The main character, Alexei Turbin, is faithful to his duty, tries to join his unit (not knowing that it has been disbanded), enters into battle with the Petliurists, is wounded and, by chance, finds love in the person of a woman who saves him from being pursued by his enemies.

A social cataclysm reveals characters - some flee, others prefer death in battle. The people as a whole accept the new government (Petlyura) and after its arrival demonstrate hostility towards the officers.

Characters

• Alexey Vasilievich Turbin- doctor, 28 years old.
• Elena Turbina-Talberg- sister of Alexei, 24 years old.
• Nikolka- non-commissioned officer of the First Infantry Squad, brother of Alexei and Elena, 17 years old.
• Victor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky- lieutenant, friend of the Turbin family, Alexei’s friend at the Alexander Gymnasium.
• Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky- former lieutenant of the Life Guards Uhlan Regiment, adjutant at the headquarters of General Belorukov, friend of the Turbin family, friend of Alexei at the Alexander Gymnasium, longtime admirer of Elena.
• Fedor Nikolaevich Stepanov(“Karas”) - second lieutenant artilleryman, friend of the Turbin family, Alexei’s friend at the Alexander Gymnasium.
• Sergei Ivanovich Talberg- Captain of the General Staff of Hetman Skoropadsky, Elena’s husband, a conformist.
• father Alexander- priest of the Church of St. Nicholas the Good.
• Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich(“Vasilisa”) - the owner of the house in which the Turbins rented the second floor.
• Larion Larionovich Surzhansky(“Lariosik”) - Talberg’s nephew from Zhitomir.

History of writing

Bulgakov began writing the novel “The White Guard” after the death of his mother (February 1, 1922) and wrote until 1924.

The typist I. S. Raaben, who retyped the novel, argued that this work was conceived by Bulgakov as a trilogy. The second part of the novel was supposed to cover the events of 1919, and the third - 1920, including the war with the Poles. In the third part, Myshlaevsky went over to the side of the Bolsheviks and served in the Red Army.

The novel could have other names - for example, Bulgakov chose between “Midnight Cross” and “White Cross”. One of the excerpts from an early edition of the novel was published in December 1922 in the Berlin newspaper Nakanune under the title “On the Night of the 3rd” with the subtitle “From the novel “The Scarlet Mach”.” The working title of the first part of the novel at the time of writing was “The Yellow Ensign”.

In 1923, Bulgakov wrote about his work: “And I will finish the novel, and, I dare to assure you, it will be the kind of novel that will make the sky hot...” In his 1924 autobiography, Bulgakov wrote: “It took a year to write the novel The White Guard. I love this novel more than all my other works.”

It is generally accepted that Bulgakov worked on the novel The White Guard in 1923-1924, but this is probably not entirely accurate. In any case, it is known for sure that in 1922 Bulgakov wrote some stories, which were then included in the novel in a modified form. In March 1923, in the seventh issue of the Rossiya magazine, a message appeared: “Mikhail Bulgakov is finishing the novel “The White Guard,” covering the era of the struggle with whites in the south (1919-1920).”

T. N. Lappa told M. O. Chudakova: “...I wrote “The White Guard” at night and liked me to sit next to me, sewing. His hands and feet were cold, he told me: “Hurry, quickly, hot water”; I was heating water on a kerosene stove, he put his hands in a basin of hot water...”

In the spring of 1923, Bulgakov wrote in a letter to his sister Nadezhda: “... I’m urgently finishing the 1st part of the novel; It’s called “Yellow Ensign.” The novel begins with the entry of Petliura's troops into Kyiv. The second and subsequent parts, apparently, were supposed to tell about the arrival of the Bolsheviks in the City, then about their retreat under the attacks of Denikin’s troops, and, finally, about the fighting in the Caucasus. This was the writer's original intention. But after thinking about the possibilities of publishing a similar novel in Soviet Russia, Bulgakov decided to shift the time of action to an earlier period and exclude events associated with the Bolsheviks.

“WHITE GUARD”, novel. First published (incomplete): Russia, M., 1924, No. 4; 1925, No. 5. In full: Bulgakov M. Days of the Turbins (White Guard). Paris: Concorde, vol. 1 - 1927, vol. 2 - 1929. The 2nd volume in 1929 as “The End of the White Guard” was also published in Riga in “A Book for Everyone”. B.G. is a largely autobiographical novel, based on the writer’s personal impressions of Kyiv (in the novel - the City) at the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. The Turbin family is to a large extent the Bulgakov family. Turbiny is the maiden name of Bulgakov’s grandmother on his mother’s side, Anfisa Ivanovna, and in her marriage, Pokrovskaya. The book was started in 1922, after the death of the writer’s mother, V.M. Bulgakova, on February 1, 1922 (in the novel, the death of the mother of Alexei, Nikolka and Elena Turbins is attributed to May 1918 - the time of her marriage to a long-time friend, doctor Ivan Pavlovich Voskresensky (about 1879-1966), whom Bulgakov did not like). The manuscript of the novel has not survived. As Bulgakov told his friend P. S. Popov in the mid-20s, B. G. was conceived and written in 1922-1924. According to the testimony of the typist I. S. Raaben, who retyped the novel, B. G. was originally conceived as a trilogy, and in the third part, the action of which covered the entire 1919, Myshlaevsky found himself in the Red Army. It is characteristic that an excerpt from the early edition of B. G. “On the night of the 3rd” in December 1922 was published in the Berlin newspaper “Nakanune” with the subtitle “From the novel “The Scarlet Mach”. “Midnight Cross” and “White Cross” appeared as possible names for the novels of the proposed trilogy in the memoirs of contemporaries. In the feuilleton “Moonshine Lake” (1923), Bulgakov spoke about the novel, which he was then working on: “And I will finish the novel, and, I dare to assure you, it will be the kind of novel that will make the sky feel hot...” However, in in the second half of the 20s, in a conversation with P.S. Popov, he called B. G. a “failed” novel, although “he took the idea very seriously.” In his autobiography, written in October 1924, Bulgakov recorded: “It took a year to write the novel “The White Guard.” I love this novel more than all my other works.” But the writer was increasingly overcome by doubts. On January 5, 1925, he noted in his diary: “It would be a terrible pity if I am mistaken and the White Guard is not a strong thing.”

The prototypes of the heroes of Bulgakov were Kyiv friends and acquaintances of Bulgakov. So, Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky was copied from his childhood friend Nikolai Nikolaevich Syngaevsky. Bulgakov’s first wife T.N. Lappa described Syngaevsky in her memoirs as follows:

“He was very handsome... Tall, thin... his head was small... too small for his figure. I kept dreaming about ballet and wanted to go to ballet school. Before the arrival of the Petliurists, he joined the cadets.” Later, either after the occupation of Kyiv by the troops of A.I. Denikin (1872-1947), or the arrival of the Poles there in 1920, the Syngaevsky family emigrated to Poland. The portrait of the character largely repeats the portrait of the prototype: “...And the head of Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky appeared above the huge shoulders. This head was very beautiful, strange and sad and attractive with the beauty of an ancient real breed and degeneration. Beauty is in different colored, bold eyes, in long eyelashes. The nose was hooked, the lips were proud, the forehead was clean, without any special features. But one corner of the mouth is sadly lowered, and the chin is cut off obliquely, as if the sculptor, sculpting a noble face, had a wild fantasy of biting off a layer of clay and leaving the manly face with a small and irregular female chin.” Here Syngaevsky's features are deliberately combined with the signs of Satan - different eyes, a Mephistophelian nose with a hump, an obliquely cut mouth and chin. Later, these same signs will be found in Woland in the novel “The Master and Margarita”.

