray of hope. Even though Communism can shatter families and whole civilizations, blood has won out in the end.

The Unz Review, September 25, 2021

*  *  *

Counter-Currents has extended special privileges to those who donate $120 or more per year.

  • First, donor comments will appear immediately instead of waiting in a moderation queue. (People who abuse this privilege will lose it.)
  • Second, donors will have immediate access to all Counter-Currents posts. Non-donors will find that one post a day, five posts a week will be behind a “paywall” and will be available to the general public after 30 days.

To get full access to all content behind the paywall, sign up here:

Enjoyed this article?

Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!

Instant Echeck GreenPay™
$

Related

  • Obi-Wan Kenobi

  • Lamentations for a City

  • The Boondock Saints and Overnight: Troy Duffy’s Career as Cautionary Tale

  • Ahsoka

  • Used to Be a Bad Guy: Carlito’s Way at 30

  • Ridley Scott’s Napoleon

  • Are We (Finally) Living in the World of Atlas Shrugged? Part 2

  • Killers of the Flower Moon

Tags

Bolshevik RevolutionBoris PasternakCommunismDavid LeanDoctor Zhivagomovie reviewsreprintsSoviet Unionthe Russian Civil WarTrevor Lynch

Next

» The Fear of Writing

7 comments

  1. Starboard says:
    September 27, 2021 at 3:01 pm

    Doctor Zhivago was commonly referred to as a Russian Gone With the Wind and in a sense it was — tumultuous love story taking place during a civil war and afterwards. But the problem with the comparison is that Zhivago’s love story was not tumultuous.

    Nobody is going to confuse Doc and Lara for Rhett and Scarlett, and for good reason. Scarlett O’Hara had spunk, drive, dreams and was multi-dimensional. Lara was a girlfriend, wife, mother and nurse — the passive (mostly) receptacle of men’s desires. And as for the Doc, well, he was a lot more like Ashley Wilkes than Rhett Butler, indecisive, moody, soulful and more acted upon than an actor in his own story.

    That’s really it. Imagine Gone With the Wind if Ashley was the main character, alternating between a passive beautiful Scarlett and an even more passive plain Melanie while Civil War and Reconstruction go on in the background. No Rhett at all.

    Not much of a movie at all either.

     

    0
    0
  2. claudius says:
    September 27, 2021 at 3:40 pm

    I watched Lawrence of Arabia based on the review on here: looks like I’ve got another great Lean movie to watch as well.

     

    0
    0
    1. Traddles says:
      September 28, 2021 at 11:40 am

      I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.  “Dr. Zhivago” is brilliant film-making.  This review does a very good job of describing the themes and characters.  And for me, the movie contains so many unforgettable images.  It’s both thought-provoking and evocative of much feeling, and not just regarding the romantic triangle.  Pasha leading his troops at the front, for example, never fails to give me goosebumps.

       

      0
      0
  3. Middle Class Twit says:
    September 27, 2021 at 4:32 pm

    I read the novel but don’t remember much of it. I remember thinking it would be out of print but for the film. Glad I’m not alone.

     

    0
    0
  4. s. clark says:
    September 27, 2021 at 5:07 pm

    I commented on it at Unz, so if you want to read what I said, go there. I will briefly recap that when I saw it in 1965, I thought Lawrence of Arabia: sand, sand, sand. Dr, Zhivago: snow, snow, snow. Funny Girl: Streisand, Streisand, Streisand.  It was the age of ‘epic’ movies.  As it was, the film is interesting with good actors, but kind of loooong.  B ut this is the memory of a twelve year old. Needed more battles.

    A movie I liked better was Nicholas and Alexandra.

    I don’t see it as a Gone with the Wind. War and Peace is the Russian GWTW, if you want to compare.

     

     

    0
    0
    1. Starboard says:
      September 28, 2021 at 4:29 pm

      Dr. Zhivago is much more like Gone With the Wind than War and Peace, and not just because Tolstoy’s novel was high art, which can never be said about the other two works.

       

      On a cultural level both Zhivago and GWTW are, as the title of the latter implies, about the end of a society, the chaos that follows and the struggle to rebuild in the aftermath.

       

      To the contrary, the Russia of War and Peace survived Napoleon for a hundred years.

       

      As stated, it is in the chemistry of the lovers where Mitchell succeeded and Pasternak did not. One pair was hot, the other tepid.

