"This world of ignominy and fraud, in which an overfed lady had the impertinence to stare right through a crowd of working-men and where a drink-sodden victim of such an order found pleasure in torturing his comrades- this world was now more hateful to him than ever before. He hurried on as though his pace might hasten the time when everything on earth would be rational and harmonious as it was now inside his feverish head. he knew that all their struggles in the last few days, the troubles on the [railroad] line, the speeches at meetings, the decision to strike- not carried out yet but at least not cancelled- were separate stages on the great road lying ahead of them."

The early 1900's were rampant with revolutionary activity in both the villages and the large cities of tsarist Russia. The growing Marxist movement claimed that only the working class (proletariat) could successfully lead the way for a true revolution. Only then would exploitation cease and a Socialist system, enobling the common man, could be developed. In contrast, the Social Revolutionary Party favored the power of the peasant. Their hope was that village uprisings would erupt all over Russian and force the upper classes (bourgeousise) to relinquish their power. Thus a Socialist nation could form, with freedom and happiness for each and every man. Here Pasternak has revealed the common worker's ripe animosity for the bourgeousise, his seething anger at injustice and his bright conviction towards a clearly attainable future. Now, I wonder, how much of this was the worker's natural, honest concern, his own sincere hope? Or how much was spoon-fed ideology, read from Marxist pamphlets and heard in the covert "underground" meetings? I speculate- not a little. Ture, revolution hung expectant in the air, but the mass implementation of Marxist doctrine was an invention of the intellectuals. They corralled illiterate workers into "literary courses", and swiftly handed out Marxist leaflets the moment the workers could read them. These leaflets explained how expoited they were by the capitalists, and what must be done about it. Revolution was soon to come.