Doctor Zhivago Part 16: Epilogue Summary

Part 16, Chapter 1

We jump ahead again, this time to 1943. Russia is smack dab in the middle of fighting the Germans in World War II. Gordon and Dudorov are quite a bit older now, and they're both pretty high up in the Russian military.
While rendezvousing with their army groups, they meet up one night in a little town called Chern.
In the early morning, Gordon gets up to go to the river and do some laundry. Dudorov doesn't think it's a good idea but goes with him anyway.

Dudorov and Gordon start talking about a woman named Christina who died nearby and whom the church has canonized as a Christian saint. It turns out this Christina woman was engaged to Dudorov. She died, though, when the Germans bombed the area during the war.
Apparently, Zhivago's half-brother Evgraf is roaming nearby and collecting info about Christina so that he can write a book about her.
Dudorov and Gordon talk about the days they spent in Russian prison camps. And now here they are as lieutenants in the Russian army. The world's a funny place.
Dudorov and Gordon finally admit that the Communists have made some mistakes in governing Russia. Really, guys? It only took being sent to prison for no reason to teach you that much?
Dudorov and Gordon briefly talk about a laundry girl named Tanya who bears a striking resemblance to Yuri Zhivago.
Tanya has told these guys that she grew up as a homeless child with unknown parents. See where this is going?

The next day, Gordon and Dudorov wait for a truck. The laundry girl Tanya is with them. She tells them about the meeting she just had with General Evgraf Zhivago.
It turns out that Evgraf asked Tanya about her past, and the more she told him, the more interested he became. As soon as she finished, Evgraf got up and walked around, thinking.
Evgraf said he didn't have time, but he had something important to tell Tanya. He told her to expect him to call on her soon to talk. He said it was perfectly possible he was actually her uncle. He even said that he might end up taking care of her financially and sending her wherever she liked.
While they're waiting, Gordon asks Tanya to repeat to him what she told Evgraf. So she starts to tell her story.

Tanya tells Gordon and Dudorov that she was born in the Russian Far East. Her mother was living with a man who wasn't Tanya's father, because Tanya's father had dropped out of the picture when Tanya's mother headed East with this second man.
Sound familiar?
Well, anyway, this man (who we now know was the lawyer Komarovsky) told Lara that she'd have to give up this new baby. This baby is the child Lara eventually had with Zhivago, though Zhivago never truly knew about her. And Komarovsky made Lara give her up to another couple.
Tanya eventually left her home village when her adopted mother's house was attacked by a robber and some Red Army guys showed up and ran the robber over with a train.
After they hear the story, Gordon and Dudorov realize that the girl must indeed be the child that Zhivago left Lara pregnant with when they parted ways at Varykino.
When Tanya is gone, the two men resume their philosophical conversation about Communism and history.

Another five or ten years go by. Then one night, Dudorov and Gordon are sitting together in an apartment in Moscow. They're flipping through one of Zhivago's old notebooks, which the two of them have put together and published. The book is full of beautiful poetry.
The two men feel that finally, a certain kind of freedom has come to Communist Russia. And it's as if Zhivago's book of poetry has somehow predicted it all.