       

      And at the end Yuri dies of a heart attack running after Lara, who doesn’t even know he’s there, while Rhett walks out on Scarlett and doesn’t give damn.

       

      0
      0
  5. Francis XB says:
    September 29, 2021 at 12:57 pm

    One reason, I think, that Doctor  Zhivago proved so popular is it was one the few movies from the 1960s and after in which the communists were the bad guys. And not just as cartoon villains, but because of their ideology: the communists are shown destroying the middle class life of the Zhivago household by moving proletarians into the living room. The Revolution was not just a change of ruling elites, but in a fundamental change to society. That’s the threat of communism. The message resounded with middle America.

     

    Zhivago‘s situation is something like we see today with the Left using homelessness, mass third world migrations, iconoclasm and tolerance of criminality to trash cities and disrupt the American way of life. It’s the Revolution first, then the seizure of power.

     

    A century ago, the White Russian movement contested the Reds across Eurasia. Will we see a similar White American movement today fighting against the Reds and, perhaps, this time around winning?

     

    0
    0

Comments are closed.

If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.

Note on comments privacy & moderation

Your email is never published nor shared.

Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.

  • Recent posts

    • Introducing the Counter-Currents Book Club

      Greg Johnson

    • The Fear of Writing

      Mark Gullick

    • Obi-Wan Kenobi

      Trevor Lynch

    • The Homeland Institute’s Third Poll, Part Two: Is National Divorce a Solution?

      David M. Zsutty

    • Tommy Robinson: Fakta vs. emoce a nejnovější lži

      Huntley Haverstock

    • The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Jim Goad

      9

    • Lamentations for a City

      Morris van de Camp

      6

    • The Homeland Institute’s Third Poll, Part One: American Democracy in Crisis

      David M. Zsutty

    • Mike Johnson and Diff’rent Strokes: When Liberal Narratives Collapse

      Travis LeBlanc

      1

    • Using Politics to Segregate the Sexes

      Jim Goad

    • Imagine Jim Goad Singing “Imagine”

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • The Union Jackal, November 2023

      Mark Gullick

      5

    • Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      Greg Johnson

      30

    • Jonathan Bowden’s The Cultured Thug

      Margot Metroland

      1

    • Le Manifeste Nationaliste Blanc: Introduction à un livre interdit

      Greg Johnson

    • Little Free Library Book Giveaway!

      Cyan Quinn

      5

    • Using Politics to Segregate the Sexes

      Jim Goad

      35

    • The Boondock Saints and Overnight: Troy Duffy’s Career as Cautionary Tale

      Travis LeBlanc

      6

    • David Zsutty Introduces the Homeland Institute: Transcript

      David M. Zsutty

    • It’s White Wednesday! Shop Our Sale Now

      Cyan Quinn

    • Ahsoka

      Trevor Lynch

      5

    • The US Military Excuses an Anti-White Massacre: Black Soldiers & the Houston Riot of 1917

      Dave Chambers

      2

    • “A Few More Steps and We Were . . . On Some Edge of Things”: Staircases That Lead Nowhere, Part 2

      Kathryn S.

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 561: An All-Star Thanksgiving Weekend Special

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Giving Tuesday at Counter-Currents: Help Us Meet Our Match!

      Cyan Quinn

      5

    • “A Few More Steps and We Were . . . On Some Edge of Things”: Staircases That Lead Nowhere, Part 1

      Kathryn S.

      4

    • The Blacks Next Door

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      7

    • Where the Dissident Right Triumphs

      Lipton Matthews

      2

    • Used to Be a Bad Guy: Carlito’s Way at 30

      Mark Gullick

      3

    • The Worst Week Yet: November 19-25, 2023

      Jim Goad

      21

    • Ridley Scott’s Napoleon

      Trevor Lynch

      28

    • Are We (Finally) Living in the World of Atlas Shrugged? Part 2

      Jef Costello

      4

    • The Suppression of the Maryland Moderates During the Civil War

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • The Anti-Black Plague “Black Death” of 1347-1351 Kills Half of Europe . . . Black Women Most Affected

      Jim Goad

      4

    • We Have Much to be Thankful For

      Greg Johnson

    • All-Star Thanksgiving Weekend Special!