The prototype for Lieutenant Shervinsky was another friend of Bulgakov’s youth, Yuri Leonidovich Gladyrevsky, an amateur singer (this quality passed on to the character), who served in the troops of Hetman Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945), but not as an adjutant. Then he emigrated. It is interesting that in B.G. and the play “Days of the Turbins” Shervinsky’s name is Leonid Yuryevich, and in the earlier story “On the Night of the 3rd” the corresponding character is called Yuri Leonidovich. In the same story, Elena Talberg (Turbina) is called Varvara Afanasyevna, like Bulgakov’s sister, who served as the prototype for Elena. Captain Talberg, her husband, was largely based on Varvara Afanasyevna Bulgakova’s husband, Leonid Sergeevich Karum (1888-1968), a German by birth, a career officer who served first Skoropadsky and then the Bolsheviks, for whom he taught at a rifle school. It is curious that in the version of the finale of B.G., in the magazine “Russia”, which was brought to proofreading, but was never published due to the closure of this printing organ, Shervinsky acquired the features of not only an opera demon, but also L.S. Karum: “I have the honor,” he said, clicking his heels, “the commander of the rifle school is Comrade Shervinsky.

He took a huge leaf star from his pocket and pinned it on his chest on the left side. The mists of sleep were creeping around him, his face from the club was bright and doll-like.

“This is a lie,” Elena cried in her sleep. - You should be hanged.

“Would you like,” answered the nightmare. - Take a risk, madam.

He whistled impudently and split into two. The left sleeve was covered with a rhombus, and a second star, a golden one, glowed in the diamond. Rays splashed from it, and on the right side of the shoulder a pale Uhlan shoulder strap appeared...

- Condottiere! Condottiere! – Elena shouted.

“Forgive me,” answered the two-colored nightmare, “there are only two, I have two in total, but I have only one neck, and that one is not the official one, but my own.” We will live.

“And death will come, we will die...” Nikolka sang and went out.

He had a guitar in his hands, but there was blood all over his neck, and on his forehead there was a yellow aureole with icons. Elena instantly realized that he would die, and sobbed bitterly and woke up screaming in the night.”

Probably, the infernal traits of such heroes as Myshlaevsky, Shervinsky and Talberg are significant for Bulgakov. It is no coincidence that the latter resembles a rat (hetman’s gray-blue cockade, brushes of “black trimmed mustache,” sparsely spaced but large and white teeth,” “yellow sparkles” in his eyes - in “Days of the Turbins” he is directly compared to this unpleasant animal) . Rats, as you know, are traditionally associated with evil spirits. All three, obviously, in the subsequent parts of the trilogy (and before the closure of the magazine “Russia” in May 1926, Bulgakov, most likely, thought to continue B. g.) were to serve in the Red Army as a kind of mercenaries (condottieres), thus saving their neck from the loop. The head of the Red Army, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council L.D. Trotsky, is directly likened to Satan in the novel. At the end of the novel, Bulgakov predicted two options for the fate of the participants in the white movement - either service to the Reds for the purpose of self-preservation, or death, which is destined for Nikolka Turbin, like the narrator’s brother in “The Red Crown” (1922), who bears the same name.

As a result of the publication of B.G., Bulgakov’s relations with his sister Varya and L.S. Karum, as well as with his acquaintance poet Sergei Vasilyevich Shervinsky (1892-1991), whose surname was awarded to not the most attractive character in the novel (although in the play “Days” Turbins” he is already much prettier).

In Bulgakov, he strives to show the people and intelligentsia in the flames of the civil war in Ukraine. The main character, Alexey Turbin, although clearly autobiographical, is, unlike the writer, not a zemstvo doctor who was only formally enrolled in military service, but a real military medic who has seen and experienced a lot during the three years of the World War. He, to a much greater extent than Bulgakov, is one of those thousands and thousands of officers who have to make their choice after the revolution, to serve, willingly or unwillingly, in the ranks of warring armies. In B. g., two groups of officers are contrasted - those who “hated the Bolsheviks with hot and direct hatred, the kind that could lead to a fight,” and “those who returned from the war to their homes with the idea, like Alexei Turbin, to rest and to rest and rebuild not a military life, but an ordinary human life.” Knowing the results of the civil war, Bulgakov is on the side of the latter. The leitmotif of B. is the idea of ​​preserving the House, the home, despite all the shocks of war and revolution, and the Turbins’ house is the real house of the Bulgakovs on Andreevsky Spusk, 13.

Bulgakov sociologically accurately shows the mass movements of the era. It demonstrates the centuries-old hatred of the peasants towards the landowners and officers and the newly emerged, but no less deep hatred towards the occupying Germans. All this fueled the uprising raised against the German hetman P. P. Skoropadsky by the leader of the Ukrainian national movement S. V. Petlyura. For Bulgakov, Petliura is “simply a myth generated in Ukraine in the fog of the terrible year of 1818,” and behind this myth stood “fierce hatred. There were four hundred thousand Germans, and around them four times forty times four hundred thousand men with hearts burning with unquenchable anger. Oh, much, much has accumulated in these hearts. And the blows of lieutenant stacks on the faces, shrapnel rapid fire on rebellious villages, and backs striped with ramrods of the Hetman Serdyuks, and receipts on pieces of paper in the handwriting of majors and lieutenants of the German army.

“Give the Russian pig 25 marks for the pig bought from her.”

Good-natured, contemptuous laughter at those who came with such a receipt to the German headquarters in the City.

And requisitioned horses, and confiscated grain, and fat-faced landowners who returned to their estates under the hetman - a tremor of hatred at the word “officer”... There were tens of thousands of people who returned from the war and knew how to shoot...

“But the officers themselves learned it on the orders of their superiors!”

In the finale of the B.G., “only the corpse testified that Pettura was not a myth, that he really was...” The corpse of a Jew tortured by Petliurists at the Chain Bridge, the corpses of hundreds, thousands of other victims - this is the reality of the civil war. And to the question “Will anyone pay for the blood?” Bulgakov gives a confident answer: “No. Nobody". In the text of the novel, which Bulgakov submitted to the Rossiya magazine, there were no words about the price of blood. But later, in connection with the work on the play “Running” and the emergence of the plan for the novel “The Master and Margarita,” the question of the price of blood became one of the main ones, and the corresponding words appeared in the second volume of the Paris edition of the novel.

In Bulgakov, Bulgakov uses the motif of the “turnover” of the Bolsheviks and Petliurists. Let us note that in reality, many figures of the Ukrainian national movement and parts of the Petliura army often went over to the side of the Bolsheviks during the civil war or after its end, or at least recognized Soviet power. Thus, one of the leaders of the Central Rada and the Directory, the famous writer Vladimir Kirillovich Vinnichenko (1880-1951), in 1920, for a short time was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars (although he later emigrated). After the end of the civil war, the former chairman of the Central Rada, the famous historian Mikhail Sergeevich Grushevsky (1866-1934), returned to the USSR. One of Petlyura’s closest associates, Yuri Tyutyunnik, also went over to the Bolsheviks, who in 1924 in Kharkov published the memoirs “With the Poles against Ukraine” in Ukrainian, and later worked in Ukrainian cinematography. The prototype of one of the characters of B.G., the Petliura Colonel Bolbotun, who burst into the city, Colonel P. Bolbochan, who had previously commanded the 5th Zaporozhye Regiment in Skoropadsky’s army, in November 1918 sided with the Directory and participated in the capture of Kiev, and six months later went over to the Bolsheviks and was shot on the orders of Petliura. Even in the 1920s there was no impassable gulf between the Ukrainian socialists, to whom Petliura, Vinnychenko, and Tyutyunnik belonged, and the Bolsheviks. Bulgakov in B. tried to make it clear to readers that violence came from the Bolsheviks to no less a degree than from their opponents. According to censorship conditions, he is forced to expose the Bolshevik myth allegorically, with hints of the complete similarity of the Reds with the Petliurists (it was not forbidden to scold the latter). This was manifested, in particular, in the following episode: “A ghost walked along the roads - a certain old man Degtyarenko, full of fragrant moonshine and terrible words, croaking, but folding in his dark lips into something extremely reminiscent of a declaration of human and civil rights. Then this same Degtyarenko the prophet lay and howled, and people with red bows on their chests flogged him with ramrods. And the most cunning brain would go crazy over this catch: if there are red bows, then ramrods are in no way acceptable, and if there are ramrods, then red bows are impossible...” This episode was copied in the Soviet editions of B.G. 60- s of the 80s, because it did not fit into the propaganda stereotype, according to which the color red and violence against a person, especially one who preaches civil rights, are incompatible. For Bulgakov, both the Bolsheviks and the Petliurists are in fact equivalent and perform the same function, since “it was necessary to lure this same peasant anger along one of some roads, for it is so magically arranged in this world that, no matter how much it fled, he always fatally ends up at the same crossroads.

