"Zhivago worked at his old table by the staff-room window, stacked with charts and forms of every size and shape. he had pushed them to one side; occasionally, in addition to taking notes for his medical works, he wrote in snatches his "Playing at people, a Gloomy Diary or Journal Consisting of Prose, Verse, and What-have-you, Inspired by the Realization that Half the People Have Stopped Being Themselves and Are Acting Unknown Parts."

Before the Revolution, when the Bolsheviks were escalating in power, when the Tsar had abandoned his capital for the front and left it in the incapable hands of his Tsarina Alexandra and the foul Rasputin, did Pasternak maintain these same feelings towards the people of Russia?