Dr Zhivago

I hate to tell you this, but I bought the Mail on Sunday last week and this. Of course its a crap paper with crap politics, but it had a free DVD each week. It was the TV adaptation of Dr Zhivago. I think it was panned a bit by TV critics, but I thought it beautifully shot, directed and acted for the most part.

Half way through the second part I found myself really disturbed by the character Strelnikov. The first world war, and then the Russian Civil war warp his idealism into monstrous avenues. And I thought to myself how like him I had been before I met Kaz. Strelnikov has no hesitation in using any means necessary to achieve his ends. The killing of thousands is nothing in the larger historical mission of the working class to usher in communism.

It is an issue I've always wrestled with. The working class defended their revolution, but gradually it was undermined by the party of Government, so independent trade unions are banned, the working class militarised and sailors gunned down at Kronstadt. The working class distroys itself on the alter ofwar to save the revolution- which ironically merely reinforces the evil of one party rule under the Bolsheviks as Stalin emerges- the red Tsar. Ultimately the revolution devours its own children.

The real message of Dr Zhivago- the movie- is the importance of the individual and the ability to love and be loved. Indeed Che Guevara said

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

If we are not inspired by love of family, friends and the abstraction -"the people"- how can we ever really commit ourselves to the task of building a new world where humanism lies at its heart? I'm not a religous person but I am reminded of a christian saying which goes something like "What gainth a man if he gain the whole world and loseth his soul?" If in the process of revolutionary change we are motivated by hate rather than love, then that hatred will permeate everything that we try to build and we will not gain the world.

Obviously as this was going through my head, I lost myself a bit and had to go back several scenes on the DVD...