It's very simple. There would be chaos, but people would still be there.”

Perhaps he was familiar with the quote from Pravda cited in S.P. Melgunov’s book “Red Terror in Russia” (1923): “The Cheka locked the peasants en masse in a cold barn, stripped them naked and beat them with ramrods.”

It is significant that in the version of the final part of B.G., which was never published in the Rossiya magazine, Alexei Turbin, who escaped from the Petliurists, awaits the arrival of the Reds and has a dream in which he is pursued by security officers: “And the worst thing is that among There is one security officer in gray and a hat. And this is the same one whom Turbin wounded in December on Malo-Provalnaya Street. Turbin is in wild horror. Turbin doesn’t understand anything. But he was a Petliurist, and these security officers were Bolsheviks?! After all, they are enemies? Enemies, damn them! Are they really united now? Oh, if so, Turbin is missing!

- Take him, comrades! - someone growls. They rush at Turbin.

- Grab him! Grab it! - yells the half-shot, bloody werewolf, - try yogo! Trimay!

Everything gets in the way. In the ring of events that replace each other, one thing is clear - Turbin is always at the peak of interest, Turbin is always the enemy of everyone. The turbine is getting colder.

Wakes up. Sweat. No! What a blessing. There is neither this half-shot man, nor the security officers, there is no one.”

According to Bulgakov, all the authorities that succeed each other in the civil war turn out to be hostile to the intelligentsia. In the Great Patriotic War he showed this using the example of the Petliuraites, in the feuilletons “Future Prospects” (1919) and “In the Cafe” (1920) - using the example of the Reds, and, finally, in the play “Running” (1928) - using the example of the Whites .

In B. the reasons for the failure of the white movement were also revealed. The peasantry is hostile to him, and the city “coffee public,” branded in the feuilleton “In the Cafe,” does not want to defend the ideals of the whites: “All currency traders knew about the mobilization three days before the order. Great? And everyone has a hernia, everyone has the apex of the right lung, and those who don’t have the apex simply disappear, as if they have fallen through the ground. Well, this, brothers, is a terrible sign. If they are whispering in coffee shops before mobilization and no one goes, it’s a mess!”

Alexei Turbin in B. is a monarchist, although his monarchism evaporates from the consciousness of powerlessness to prevent the death of innocent people. T.N. Lappa testified that the episode of the Turbin brothers and their friends performing the forbidden tsar’s anthem was not a fiction. Bulgakov and his comrades actually sang “God Save the Tsar,” but not under the hetman, but under the Petliurites. This caused dissatisfaction with the homeowner, Vasily Pavlovich Listovnichy (1876-1919, according to other sources - not earlier than 1920) - the prototype of the engineer Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, Vasilisa, in Bulgakov. However, during the creation of the novel, Bulgakov was no longer a monarchist. In the writer’s diary on April 15, 1924, the following commented on rumors that “as if a manifesto of Nikolai Nikolaevich” (the Younger) (1856-1929), uncle Nicholas II (1868-1918) and the head of the Romanov house was circulating in Moscow: “Damn it.” all the Romanovs! There weren't enough of them."

In B.G. there are clear parallels with S.N. Bulgakov’s article “At the Feast of the Gods” (1918). The Russian philosopher wrote that “someone in gray,” who is more cunning than Wilhelm, is now at war with Russia and seeks to bind and paralyze it.” In the novel, “someone in gray” is both Trotsky and Petliura, likened to the devil, and the gray color of the Bolshevik, German and Petliura troops is persistently emphasized. The Reds are “gray scattered regiments that came from somewhere in the forests, from the plain leading to Moscow,” the Germans “came to the City in gray ranks,” and the Ukrainian soldiers do not have boots, but have “wide trousers peeking out from under soldiers' gray overcoats." Myshlaevsky’s reasoning about Dostoevsky’s “God-bearing peasants” who cut up the officers near Kiev goes back to the following passage in the article “At the Feast of the Gods”: “Recently, they dreamily worshiped the God-bearing people, the liberator. And when the people stopped being afraid of the master, and shook with all their might, they remembered their Pugachev days - after all, the people's memory is not as short as the master's - then disappointment began...” In B.G. who immediately become docile after the threat of execution. However, he and the other officers in the novel only make threats, but do not put their threats into action (the lord’s memory is really short), unlike the men who, at the first opportunity, return to Pugachev’s traditions and slaughter their masters. When describing Myshlaevsky’s campaign under the Red Tavern and the death of the officers, the author B. G. used the memoirs of Roman Gul (1896-1986) “The Kiev Epic (November - December 1918)”, published in the second volume of the Berlin “Archive of the Russian Revolution” in 1922 This is where the image of the “spurs-clanging, burring adjutant guardsman” materialized in Shervinsky, the poster “You may not be a hero, but you must be a volunteer!”, the confusion of the headquarters, which Bulgakov himself did not have time to encounter, and some other details.

As T.N. Lappa recalled, Bulgakov’s service with Skoropadsky boiled down to the following: “Syngaevsky and Misha’s other comrades came and they were talking that they should not let the Petliurists in and defend the city, that the Germans should help... and the Germans kept scurrying away. And the guys agreed to go the next day. They even stayed overnight with us... And in the morning Mikhail went. There was a first aid station there... And there should have been a battle, but it seems there was none. Mikhail arrived in a cab and said that it was all over and that the Petliurists would come.” The episode with the escape from the Petliurites and the wounding of Alexei Turbin on December 14, 1918 is a writer’s fiction; Bulgakov himself was not wounded. Much more dramatic was the escape of the mobilized Bulgakov from the Petliurites on the night of February 2 to 3, 1919, depicted in B. in the flight of Alexei Turbin, and in the story “On the Night of the 3rd” - in the flight Dr. Bakaleinikov. T.N. Lappa remembered her husband’s return on this dramatic night: “For some reason, he ran hard, trembled all over, and was in a terrible state - so nervous. They put him to bed, and after that he lay sick for a whole week. He later said that somehow he fell behind a little, then a little more, behind a pillar, behind another, and rushed to run into the alley.

I ran like that, my heart was pounding, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. He saw and remembered this scene of a man being killed at the bridge.” In the novel, Alexei Turbin’s illness is postponed in time to the period of his stay in the City of the Petliurists, and he observes the scene of the murder of a Jew at the Chain Bridge, as it happened with the writer, on the night of February 3rd. The arrival of the Petliurists in the City begins with the murder of the Jew Feldman (as one can judge from the Kyiv newspapers of that time, a man with that last name was actually killed on the day the Ukrainian troops entered Kiev) and ends with the murder of a nameless Jew, which Bulgakov had a chance to see with his own eyes. Life itself suggested the tragic composition of B. G. The writer in the novel established human life as an absolute value, rising above any national and class ideology.

The ending of the B. g. makes us remember “the starry sky above us and the moral law within us” by I. Kant and the reasoning of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky inspired by him in the novel “War and Peace” (1863-1869) by Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910). In the text intended for publication in the Rossiya magazine, the final lines of the novel sounded like this: “Over the Dnieper, from the sinful, bloody, and snowy earth, Vladimir’s midnight cross rose into the black and gloomy heights. From a distance it seemed that the crossbar had disappeared - it had merged with the vertical, and from this the cross turned into a threatening sharp sword.

But he's not scary. All will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, famine and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on the earth. The stars will be just as unchanging, just as vibrant and beautiful. There is not a single person on earth who does not know this. So why don’t we want peace, don’t want to turn our attention to them? Why?"

