Doctor Zhivago Part 10: On the High Road Summary

Part 10, Chapter 1

The narrator gives us a long description of the highway that the soldiers take Zhivago on. It sounds like he's traveling a very long way from his family.

The narrator goes on describing a little town that Zhivago and his captors pass through. Everywhere in the town, there are posters saying that more and more age groups of people are being called to serve in the White Army to fight the Communist Reds. So we're not necessarily in Red territory anymore.

We leave Zhivago's story and start following a woman named Galuzina, who's walking around and feeling sad about what what's been happening in Russia.
Galuzina's worried that both her husband and her good-for-nothing son won't make it out of the Revolution alive.
Galuzina reminisces about times when she and her father's family lived a comfortable lifestyle.

Galuzina goes for a walk through her town and looks through the old, dusty windows of the shop her family used to own. She looks at the nice houses that have been turned into dirty apartments for dozens of people to stay in together.
All she can really do is sing a folk song and sigh bitterly as she returns to her house.

Galuzina walks through her house. The narrator describes some of her little religious statues.
Galuzina complains to her adopted child about her health and her clothing, which is poorly made. She fears that everything in the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Galuzina accuses her adopted kid of making fun of her behind her back, but the kid promises her this isn't true.

We look in on a political meeting where people are talking about the evils of capitalism and the middle class.
The leader of the meeting seems to be Mikulitsyn's son, Liberius. This is the guy who has apparently ordered the kidnapping of Zhivago. Another guy in the same room, though, is the revolutionary leader Kostoed-Amursky. You might remember him from the Zhivagos' train ride to the Urals.
Liberius is constantly disrespectful to the elder speakers. He claims that while they've been making fancy speeches, he's been waging battles and defeating the enemy.

A bunch of young soldiers are having a potluck before they're sent off to fight for the Communists. They all get pretty drunk.
There are speeches about how Communism has to strike down everything in its path, even if this means killing a whole lot of people.
Young Galuzin, the son of Galuzina, talks about how much the world has cheated him in his life. He doesn't want to have to fight in a war.
Galuzin makes a bunch of political claims that are completely wrong and shows himself to be really ignorant of politics.
Suddenly, the noise of the dinner is drowned out by a nearby explosion. A government building has been attacked, and everyone rushes into the town and starts searching houses to look for the culprit.
Some of the youngest guys in the local army run away from their team and hide underneath a nearby house to watch everything happening. They know that if they get caught neglecting their duties, they'll probably all be shot.
An army colonel walks close to them, swearing that he just heard talking. But his assistant says he must have just imagined it, and the two of them walk away. The colonel has noticed, though, that the boys under the house are missing, and he orders them to be killed on sight. Little does he know that the boys can overhear him saying this.
The boys decide to get the heck out of town before they're found.