[yarddog]

I have not read the book but the movie was not particularly hard on the Bolsheviks. It was tough enough that I am sure it was banned in the Soviet Union.

It really was a great movie tho.

[Sans-Culotte]

I have not read the book but the movie was not particularly hard on the Bolsheviks. It was tough enough that I am sure it was banned in the Soviet Union.

I haven't read it either, but I love the film, and I thought there was no doubt that the commies were evil. It is implied that Lara ended her days in the Gulag.

[dsc]

“I have not read the book but the movie was not particularly hard on the Bolsheviks.”

I saw it in an empty theater one afternoon when I was cutting high school back in 1966 or 1967. It was my introduction to the history of the Bolsheviks. Maybe it wasn’t hard enough on them, but I walked out of that theater despising them, even though I had as yet no historical context.

[Campion]

I've read parts of the novel. (As Russian novels often are, it's pretty long and ponderous.)

The Yuri Zhivago in the book is pretty clearly anti-Soviet, more so than in the movie. The book goes into some detail about how thoroughly Yuri hates the commander of the Red partisan band that impressed him into service, how the commander would badger him about politics late at night, etc.