In the 1929 edition of B., the “peace” disappeared in the finale, and it became less obvious that Bulgakov was polemicizing here with the famous words of the Gospel of Matthew: “I did not bring you peace, but a sword.” The author B.G. clearly prefers peace to the sword. Later, in the novel “The Master and Margarita,” a paraphrase of the Gospel saying was put into the mouth of the high priest Joseph Kaifa, convincing Pontius Pilate that Yeshua Ha-Nozri brought the Jewish people not peace and quiet, but confusion, which would bring them under the Roman swords. And here Bulgakov affirms peace and quiet as one of the highest ethical values. And in the finale of B.G., the author agrees with Kant and Leo Tolstoy: only an appeal to the supermundane absolute, which symbolizes the starry sky, can force people to follow the categorical moral imperative and forever renounce violence. However, taught by the experience of revolution and civil war, the author of B.G. is forced to admit that people do not want to look at the stars above them and follow the Kantian imperative. Unlike Tolstoy, he is not such a great fatalist in history. The masses of the people in Belarus play an important role in the development of the historical process, however, they are not guided by some higher power, as stated in “War and Peace,” but by their own internal aspirations, in full accordance with the thought of S.N. Bulgakov, expressed in the article “At the Feast of the Gods”: “And now it suddenly turns out that for this people there is nothing sacred except the belly. Yes, he is right in his own way, hunger is not an issue.” The popular element, which supported Petlyura, turns out to be a powerful force in B., crushing the weak, in its own way also spontaneous, poorly organized army of Skoropadsky. It is precisely this lack of organization that Alexey Turbin accuses Hetman of. However, this same popular force turns out to be powerless against a well-organized force - the Bolsheviks. Myshlaevsky and other representatives of the White Guard involuntarily admire the organization of the Bolsheviks. But the condemnation of the “Napoleons” who bring suffering and death to people is completely shared by the author of B.G. and the author of “War and Peace”, only Petliura and Trotsky are not a myth for him, like Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) for Tolstoy, but real existing and in their own way outstanding personalities who, due to their dominant role, must bear a higher responsibility for the crimes of their subordinates (however, the future crimes of the Cheka are still only vaguely visible in the dreams of Alexei Turbin, and even then only in the unpublished version of the novel).

Let us note that besides Trotsky, another character close to the Bolsheviks, B. G., has demonic traits. If the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council is compared to the angel of the abyss Apollyon of the Revelation of John the Theologian and the Jewish fallen angel Abaddon (both words translated from ancient Greek and Hebrew mean destroyer), then Mikhail Semenovich Shpolyansky, receiving instructions from Moscow, is likened to Lermontov’s demon. The prototype of Shpolyansky was the famous writer and literary critic Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893-1984). In 1918, he was in Kiev, served in the hetman’s armored division and, like Shpolyansky in B., “sugared” armored cars, describing all this in detail in the memoir book “Sentimental Journey,” published in Berlin in 1923. Pravda , Shklovsky was not a Bolshevik at that time, but a member of the militant Left Socialist Revolutionary group that was preparing an uprising against Skoropadsky. Bulgakov brought Shpolyansky closer to the Bolsheviks, also remembering that until mid-1918 the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were allies, and then many of the latter joined the Communist Party.

Due to the fact that B.G. was not completed publication in the USSR, and foreign publications of the late 20s were inaccessible in the writer’s homeland, Bulgakov’s first novel did not receive much attention from the press. True, the famous critic A.K. Voronsky (1884-1937) at the end of 1925 managed to call B. G., together with “Fatal Eggs,” works of “outstanding literary quality,” for which at the beginning of 1926 he received a sharp rebuke from the head of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) L. L. Averbakh (1903-1939) in the Rapp organ - the magazine “At the Literary Post”. Subsequently, the production of the play “Days of the Turbins” based on B. G. at the Moscow Art Theater in the fall of 1926 turned the attention of critics to this work, and the novel itself was forgotten. Bulgakov was tormented by doubts about the literary merits of B. G. In a diary entry on the night of December 28, 1924, he recorded them: “The novel seems to me either weak or very strong. I can no longer understand my feelings.” At the same time, there was also a high assessment of B. by an authoritative contemporary. The poet Maximilian Voloshin (Kirienko-Voloshin) (1877-1932) invited Bulgakov to his place in Koktebel and on July 5, 1926 presented him with a watercolor with a remarkable inscription: “To dear Mikhail Afanasyevich, the first who captured the soul of Russian strife, with deep love.. .” The same Voloshin, in a letter to the publisher of the almanac “Nedra” N.S. Angarsky (Klestov) (1873-1941) in March 1925, argued that “as the debut of an aspiring writer, “The White Guard” can only be compared with the debuts of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy " When reworking the text of the novel in the late 20s, Bulgakov removed some censorship-sensitive moments and somewhat ennobled a number of characters, in particular Myshlaevsky and Shervinsky, clearly taking into account the development of these images in “Days of the Turbins”. In general, in the play the characters turned out to be psychologically deeper, not as loose as in the novel, and the characters no longer duplicated each other.

In a letter to the government on March 28, 1930, Bulgakov called one of the main features of his work in B.G. “the persistent portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in our country. In particular, the depiction of an intellectual-noble family, by the will of an immutable historical fate, thrown into the camp of the White Guard during the Civil War, in the traditions of “War and Peace”. Such an image is quite natural for a writer who is closely connected with the intelligentsia.” In the same letter he emphasized “his great efforts to STAND PASSIONALLY OVER RED AND WHITE.” Let us note that Bulgakov actually managed to impartially look at all the warring sides of the civil war from a position close to the philosophy of non-violence (non-resistance to evil with violence), developed by L. N. Tolstoy mainly after the creation of “War and Peace” (in the novel this philosophy is expressed only by Platon Karataev). However, Bulgakov’s position here is not entirely identical to Tolstoy’s. Alexey Turbin in B. understands the inevitability and necessity of violence, but he himself turns out to be incapable of violence. At the end of the B.G., which was never published in the magazine “Russia,” he, observing the atrocities of the Petliurists, turns to heaven: “Lord, if you exist, make sure that the Bolsheviks appear in Slobodka this very minute. This minute. I am a monarchist by my convictions. But at the moment Bolsheviks are needed here... Oh, bastards! What scoundrels! Lord, let the Bolsheviks immediately, from there, from the black darkness behind Slobodka, fall on the bridge.

Turbin hissed voluptuously, imagining sailors in black pea coats. They fly in like a hurricane, and hospital gowns run in all directions. What remains is Master Kurenny and that vile monkey in the scarlet hat - Colonel Mashchenko. Both of them, of course, fall to their knees.

“Have mercy, goodness,” they cry.

But then Doctor Turbin steps forward and says:

- No, comrades, no. I am a monarch... No, this is unnecessary... And so: I am against the death penalty. Yes, against it. I must admit, I haven’t read Karl Marx and I don’t even quite understand why he’s here in this mess, but these two need to be killed like mad dogs. These are the scoundrels. Vile pogromists and robbers.

“Ah... so...” the sailors answer ominously.

- Y-yes, y-comrades. I'll shoot them myself. The doctor holds a sailor's revolver in his hands. He takes aim. To the head. Alone. To the head. To another.”

Bulgakov's intellectual is capable of killing only in his imagination, and in life he prefers to entrust this unpleasant duty to sailors. And even Turbin’s cry of protest: “Why are you beating him?!” is drowned out by the noise of the crowd on the bridge, which, by the way, saves the doctor from reprisals. In the conditions of general violence in Belarus, the intelligentsia is deprived of the opportunity to raise its voice against the murders, just as it was deprived of the opportunity to do this later, under the conditions of the communist regime established at the time of the creation of the novel.