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Black Friday Special: It’s Time to STOP Shopping for Christmas

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • Are We (Finally) Living in the World of Atlas Shrugged? Part 1

      Jef Costello

      12

    • We Get the Crime We Deserve

      Spencer J. Quinn

      8

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha, Capítulo 12: La Cuestión Cristiana en el Nacionalismo Blanco

      Greg Johnson

    • Happy Thanksgiving!

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Anti-Black Plague: “Black Death” of 1347-1351 Kills Half of Europe . . . Black Women Most Affected

      Jim Goad

      24

    • A Veteran’s Thanksgiving Message

      David M. Zsutty

      3

    • Horses and Heavy Hors d’Oeuvres

      James J. O'Meara

    • Let Elon Cook

      Travis LeBlanc

      3

    • Should We Defend Anti-Semitic Literature?

      Jason Kessler

      8

    • G. Gordon Liddy’s When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • Aleister Crowley jako politický teoretik, část 2

      Kerry Bolton

    • The Spanish Protests of 2023

      Asier Abadroa

      8

    • We Told You So, Again

      David M. Zsutty

      11

  • Classics Corner

    • A Heroic Vision for Our Time: The Life and Ideas of Colin Wilson

      John Morgan

      12

    • Remembering J. Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943–October 2, 2012)

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Herman Husband, Eighteenth Century White Nationalist Pioneer

      Spencer J. Quinn

      10

    • Remembering Henry Williamson (December 1, 1895-August 13, 1977)

      Greg Johnson

    • Black Friday Special: It’s Time to STOP Shopping for Christmas

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • The Holy Mountain, Part 1

      Derek Hawthorne

      1

    • The Holy Mountain, Part 2

      Derek Hawthorne

      2

    • Remembering Krzysztof Penderecki (November 23, 1933-March 29, 2020)

      Alex Graham

    • Thanksgiving Day as a Harvest Festival

      Andrew Hamilton

    • Thanksgiving: The Only Holiday Unique to the American Ethny

      C. F. Robinson

      9

    • The Importance of Believing: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

      Howe Abbott-Hiss

      6

    • Remembering Madison Grant (November 19, 1865-May 30, 1937)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Remembering Wyndham Lewis (November 18, 1882-March 7, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Sir Oswald Mosley (November 16, 1896-December 3, 1980)

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Revolution of the Nation

      Sir Oswald Mosley

    • The Feminine Sexual Counter-Revolution and Its Limitations, Part 1

      F. Roger Devlin

      2

    • The Feminine Sexual Counter-Revolution and Its Limitations, Part 2

      F. Roger Devlin

      41

    • America and Israel: United in Struggle

      Alexander Jacob

      16

    • Zionism vs. White Nationalism

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • Debate on Christianity

      Jonas De Geer and Greg Johnson

      42

    • In Defense of Populism

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 3: Israel and the Bomb

      John Morgan

      30

    • For Leo Yankevich: October 30, 1961 to December 11, 2018

      Juleigh Howard-Hobson

      3

    • The Heresy of Christian Zionism: Israel, Christianity, & Genesis 12.2-3

      Irmin Vinson

      31

    • Philosemitism & Brutality

      Andrew Hamilton

      57

    • Charles Ives, American Composer

      Alex Graham

      8

    • Remembering Friedrich Nietzsche
      (October 15, 1844–August 25, 1900)

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • Remembering Aleister Crowley (October 12, 1875–December 1, 1947)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Remembering Ralph Vaughan Williams (October 12, 1872–August 26, 1958)

      Alex Graham

      3

    • Archeofuturist Fiction: Frank Herbert’s Dune

      Greg Johnson

      23

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Never the Twain: Notes on Logic and Morality

      Mark Gullick

      18

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 557: New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Heil Honey, I’m Home

      Travis LeBlanc

      2

    • Management and Working Remotely

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • The Protocols of Zion Today, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Protocols of Zion Today, Part 1

      Beau Albrecht

      8

    • The Rise and Fall of Ibram X. Kendi

      Beau Albrecht

      14

    • Remembering the Great White Hopes of Boxing

      Travis LeBlanc

      10

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 5

      Arthur Jensen

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 10: El Peso de Hitler

      Greg Johnson

    • Gerald P. Nye: American Patriot and Midwestern Isolationist, Part 2

      Morris van de Camp

    • Gerald P. Nye: American Patriot and Midwestern Isolationist, Part 1

      Morris van de Camp

    • Looking for Mr. Goodbar: A Tale of Disco-Era Debauchery

      Travis LeBlanc

      26

    • Race & IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 4

      Arthur Jensen

    • For Lesbians Only

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Why Cartoons Have Potential: A Response to Travis LeBlanc, Part 2

