Strelnikov

Pasha Antipov, also known as Strelnikov, is the hidden antagonist in the 1957 Boris Pasternak novel Doctor Zhivago as well as it's 1965 film adaptation of the same name. He was potrayed by Sir Tom Courtenay.

Pasha is an idealistic reformer who slowly drifts into left wing extremism. He first appears during a peaceful protest demonstration involving impoverished Russian workers where he is wounded when he and the workers are attacked by a Tsarist Cossack calvery charge armed with sabres. Whilst fleeing, he runs to a nurse named Lara Antipova (whom he wants to marry) to tend to his wound and he gives her a gun he picked up during the massacre (Lara would later use this gun to attempt revenge on Viktor Komarovsky at a Christmas Eve party and ends up being escourted out the building by Pasha). During World War One, Pasha is reported M.I.A (missing in action) when he and his platoon attempt a daring charge attack on German forces in No Man's Land.

Later on, following the 1917 Russian Revolution, aspiring poet Yuri Zhivago (who's poetry has now being condemned as anti-Communist) and his family are attempting to flee Moscow into the Ural mountains which involves a train ride through contested territory, which is being secured by the imfamous Bolshevik commander Strelnikov. One day Yuri stumbles across Strelnikov's armoured train and, after being summoned before the Bolshevik commander, is shocked to discover that Strelnikov is none other than the formerly idealistic Pasha Antipov. During a tense interview Strelnikov reveals that Lara is living in a town called Yuriatin, which is occupied by the anti-communist White Army. He permits Yuri to return to his family, however Strelnikov's right hand man implies that most people who are interrogated by Strelnikov end up being shot.

Some time after Yuri is reunited with Lara, Komarovsky informs them that the Cheka (Soviet secret police) have been keeping an eye on the couple due to Lara's connection to Strelnikov via marriage and Yuri's counter revolutionary poetry and desertion from communist partisans and that Lara is only being spared in order to lure Strelnikov out of hiding. Strelnikov is eventually lured out of hiding and while on route to his own execution commited suicide. As a result Yuri sends Lara and her daughter Katya away with Komarovsky to take them to safety. out of Russia.