Thalberg's prototype L.S. Karum left extensive memories “My life. A story without lies”, where he outlined many episodes of his biography, reflected in B.G., in his own interpretation. The memoirist testifies that he greatly angered Bulgakov and other relatives of his wife by appearing at the wedding in May 1917 (like Talberg’s wedding with Elena, it was a year and a half before the events described in the novel) in a uniform, with all the orders, but with red bandage on his sleeve. In B.G., the Turbin brothers condemn Talberg for the fact that in March 1917 he “was the first—understand, the first—to come to the military school with a wide red bandage on his sleeve. This was in the very first days, when all the officers in the City, at news from St. Petersburg, turned into bricks and went somewhere, into dark corridors, so as not to hear anything. Talberg, as a member of the revolutionary military committee, and no one else, arrested the famous General Petrov.” Karum was indeed a member of the executive committee of the Kiev City Duma and participated in the arrest of Adjutant General N.I. Ivanov (1851 - 1919), who at the beginning of the First World War commanded the Southwestern Front, and in February 1917, who undertook an unsuccessful campaign by order of the emperor to Petrograd to suppress the revolution. Karum escorted the general to the capital. Bulgakov's sister's husband, like Talberg, graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University and the Military Law Academy in St. Petersburg. Under Skoropadsky, like the hero of B., he served in the legal department of the War Ministry. In December 1917, Karum left Kyiv and, together with Bulgakov’s brother Ivan, whom his mother, fearing Petliura’s mobilization, sent with his son-in-law, arrived in Odessa, and from there to Novorossiysk. Thalberg's prototype entered the White Astrakhan Army, previously supported by the Germans, became the chairman of the court here and was promoted to colonel. Perhaps this circumstance prompted Bulgakov to promote Talberg to colonel in the play “Days of the Turbins”. The former chief of staff of the Kiev Military District, General N.E. Bredov, who knew Karum from his activities in the executive committee of the Kiev Duma, when the Astrakhan Army transferred to the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, General A.I. Denikin, insisted on his dismissal. Only thanks to influential acquaintances did Karum manage to get a position as a law teacher in Feodosia, where he left in September 1919, taking his wife with him from Kyiv. Bulgakov’s brother Nikolai, who was wounded in October 1919, also went to his son-in-law in Feodosia. battles in Kyiv. Perhaps this circumstance prompted the writer to connect Nikolka’s future fate in B. with Perekop. After the arrival of the Reds, Karum, who did not want to evacuate with the Russian army of General P.N. Wrangel (1878-1928) in November 1920, remained to teach at the rifle school, which in 1921 was transferred to Kyiv. Unlike Elena Turbina in B. and especially in “Days of the Turbins,” Bulgakov’s sister Varya did not cheat on her husband. When Karum was arrested in 1931 and later exiled to Novosibirsk, his wife followed him. Her note, given to her husband after her arrest, has been preserved: “My beloved, remember that my whole life and love is for you. Your Varyusha.” The most interesting manuscript by L. S. Karum, “Woe from Talent” (1967), devoted to the analysis of Bulgakov’s creativity, has been preserved. Here the prototype characterized Talberg as follows: “Finally, the tenth and last of the White Guards is Captain Talberg of the General Staff. In fact, he’s not even in the White Guard, he serves under the hetman. When the “mess” begins, he boards the train and leaves, not wanting to take part in the struggle, the outcome of which is quite clear to him, but for this he incurs the hatred of the Turbins, Myshlaevsky and Sherviisky. – Why didn’t he take his wife with him? Why did he “walk like a rat” away from danger into the unknown? He is “a man without the slightest concept of honor.” For the White Guard, Thalberg is an episodic personality.” The author of “Woe from Talent” seeks, as it were, to justify Thalberg: he refused to participate in a hopeless struggle, did not take his wife with him, because he was going into the unknown. Karum characterized the writer himself with almost the same words as the Marxist criticism of the 20s, hostile to the author B.G.: “Yes, Bulgakov’s talent was not so much deep as it was brilliant, and the talent was great... And yet the works Bulgakov is not popular. There is nothing in them that affected the people as a whole.

In general, he has no people. There is a mysterious and cruel crowd. In Bulgakov's works there are well-known layers of the tsarist officers or employees, or the acting and writing environment. But the life of the people, their joys and sorrows cannot be learned from Bulgakov. His talent was not imbued with an interest in the people, a Marxist-Leninist worldview, or a strict political orientation. After a burst of interest in it, especially in the novel “The Master and Margarita,” attention may fade.” In a letter to the government on March 28, 1930, Bulgakov quoted a review similar to Karumov’s by critic R.V. Pikel, which appeared in Izvestia on September 15, 1929: “His talent is as obvious as the social reactionary nature of his work.”

In “A Novel Without Lies,” Karum described his reaction to the appearance of B. in the following way: “The novel describes the year 1918 in Kyiv. We didn’t subscribe to the magazine “Change of Milestones” (as Leonid Sergeevich mistakenly calls the magazine “Russia” from memory. - B.S.), so Varenka and Kostya (K.P. Bulgakov. - B.S.) bought it in the store. “Well, Mikhail doesn’t love you,” Kostya told me.

I knew that Mikhail did not love me, but I did not know the actual extent of this dislike, which grew into meanness. Finally, I read this ill-fated issue of the magazine and was horrified by it. There, among others, a man was described who in appearance and some facts was similar to me, so that not only relatives, but also acquaintances recognized me in him; in morals, this man stood very low. He (Thalberg), when the Petliurites attacked Kyiv, fled to Berlin, abandoned his family, the army in which he served, and acted like some kind of scoundrel.

The novel describes the Bulgakov family. He describes the case of my business trip to Lubny during the hetman’s power during the Petliura uprising. But then the lies begin. Varenka is made the heroine of the novel. There are no other sisters at all. There is no mother either. Then all his drinking companions are described in the novel. Firstly, Syngaevsky (under the surname Myshlaevsky), he was a student drafted into the army, handsome and slender, but no different in any way. An ordinary drinking buddy. He was not in military service in Kiev, then he met the ballerina Nezhinskaya, who danced with Mordkin, and during a change, one of the changes in power in Kiev, he went to Paris at her expense, where he successfully acted as her dance partner and husband, although he was 20 years younger than her.

The drinking buddies were described quite accurately, but only from the noble side, which is why Bulgakov subsequently had a lot of trouble.

Secondly, Yuri Gladyrevsky, my cousin, a wartime officer of the Life Guards Rifle Regiment (under the name Shervinsky) was described. During the time of the hetman, he served in the city police, but in the novel he is shown as the hetman’s adjutant. He was an unintelligent young man of 19 who only knew how to drink and sing along with Mikhail Bulgakov. And his voice was small, not suitable for any stage. He left with his parents during the civil war for Bulgaria, and I have no more information about him.

Thirdly, Kolya Sudzilovsky is described, he can also be recognized by his external appearance, who was at the same time a Kyiv student, a slightly naive, slightly arrogant and stupid young man, also 20 years old. He was bred under the name Lariosika.”

The fate of the prototype “drinking buddies” was as follows. Yuri (George) Leonidovich Gladyrevsky (1898-1968) was born on January 26/February 7, 1898 in Libau (Liepaja) into a noble family. During the First World War he rose to the rank of second lieutenant in the 3rd His Majesty's Infantry Regiment. In the last weeks of the hetmanate, he was on the headquarters of the White Guard volunteer formations of Prince Dolgorukov (in Belarus - Belorukov). After the Reds arrived in Kyiv in early February 1919, Yu.L. Gladyrevsky worked in the white underground and, perhaps, served as a disguise in the Red Army. Hence Shervinsky is the red commander in that version of the final of the B.G., which was supposed to appear in the magazine “Russia”. Later, obviously, Bulgakov learned about the true fate of Yu.L. Gladyrevsky and removed the Red Army attributes from the final image of Shervinsky. After the Volunteer Army entered the city on August 31, 1919, Yuri Leonidovich was immediately promoted to captain of his native Life Guards regiment. During the October battles in Kyiv, he was slightly wounded. Later, in 1920, he took part in battles in the Crimea and Northern Tavria, was again wounded and, together with the Russian army, P.N. Wrangel was evacuated to Gallipoli. In exile, he made a living by singing and playing the piano. He died on March 20, 1968 in the French city of Cannes.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Syngaevsky, Bulgakov’s childhood friend, unlike Lieutenant Viktor Myshlaevsky, was a civilian and never served in the army, except for a short period in the last weeks of the hetmanate. Then, according to T.N. Lapp, he entered the cadet school and, like Bulgakov, was going to take part in the battles with the Petliurists entering Kiev. Syngaevsky lived on Malaya Podvalnaya Street (in the novel - Malo-Provalnaya) and in 1920 emigrated to Poland with his parents, and later ended up in France. While still in Kyiv, he graduated from a ballet school and worked as a dancer in exile.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Sudzilovsky, according to the memoirs of his uncle Karum, “was a very noisy and enthusiastic person.” He was born on August 7/19, 1896 in the village of Pavlovka, Chaussky district, Mogilev province, on the estate of his father, state councilor and district leader of the nobility. In 1916 he studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. At the end of the year, Sudzilovsky entered the 1st Peterhof Warrant Officer School, from where he was expelled for poor academic performance in February 1917 and sent as a volunteer to the 180th Reserve Infantry Regiment. From there he was sent to the Vladimir Military School in Petrograd, but already in May 1917 he was expelled from there. To get a deferment from military service, Sudzilovsky got married, and in 1918 he and his wife moved to Zhitomir, where his parents were then located. In the summer of 1918, Lariosik's prototype unsuccessfully tried to enter Kiev University. Sudzilovsky appeared in the Bulgakovs' apartment on Andreevsky Spusk on December 14, 1918 - the day Skoropadsky fell. By that time, his wife had already left him. In 1919, Nikolai Vasilyevich joined the ranks of the Volunteer Army, and his further fate is unknown.

