Doctor Zhivago Part 11: The Forest Army Summary

Part 11, Chapter 1

It's been two years now since Zhivago has been captured by the Forest Brotherhood army. That's two years since he's seen his family (or his lover, Lara). It's not like he's kept in a cage or anything. He's just been threatened with death if he ever tries to escape.
Nonetheless, he tries to escape a couple of times. He gets caught each time without being punished, but he knows well enough to stop trying, or he could get himself killed.
All the while, the partisan leader Liberius has taken a liking to Zhivago. He sleeps in the same tent with Zhivago so that the two of them can talk about philosophical ideas.
Zhivago just finds this tiresome.

Month after month, the left-wing Forest Brotherhood keeps driving the right-wing White Army eastward, racking up victory after victory. It looks like Communism is definitely going to conquer all of Russia. But that doesn't mean the Whites are going to give up without killing as many Communists as they can.
Whenever possible, Zhivago raids abandoned pharmacies and takes as many pharmaceuticals as he can.
In one of these pharmacies, he runs into a woman he recognizes from his train ride to the Urals. She tells him about all of her misfortunes, which he sympathizes with. But he really needs to get going. He knows that he's hurting the entire town by cleaning out their pharmacy, but he has armed guards watching him and doesn't really have a choice.

The narrator tells us that Zhivago always has plenty of work to do with the army. It's winter in Siberia, and everyone is constantly getting sick. Plus, the army grows tenfold during the two years he's with them.
On the bright side, he gets a few assistants with medical backgrounds to help him out.

According to international rules, medical people aren't allowed to pick up guns and start firing in a war. But one time, without wanting to, Zhivago had to violate this rule. He got caught in a battlefield and had to start shooting back.
During the battle, Zhivago takes a rifle off of a dead guy and just starts shooting at the oncoming army. He tries to shoot away from people, instead focusing on a faraway tree as his target. But try as he might, he accidentally hits a soldier and kills him.
Eventually, the Whites retreat. Zhivago goes out to one of the people he's shot and finds his name sewn into the victim's coat, probably by his mother. The guy is just a kid.
But wait a second: Zhivago finds out that the kid is actually still alive. He knows that his army will finish the kid off if they find out, so he takes the uniform off a dead member of his own army and puts it on the kid. Before long, he nurses the kid back to health.
When they let the kid go, he swears that he'll return to the Whites and fight them all over again.

We look in on Liberius's quarters, where he is talking Zhivago's ear off and not letting him sleep.
Liberius wants to know what Zhivago thinks of his father, Mikulitsyn. Zhivago answers that he just wants to sleep. He also calls Liberius out for getting into his cocaine supplies and being an addict.
Liberius, in turn, says that Zhivago isn't committed enough to the cause of Communism.
Finally, Zhivago snaps and calls Liberius an ignorant fool. Liberius, undaunted, suggests that Zhivago wouldn't be so depressed all the time if he got with the program.
Zhivago says that he has heard a rumor about an attack on Varykino by some band of armed marauders. No one knows if Zhivago's family made it out alive, but the entire village has been wiped out. Liberius says this rumor isn't true, since it would apply to his own family as well.
Zhivago falls asleep, wondering if his wife Tonya is alive.

It's autumn now. Zhivago talks with one of his assistants whose name is Lajos. Apparently, some men have been caught making moonshine in the army, and no one knows what'll happen to them. This is kind of hypocritical, considering that the head of the army, Liberius, is a cokehead.
The two doctors decide that they're going to have to start offering treatment for mental illness in the army.
Apparently, there's this one guy who's been acting very strangely and worrying people. His name is Pamphil Palykh, and he's worried about what'll happen to his family if he's killed in battle.

Zhivago is informed by Liberius's second-in-command that he's going to have to take care of twice as many wounded soldiers with half as many supplies. Zhivago says it's impossible, but the soldier says he'll have to adjust to circumstances.
They chat about that Pamphil Palykh guy, who seems to be going more insane by the day. His wife and children are coming to travel with him, which is just increasing the pressure on his brain.
Zhivago agrees to go talk to Palykh right away.

On his way to meet Pamphil Palykh, Zhivago lies down in the forest to take a nap. Liberius hasn't let him sleep for days. He covers his body with leaves.
Later on, though, he's awakened by the sound of people talking. It sounds like Liberius's second-in-command is planning to murder Liberius with a couple of conspirators. The guys don't see Zhivago under the leaves, and he can hear the whole plan.
There have been many times when Zhivago has fantasized about killing Liberius himself. But he feels like he has a responsibility to warn the guy about his assassination.
Before he gets a chance, though, Liberius's second-in-command exposes the conspirators and has them all shot. It turns out that the entire time, he was just tricking them into a trap. Zhivago is sickened by the whole thing.

Finally, Zhivago goes to see the mentally ill Pamphil Palykh. He finds the guy preparing a tent for the arrival of his family.
Zhivago voices his concerns about Pamphil's health, since he's stopped eating and has grown thin.
They sit down, and Pamphil tells Zhivago his life story, which explains how he ended up where he is. He also talks about how worried he is that the Whites are surrounding them and getting ready to wipe all of them out, especially his wife and children.
Pamphil also reveals that over the years, he's killed a whole lot of people. He tells one particular story about a commissar who once tried to give a nice speech telling him and some army men to return to the WWI front. But the guy stumbled on top of a water barrel, and Pamphil laughed so hard that he shot the guy in the throat.
Zhivago recognizes this story and realizes that Pamphil is talking about Commissar Gintz, the brash young man who was murdered by an angry mob. It turns out Pamphil was the first guy to pull the trigger.