Very… Russian
Have you ever read a book and thought to yourself, "Huh, this is an interesting character. I wonder what his entire life has been like up to this point?" Well, if you're reading a Russian writer like Pasternak, chances are you're going to find out.
Like Russia itself, Russian novels are famous for being gigantic. Now, Doctor Zhivago isn't the most gigantic of them all (War and Peace, anyone?), but it definitely follows a trend that began with 19th-century novels (think Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) that placed realistic, complex characters in massive historical settings and tried to analyze social, historical, and political trends through these characters' eyes.
With all that detail to cover, a writer needs to figure out what exactly needs to be described—and for how long. At times, Pasternak will throw you right into the middle of a long scene. At others times, he'll gloss over a massively important event in a single sentence, like when he tells us of Lara's fate: "Evidently she was arrested on the street in those days and died or vanished no one knew where" (15.17.2).
By making us sympathize with Lara so deeply for so long and then informing us of her death this way, Pasternak is truly able to show us how horrifying it would have been to be politically unpopular during the Communist occupation of Russia, a time when someone could disappear from the street and never be seen again, just like that.
It's harsh, but it's also an accurate picture of how bad things got in Russia during the early 20th century.