L.S. Karum in his memoirs tried to prove that he was much better than Talberg and was not devoid of the concept of honor, but involuntarily only confirmed Bulgakov’s rightness. Consider the episode with the attempt to kiss the hand of General N.I. Ivanov, who was arrested and transported to Petrograd, in order to “express to the old general all my sympathy for him and to show that not all of those around him are his enemies” (Karum clearly made this gesture in that case , if the power changes and Ivanov takes command again). Or the scene in Odessa: “I met on the street some officer I knew from the academy... He, having learned that I had to hang out alone in Odessa for five days, persuaded me to go see Colonel Vsevolzhsky, a very interesting man, supposedly, who has daily officer meetings. a society that in the future should form an officer squad or even lead a detachment that will go to battle with the Bolsheviks.

I had nothing to do. I agreed.

Vsevolzhsky occupied a large apartment... There are about 20 officers in the room... Everyone is silent, says Vsevolzhsky.

He speaks a lot and well about the upcoming tasks of the officers in the restoration of Russia. He persuades me to stay in Odessa and not go to the Don.

– But will I occupy some position here and receive a salary? - I ask.

“No,” the guards colonel smiles. – I can’t guarantee you anything.

“Well, then I have to go,” I say. I didn’t go see him again.” From the quoted passage it is clear that Karum, like the hero B. G. ascending to him, was concerned only with his career, rations and financial support, and not with any ideological considerations, and therefore changed armies with such ease during the years of the revolution and civil war.

The surname Thalberg, which Bulgakov awarded to the unsympathetic character B. G., was very odious in Ukraine. Lawyer Nikolai Dmitrievich Talberg, under Skoropadsky, served as vice-director of the police - Derzhavnaya Varta and was hated by both the Petliurites and the Bolsheviks. On the eve of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic entering the city, he managed to escape. Perhaps he, like the hero B., managed to leave for Germany.

Thalberg in Bolsheviks is opposed by the Turbin brothers, who are ready to enter into a hopeless fight with the Petliurites and only after the collapse of resistance realize the doom of the white cause. Moreover, if the eldest, copied from the author B. G. himself, withdraws from the fight, then the younger one is clearly ready to continue it and will probably die at Perekop. Nikolka used Bulgakov’s younger brothers as his prototypes – mainly Nikolai, but partially also Ivan. Both of them took part in the white movement, were wounded, and fought to the end. Ivan, interned in Poland along with the troops of General N.E. Bredov (1883 - after 1944), later voluntarily returned to the Crimea to General Wrangel and from there went into exile. Nikolai, most likely evacuated to the Crimea due to injury, served together with L.S. Karum in Feodosia. However, he did not have a negative attitude towards his sister’s husband. In a letter to his mother from Zagreb on January 16, 1922, N.A. Bulgakov mentions meetings “at Varyusha and Lenya” with his cousin Konstantin Petrovich Bulgakov (1892-after 1950) while serving in the Volunteer Army (in the mid-20s K.P. .Bulgakov emigrated and became an oil engineer in Mexico). Obviously, the meeting between N.A. Bulgakov and L.S. Karum took place in Feodosia, where he lived with Varya.

With the image of the thrush Yavdokha, the author B. G. continues the tradition of depicting a healthy beginning in folk life, contrasting it with the money-grubber Vasilisa, who secretly lusts after the young beauty. The influence of the famous story “Yavdokha” (1914) by the satirical writer Nadezhda Teffi (Lokhvitskaya) (1872-1952) is noticeable here. Later, in the preface to the collection “The Lifeless Beast” (1916), she outlined the content of the story as follows: “In the fall of 1914, I published the story “Yavdokha.” The story, very sad and bitter, spoke of a lonely village old woman, illiterate and stupid, and so hopelessly dark that when she received the news about the death of her son, she did not even understand what was the matter, and kept thinking that he would send her money or not. And so one angry newspaper devoted two feuilletons to this story, in which they were indignant at me for supposedly laughing at human grief.

“What does Mrs. Teffi find funny in this!” – the newspaper was indignant and, quoting the saddest parts of the story, repeated:

– And this, in her opinion, is funny?

- And this is funny too?

The newspaper would probably be very surprised if I told it that I didn't laugh for a single minute. But how could I tell?

Perhaps Bulgakov was attracted in this preface by the similarity with B. G., where, unlike feuilletons and satirical stories, he did not laugh for a minute and talked about tragic things. Bulgakov made his Yavdokha a blossoming young woman whom the stingy Vasilisa lusts after, and in his imagination she appears “naked, like a witch on the mountain.”

The only heroic character of B.G., Colonel Nai-Tours, apparently had a very specific and unexpected prototype. Bulgakov told his friend P.S. Popov in the second half of the 20s that “Nai-Tours is a distant, abstract image. The ideal of Russian officers. What would a Russian officer be like in my opinion? From this confession they usually conclude that Nai-Tours had no real prototypes, since there supposedly could not have been real heroes among the participants in the white movement. Meanwhile, the prototype may have existed, but it was unsafe to say its name out loud in the 20s and later.

Here is the biography of one of the prominent cavalry commanders of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, which has obvious parallels with the biography of the novel Nai-Tours. It was written by the Parisian emigrant historian Nikolai Nikolaevich Rutych (Rutchenko) (born in 1916) and placed in the “Biographical Directory of Higher Officials of the Volunteer Army and the Armed Forces of the South of Russia” compiled by him (1997): “Shinkarenko Nikolai Vsevolodovich (lit. pseudonym - Nikolai Belogorsky) (1890-1968). Major General... In 1912-1913. participated as a volunteer in the Bulgarian army in the war against Turkey... He was awarded the Order “For Bravery” - for his distinction during the siege of Adrianople. He went to the front of the First World War as part of the 12th Ulan Belgorod Regiment, commanding a squadron... Knight of St. George and lieutenant colonel at the end of the war. He was one of the first to arrive in the Volunteer Army in November 1917. In February 1918, he was seriously wounded (in the leg - B.S.), replacing a machine gunner in an armored train in the battle of Novocherkassk.”

1. Introduction. M. A. Bulgakov was one of those few writers who, during the years of omnipotent Soviet censorship, continued to defend their rights to authorial independence.

Despite the fierce persecution and the ban on publishing, Bulgakov never followed the lead of the authorities and created sharp independent works. One of them is the novel "The White Guard".

2. History of creation. Bulgakov was a direct witness to all the horrors of the Civil War. The events of 1918-1919 made a huge impression on him. in Kyiv, when power passed several times to different political forces.

In 1922, the writer decided to write a novel, the main characters of which would be the people closest to him - white officers and the intelligentsia. Bulgakov worked on The White Guard during 1923-1924.

He read individual chapters in friendly companies. Listeners noted the undoubted merits of the novel, but agreed that it would be unrealistic to publish it in Soviet Russia. The first two parts of "The White Guard" were nevertheless published in 1925 in two issues of the magazine "Russia".

3. The meaning of the name. The name "White Guard" carries a partly tragic, partly ironic meaning. The Turbin family are staunch monarchists. They firmly believe that only the monarchy can save Russia. At the same time, the Turbins see that there is no longer any hope for restoration. The abdication of the Tsar became an irrevocable step in the history of Russia.

The problem lies not only in the strength of the opponents, but also in the fact that there are practically no real people devoted to the idea of ​​the monarchy. The “White Guard” is a dead symbol, a mirage, a dream that will never come true.