      White Lion Movement

    • Fictionalizing the Right

      Clarissa Schnabel

      5

    • Jack Hinson’s One-Man War

      Spencer J. Quinn

      2

    • The 12 Black Years Since Jared Taylor’s White Identity

      Mark Gullick

      4

    • Exercise Tips for the Anxious

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      3

    • Race & IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 3

      Arthur Jensen

    • It’s Not All About You

      Spencer J. Quinn

      5

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 554 How Often Does Pox Think About the Roman Empire? . . . & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • White Altruism Revealed

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      4

    • The Captivity Narrative of Fanny Kelly

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 2

      Arthur Jensen

      3

    • The Unnecessary War

      Morris van de Camp

      3

    • Marx vs. Rousseau

      Stephen Paul Foster

      4

  • Recent comments

    • Will Williams

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      Greg: Kwanzaa is supposed to be a Negro alternative to Christmas. It is a seven-day feast,...

    • Richard Smith

      Imagine Jim Goad Singing “Imagine”

      First time I heard Jim singing "White Room" above, it's damn good!

    • Josephus Cato

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      I was hoping he would have succeeded in his appeal to SCOTUS.  I'm wondering if it was declined due...

    • DarkPlato

      Lamentations for a City

      I’ll wager Bovarian Motor Works has a large percentage of it by now!

    • Gallus

      Lamentations for a City

      That was a superb article. Thanks for sharing the link to the documentary, I shall watch that with...

    • Fyrdman

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      Interesting article, with interesting reader responses. Here in England, the mercantile Christmas tv...

    • Hamburger Today

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      The 'divine mother and child' is a pre-Christian tableu.Innana, the ‘mother’ figure in the Egyptian...

    • ncleapyear

      Lamentations for a City

      I read somewhere that George Wallace referred to Humphrey as a "pointy head" in the 1968...

    • Kök Böri

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Тurscak is either an Ukrainian, or a Pole.

    • DarkPlato

      Lamentations for a City

      Great article. Of course it was all to get whites back for electing Trump. As were the Covid...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Victims of black on white violence are just experiencing diversity.  Or experiencing cultural...

    • Anne Frank Rizzo

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Not only has the Mexican Mafia had white members https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_%22Pegleg%...

    • Gyromite

      Using Politics to Segregate the Sexes

      In my final paragraph, I said a possible way to raise white fertility is via technology that would...

    • Yours Truly

      Lamentations for a City

      Hmm.  Now this is interesting, but also incredibly depressing.  Lisa Bender began her political...

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      Mike Johnson and Diff’rent Strokes: When Liberal Narratives Collapse

      Different Strokes aside, I’d like to hear more about Mike Johnson’s black son. The fact that Johnson...

    • J Webb

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      The rest of Nardo Wick’s lyrics go on about references to 7.62 shell casings, killing, some more...

    • Antipodean

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      In Spain the nativity scene (Belin as they call it) is a major feature of the pre-Christmas period....

    • AdamMil

      Christmas Special: Merry Christmas, Infidels!

      It's true that Christianity ripped off many European pagan traditions, but it's also beside the...

    • Enoch Powell

      The Worst Week Yet: November 26-December 2, 2023

      Jim reminds me weekly that it is astounding that one country can have so much human vermin in its...

    • Fred C. Dobbs

      Lamentations for a City

      My favorite meme after the George Floyd riots was “ What do you think George Floyd’s family would...

  • Book Authors

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • Savitri Devi
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Julius Evola
    • Jim Goad
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Charles Krafft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Multiple authors
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Spencer J. Quinn CC Giving Tuesday Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener IHR-Store American Renaissance Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Donate Now Mailing list
Books for sale
  • The Cultured Thug
  • Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Trial of Socrates
  • Fields of Asphodel
  • El Manifiesto Nacionalista Blanco
  • An Artist of the Right
  • Ernst Jünger
  • Reuben
  • The Partisan
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • End of an Era: Mad Men & the Ordeal of Civility
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
Copyright © 2023 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address.

Lost your password?

Edit your comment