Part I
In Tsarist Russia in the early 1900s, Victor Komarovsky, an unctuous, wealthy businessman with political connections, is involved in a casual affair with Lara's bourgeois dressmaker mother Amalia, who encourages her teenage daughter to accept his invitation to dinner in an attempt to retain his financial support of her household. Initially, Lara is repelled by the thought, but she finally accepts because of the pressure he exerts on her. This eventually leads her to have a forceful relationship with him.
Meanwhile, Lara is also involved in a relationship with the idealistic reformer Pasha Antipov who drifts into left-wing extremism after being wounded by sabre-wielding Cossacks during a peaceful demonstration. Pasha goes to Lara, whom he wants to marry, to treat his wound. He asks her to hide a gun he picked up at the demonstration.
The title character is poet and doctor Yuri Zhivago, who first sees Lara from the window of a café. The two meet when Zhivago and his mentor are called to treat Amalia after she attempts suicide in response to her daughter's relationship with Victor Komarovsky. When Komarovsky learns of Lara's intention to marry Pasha, he tries to dissuade Lara and then rapes her. In revenge, Lara takes the pistol she has been hiding for Pasha and shoots Komarovsky at a Christmas Eve party but wounds another man by accident. Here, Zhivago and Lara encounter each other again when he is called to tend to the wounded victim. Komarovsky insists no action be taken against Lara, who is escorted out. Upon meeting face to face, Zhivago and Komarovsky take an instant dislike to each other as Zhivago realises that Komarovsky knew his now dead father. Komarovsky warns Zhivago to stay away from Lara.
Although enraged and devastated by Lara's affair with Komarovsky, Pasha marries Lara, and they have a daughter named Katya. Zhivago eventually marries his cousin, Tonya Gromeko, with whom he was raised after his father, who was involved in business dealings with Komarovsky, killed himself in 1897. Together they have a son named Sasha.
In 1915, with World War I in progress, Yuri Zhivago is conscripted and becomes an army doctor. He and Lara are reunited over a year later in a makeshift field hospital, where she is serving as a nurse while searching for her missing husband. The two fall in love but do not consummate their relationship. Together they run a hospital for several months, during which radical changes take place throughout Russia due to the fall of the Tsar and subsequent Bolshevik takeover of the country. Lara leaves the hospital to return to her village, while Zhivago returns to Moscow.
Part II
After Russia's involvement with the War ends in 1917, Zhivago returns to Moscow and to his wife Tonya, son Sasha, and his uncle Alexander, whose house in Moscow has been divided into tenements by the new Soviet government. Zhivago briefly returns to work at a hospital where his old friend, Misha Gordon, is now director. Despite supporting the revolution, Zhivago is suspected of having bourgeois tendencies as he refuses to comply with the official line on the prevalence of epidemics. Gordon arranges for travel passes and documents for Zhivago and his family to escape from the continuing unrest in Moscow to the far away Gromeko estate at Varykino in the Ural Mountains. Zhivago, Tonya, Sasha, and Alexander board a heavily guarded cattle truck train. They are informed that they will be traveling through the contested territory, secured by the infamous Bolshevik commander named Strelnikov.
While the train is stopped at a siding, Zhivago wanders away. He stumbles across the armoured train of Strelnikov. Yuri recognizes Strelnikov as the former Pasha Antipov. After a tense interview, Strelnikov informs Yuri that Lara is now living in the town of Yuriatin, then occupied by the anti-communist White Army. He allows Zhivago to return to his family.
The family lives a peaceful life in Varykino for the next year and a half until Zhivago finds Lara in nearby Yuriatin, and they surrender to their long-repressed feelings and begin an affair. When Tonya becomes pregnant, Yuri breaks off with Lara, only to be abducted and conscripted into service by Communist partisans.
Lara is called to serve as the midwife when Tonya is ready to deliver her second child, and Tonya realises who she is. As the civil war draws to a close, Zhivago deserts the red partisans and treks across the mountains to Lara's house in Yuriatin, where she nurses him back to health. Meanwhile, Tonya, her two children, and her father have returned to Moscow.
Pursued by Komarovsky, now a leader in the Communist Party, Zhivago, Lara and her daughter flee to Varykino. Months later, Komarovsky, still obsessed with Lara, arrives and offers them safe passage out of Russia. They initially refuse, but Komarovsky persuades Zhivago that it is in Lara's best interests to leave because of her connection to Strelnikov, who has fallen from favour and lost his position in the Red Army. Zhivago convinces Lara, who is expecting their child, to leave with Komarovsky, telling her he will follow her shortly.
Strelnikov, now a hunted man, arrives at Varykino in search of his family soon after they leave with Komarovsky. Zhivago assures him that Lara and his daughter are safe, and Strelnikov kills himself.
Zhivago returns to Moscow and learns his wife, son, and father-in-law were deported and their location is unknown. Several years later, while sitting in a café, he sees a young boy who reminds him of himself as a child passing on the street with his mother, and he recognizes Lara. Before he can reach the pair, he suffers a fatal heart attack. Lara brings young Yuri to view his father's body, and as the two near their home, she realises that the NKVD is waiting to arrest her. Pretending that they are playing a game, she urges her son to run away as quickly as he can, with the book of poems Zhivago wrote over the years before she surrenders to the authorities.
