Lara's life is also dealt with in considerable detail. Lara, whose full name is Larissa Feodorovna Guishar (later Antipova), is the daughter of a bourgeois mother. She becomes involved in an affair with Viktor Komarovsky, a powerful lawyer with political connections, who both repulses and attracts her. Lara is engaged to Pavel "Pasha" Antipov, an idealistic young student who becomes involved in Bolshevism through his father. To gain independence from Komarovsky, Lara