On the September 18 broadcast of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace described Doctor Zhivago, one of two films named by chief justice nominee John G. Roberts Jr. as his favorites, as “a little commie.” Weekly Standard editor William Kristol concurred, calling the film “a sappy, liberal movie.” But the exchange mischaracterized both the film and the Boris Pasternak novel from which it was adapted, ignoring its anti-communist message and the persecution Pasternak suffered in the Soviet Union for expressing these beliefs.

Originally censored in the Soviet Union, Pasternak's novel, Doctor Zhivago, was published in Italy in 1957, and Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958. Soviet authorities resisted the novel from the outset. Although Pasternak had smuggled a manuscript out of the Soviet Union to be published in Italy, The Guardian of London recently discovered that the Soviet government had forced him to send false telegrams rescinding his approval of the manuscript. Pasternak finally managed to send a genuine letter to his publisher, complaining of “moral pressure, repulsive in its duplicity.” MSN's Encarta Encyclopedia reports that upon being awarded the Nobel Prize, Pasternak was forced to decline the award because the novel was anti-communist. According to the Academy of American Poets, the Soviet government took extreme measures to ensure he rejected the award as “all publication of his translations came to a halt and he was deprived of his livelihood.”

Commentary on the novel suggests that it is not communist. The protagonist, Dr. Yuri Zhivago, is a doctor and poet himself persecuted for his rejection of Soviet dogmatism. After serving as a military doctor for the czarist regime in World War I, Zhivago returns to a local hospital where “his co-workers are suspicious of him. Influenced by Bolshevism, they dislike his use of intuition instead of logic,” according to the New York University Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. Dr. Zhivago flees Moscow for the country but cannot escape Russia's political struggles. Eventually conscripted as a doctor by communist partisans, he spends the revolution caught up in a struggle he cannot understand. His loyalty is not to any political system, but to his art, as the NYU database notes:

For Dr. Zhivago, philosophy, literature, and medicine are all part of the same thing. They all are spaces in which he can express his love and respect for the beauty of life. In all these spheres, he is undogmatic, unrational, but wholly devoted to justice. He prizes sensory experience over dogmatism or logical argument.

Hardly “commie,” the novel and film describe the struggles of an artist to express himself under a repressive regime.

From a panel discussion with Wallace, Kristol, Fox News host Brit Hume, National Public Radio (NPR) national political correspondent and Fox News political correspondent Mara Liasson and NPR senior correspondent and Fox News political contributor Juan Williams on the September 18 broadcast of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:

[video clip]

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D-NY): -- what kind of movies you like. You won't name one. Then I ask you if you like Casablanca, and you respond by saying lots of people like Casablanca.

ROBERTS: First, Doctor Zhivago and North by Northwest.

[end video clip]

WALLACE: That exchange during this week's confirmation hearings when democratic Senator Charles Schumer complained he couldn't get straight answers from Judge John Roberts. And we're back now with Brit, Mara, Bill, and Juan. All right. Let's review this week's Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Roberts, and let's start with the lead player. Bill Kristol, how did Roberts do, and should conservatives worry that perhaps this fellow is more moderate than they had expected?

KRISTOL: He did great. The only conservative worries I've heard are about Doctor Zhivago. Isn't that kind of a sappy, liberal movie, you know?

WALLACE: It's a little commie.

KRISTOL: Yeah, right. Anyway, no, he did great. Republicans, conservatives are happy. Democrats looked foolish. And now they've got a problem that they don't know what to do. Should they vote to confirm him or not? The New York Times says vote no. The Washington Post says vote yes. Huge dilemma for Democrats this week.