Bulgakov's irony is most clearly manifested in the scene of a night drinking session in the Turbins' house with enthusiastic talk about the revival of the monarchy. This is the only strength of the “white guard”. Sobering up and hangover are exactly reminiscent of the state of the noble intelligentsia a year after the revolution.

4. Genre Novel

5. Theme. The main theme of the novel is the horror and helplessness of ordinary people in the face of enormous political and social upheavals.

6. Issues. The main problem of the novel is the feeling of uselessness and uselessness among white officers and the noble intelligentsia. There is no one to continue the fight, and it makes no sense. There are no more people like Turbins left. Betrayal and deception reign among the white movement. Another problem is the sharp division of the country into many political opponents.

The choice has to be made not only between monarchists and Bolsheviks. Hetman, Petliura, bandits of all stripes - these are just the most significant forces that are tearing Ukraine and, in particular, Kyiv apart. Ordinary people who do not want to join any camp become defenseless victims of the next owners of the city. An important problem is the huge number of victims of the fratricidal war. Human life has become so devalued that murder has become commonplace.

7. Heroes. Alexey Turbin, Nikolay Turbin, Elena Vasilyevna Talberg, Vladimir Robertovich Talberg, Myshlaevsky, Shervinsky, Vasily Lisovich, Lariosik.

8. Plot and composition. The novel takes place at the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. At the center of the story is the Turbin family - Elena Vasilievna with two brothers. Alexey Turbin recently returned from the front, where he worked as a military doctor. He dreamed of a simple and quiet life, of a private medical practice. Dreams are not destined to come true. Kyiv is becoming the scene of a fierce struggle, which in some ways is even worse than the situation on the front line.

Nikolai Turbin is still very young. The romantically inclined young man endures the Hetman’s power with pain. He sincerely and ardently believes in the monarchical idea, dreams of taking up arms in its defense. Reality roughly destroys all his idealistic ideas. The first military clash, the betrayal of the high command, and the death of Nai-Tours amaze Nikolai. He understands that he has until now harbored ethereal illusions, but cannot believe it.

Elena Vasilievna is an example of the resilience of a Russian woman who will protect and take care of her loved ones with all her might. The Turbins' friends admire her and, thanks to Elena's support, find the strength to live on. In this regard, Elena’s husband, Staff Captain Talberg, makes a sharp contrast.

Thalberg is the main negative character of the novel. This is a person who has no beliefs at all. He easily adapts to any authority for the sake of his career. Thalberg's flight before Petlyura's offensive was due only to his harsh statements against the latter. In addition, Thalberg learned that a new major political force was being formed on the Don, promising power and influence.

In the image of captain, Bulgakov showed the worst qualities of the white officers, which led to the defeat of the white movement. Careerism and lack of sense of homeland are deeply disgusting to the Turbin brothers. Thalberg betrays not only the defenders of the city, but also his wife. Elena Vasilievna loves her husband, but even she is amazed by his actions and in the end is forced to admit that he is a scoundrel.

Vasilisa (Vasily Lisovich) personifies the worst type of everyman. He does not evoke pity, since he himself is ready to betray and inform, if he had the courage. Vasilisa’s main concern is to better hide her accumulated wealth. Before the love of money, the fear of death even recedes in him. A gangster search of the apartment is the best punishment for Vasilisa, especially since he still saved his miserable life.

Bulgakov's inclusion of the original character Lariosik in the novel looks a little strange. This is a clumsy young man who, by some miracle, remained alive after making his way to Kyiv. Critics believe that the author specifically introduced Lariosik to soften the tragedy of the novel.

As is known, Soviet criticism subjected the novel to merciless persecution, declaring the writer a defender of white officers and “philistines.” However, the novel does not at all defend the white movement. On the contrary, Bulgakov paints a picture of incredible decline and decay in this environment. The main supporters of the Turbine monarchy, in fact, no longer want to fight with anyone. They are ready to become ordinary people, isolating themselves from the surrounding hostile world in their warm and cozy apartment. The news their friends report is depressing. The white movement no longer exists.

The most honest and noble order, paradoxically, is the order to the cadets to throw down their weapons, tear off their shoulder straps and go home. Bulgakov himself subjected the “white guard” to sharp criticism. At the same time, the main thing for him becomes the tragedy of the Turbin family, who are unlikely to find their place in their new life.

9. What the author teaches. Bulgakov refrains from making any author's assessments of the novel. The reader's attitude towards what is happening arises only through the dialogues of the main characters. Of course, this is pity for the Turbin family, pain for the bloody events that shook Kyiv. “The White Guard” is the writer’s protest against any political coups, which always bring death and humiliation for ordinary people.

M.A. Bulgakov "The White Guard" Review and analysis of the novel (chapter 1, part 1)

M. A. Bulgakov began to win the attention and recognition of a wide range of readers in the early seventies of the twentieth century. His books were read in secret, although there was no official ban on them.

The writer's fate was difficult, but extremely happy. The novel “The White Guard” is one of the writer’s most significant works. He began publishing in 1925 in the magazine Rossiya.

You should pay attention to the epigraph to the first part of “The White Guard”. The author quotes here from “The Captain’s Daughter” by A. S. Pushkin, a book that is mentioned several times in this chapter. I immediately remember the bloody times of the Pugachev era, described in “The Captain’s Daughter.” Drawing parallels and correlating the words in the epigraph with the time of action in The White Guard, we understand that we are talking about completely different Pugachevs, modern, educated and with completely different goals. But, despite this, Bulgakov emphasizes with these same few lines his connection with the classics, namely, with the historicism of A. S. Pushkin. The author in the novel has a clear division of political forces, the main characters of the novel, a clear separation of their goals. And just by the title of the novel, if you know what time the action belongs to, it becomes clear that there will be other forces opposite to them.

There is an exact indication of the time of what was happening - 1918, the post-revolutionary year, which was “great and terrible.” A description of two planets is given - Venus and Mars. Bulgakov calls Venus “shepherd”, Mars – “red, trembling”. Thus, he emphasizes not only the confrontation, but also the coexistence of two forces - the workers, calm and peaceful, and the revolutionary.

And then the author introduces us to the Turbin family. Their home, their way of life - everything is in the spirit of the time when they were brought up, a happy time. The mother was buried when, it would seem, a carefree, family life should have begun - daughter Elena got married to captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, eldest son Alexei Vasilyevich Turbin returned from long campaigns.

Geographical and local names are accurate, which indicates the possible reality of the story, making it more vital, and therefore more emotionally perceived by the reader. A little later we learn that there is also Anyuta, who grew up in Turbina’s house, and Nikolka, the youngest son in the family. He doesn’t understand why it was necessary to take his mother away now, when the whole family is together. Also, he did not yet understand that everything that happens is for the better. And it’s true that what happened next would have been impossible for their mother to survive.

Then - a very short journey into the past, many years before death. The children are still very young. Cozy antique furnishings in the house - a tiled stove, a clock, the inevitable smell of pine needles at the end of December and colored candles on the green branches of spruce... Much attention is paid to the description of the clock that “lived” in the Turbins’ house for a long time. They each beat in their own way, and it seemed that if they stopped beating, the house would become completely boring. One of the watches that my father once bought outlived him, and all his children grew up listening to them. The watch is immortal, fortunately.

A lot of attention is paid to things. The technique of characterizing the characters through the environment surrounding them is used. Bulgakov does not talk about how, when and in what spirit the Turbins were brought up. He just describes their house, and everything becomes clear. The writer easily introduces the reader to the time when the action of the novel takes place, “surrounding” him with things that “live” in the characters’ house. All descriptions are realistic and detailed. The name of the City is not announced, but it is clear from the very beginning that we will be talking about Kyiv.

Her mother died and bequeathed only one thing to Elena - to live together. But how can you live together, just live, in times like these? Elena, Alexey and Nikolka are still very young, and cold winds are already blowing from the north, the earth rumbles under their feet. This terrible eighteenth year is coming to an end, and no one knows what the next year has in store, although everyone knows very well that nothing good is happening...

The first part has another epigraph: “And the dead were judged from what was written in the books, according to their deeds...”. It is taken from the Revelation of John the Theologian, or more simply, the “Apocalypse.” Having read these lines at the beginning of the story, you involuntarily remember them later. At the end of the first chapter, Father Alexander reads aloud to Alexei, who is seeking consolation from him after the death of his mother, the words “The third angel poured out their cup into the rivers and springs of water; and there was blood." Such a circular, closed composition of the beginning of the novel is not accidental - the author returns the reader to comprehend the lines quoted at the beginning. Thus, as if having communicated with two epigraphs the main theme that permeates the entire work, the author recognizes the great power of this book - “Apocalypse”.

Bulgakov's manner of narration is deeply symbolic. The entire novel, even such a small part of it - the first chapter, is permeated with images-symbols, images-riddles: “Revenge from the north has long begun, and it sweeps, and does not stop, and the further it goes, the worse.” It is clear without any explanation what is being said about the relentlessly coming future, the future is not better, the future is terrible: “The walls will fall, the alarmed falcon will fly away from the white mitten, the fire in the bronze lamp will go out, and the Captain’s daughter will be burned in the oven.” It is reminiscent of the prophecy from the same “Apocalypse”, but closer to the life of our heroes, written as if especially for their family. You can also hear Bulgakov’s obvious concern for the fate of Pushkin’s legacy, which is not only dear to the writer himself, but also irreplaceable for world literature.

During a conversation with Father Alexander, Alexey looks out the window: “The branches in the church yard covered the priest’s house. It seemed that right now, behind the wall of a cramped office crammed with books, a mysterious tangled forest of spring was beginning.” And again - a prediction of the future, confused, dark and incomprehensible, like this forest outside the windows. It is clear that you will have to go through many hardships, rivers of blood and death before you understand and see what awaits behind the dark forests, when the cold north wind stops blowing, the snowstorm stops spinning and the earth stops rumble.

Year of publication of the book: 1925

Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard” first saw the light back in 1925 and became the author’s first major work. Although some chapters of the book were published in various periodicals several years before the publication of the final version. The plot of Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard" formed the basis for several theatrical productions and feature films. The latest was the Russian series of the same name, which was released in 2012.

The novel "The White Guard" summary

At the very beginning of Mikhail Bulgakov’s work “The White Guard,” a certain city is described that vaguely resembles Kyiv. It is the winter of 1918, and the entire population, as in, is going through turbulent times due to the political situation. And this is not without reason - the city has been occupied by the Germans for several years. It was then headed by the hetman and his subordinates. However, already a few kilometers away from him were Petliura’s troops, ardently wanting to gain power. At that time, the city was crowded not only with local residents, but also with visiting Muscovites who were hiding from the Bolshevik power.

Further in Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard” we can read about the Turbin family, which is going through difficult times. The fact is that two brothers Alexey and Nikolka and their sister Elena recently lost their beloved mother. It’s hard for them to come to terms with her death, so for several weeks now a mournful atmosphere has reigned in their apartment on Aleksandrovsky Spusk. Before her death, the mother told her children that, no matter what happens, they should all live in friendship and harmony.

The eldest son of the deceased woman was twenty-eight-year-old doctor Alexei. Having now become the head of the family, it is difficult for him to come to terms with the loss of his mother. Therefore, he decides to go to church and talk with Father Alexander. The priest tells him that there is no point in living in sadness for so long, so he needs to get involved in the whirlpool of events. Moreover, very difficult times are coming for the country.

One day, when the brothers were sitting near the stove and humming the tunes of songs familiar from their youth, their sister, twenty-four-year-old Elena, entered the room. She was very alarmed that her husband Sergei Talberg had still not returned from work, although he himself promised to be home seven hours ago. The girl does not find a place for herself and does not know at all what to do. Suddenly there is an unexpected knock on the door. Everyone was sure that it was Sergei who had come, but the guest turned out to be an old family friend, Lieutenant Viktor Myshlaevsky. He talks about how his squad was cordoned off for six hours. But after this time, no one gave the order to complete the operation, and the soldiers spent a day in the cold without food supplies and in light uniforms. Two of them died from the cold, two more received severe frostbite. And the lieutenant himself was shaking from the cold throughout this entire time.

Reading the novel “The White Guard” further, we learn that Sergei finally enters the house. He says that the rumors that have been circulating around the city for quite some time have been confirmed - the Germans are retreating due to the approach of Petlyura’s troops. Therefore, Thalberg must also urgently leave Kyiv with them. But he cannot take his wife with him, because he is not sure what exactly awaits him next after escaping. Elena collects her husband's things, and the Turbins say goodbye to him. A couple of hours pass, and Alexey’s guests come - his friends from his days at the gymnasium. They bring alcohol with them and have fun until Myshlaevsky begins to feel uneasy. Alexey decides to help his friend. He takes him to another room and offers him some medicine. On the way, he notices Elena crying in her room. The girl understands that she may never see her husband again.

Further in the novel “The White Guard” by Bulgakov, the content briefly talks about the neighbor of the main characters, Vasily Lisovich, who lives on the floor below. On the night when the above-mentioned events happened to the main characters, the man hid valuable things in a cache. In addition, Vasily had several more hiding places that were located in the attic and barn. The man wanted to hide at least a little valuables so much that he missed one important thing - during all this time a stranger was watching him outside the window.

The next morning, Nikolka and one of the guests, Leonid Shevrinsky, leave the apartment. They all want to enlist. This is especially necessary right now, when terrible things are happening in the city - explosions in warehouses, murders and the retreat of the German army oppress the residents. Everyone understands that something terrible is approaching. A little later, the others woke up - Alexey, his friend, who was called Karas among his comrades, and Myshlaevsky. They decide to go to the gymnasium where they once studied. At the moment, the headquarters of volunteer artillery is located there. Their commander Malyshev carefully examined the new arrivals and sent them under the leadership of Captain Studzinsky. Karas and Myshlaevsky became officers, while Alexey received the position of military doctor. However, that night it turns out that most of the volunteers do not know how to handle weapons. Since there is no time to train soldiers, Malyshev decides to disband the division, which he announces the next morning. Moreover, news arrives that the hetman has fled the city. Now there is no legal authority in it, and therefore there is no one for the soldiers to protect.

Further in Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard,” a brief summary tells about Colonel Nai-Turs, who forms several squads to protect the city from the Petliurists. However, he understands that soldiers without warm uniforms and sufficient food supplies will not be able to carry out their work at full capacity. That’s why Nai-Tours is trying to get at least warm clothes for the cadets. He even took with him several soldiers with rifles to intimidate the quartermaster a little. This move worked, and after some time the supply service gives him everything he needs.

The headquarters orders the colonel to hold the defense of the Polytechnic Highway and open fire if the enemy appears. Nai-Tours sends several soldiers on reconnaissance. They had to find out whether the hetman's units were somewhere nearby. After some time, the cadets return with unpleasant news - they are all in a trap, no units are observed nearby. Moreover, news arrived that Petliura’s troops had already entered the city.

Around the same time, Nikolka, who by that time had already become a corporal, received an order to lead several soldiers along the specified route. Already halfway there, he sees Nai-Tours, who orders the cadets to immediately tear off their shoulder straps, run away from here and burn all their documents. Shooting begins, and the colonel tries to cover his soldiers. Nikolka volunteers to help and begins to shoot back, but a few minutes later Nai-Turs is mortally wounded. Before his death, he orders the corporal to immediately retreat in order to save his life. Nikolka follows the commander’s orders and gets home, encountering enemies along the way.

Meanwhile, in the novel M.A. Bulgakov's "The White Guard" tells that Alexey did not know that the volunteer division had been disbanded. As he was ordered, by two o'clock in the afternoon the man arrives at the headquarters near the gymnasium. However, he finds no one there - moreover, there are no weapons or papers at the headquarters. After some time, he manages to find Malyshev, who burns the remaining documents. He tells the doctor about Petlyura’s army, which has already penetrated the city. The commander tells Turbin to tear off his shoulder straps and leave the building through the back door. Alexei obeys him and leaves. He runs into an unfamiliar and empty yard. Turbin was supposed to urgently go home, but decides to see what is happening in the city center now. On the way, he meets Petlyura’s army, which understands that a soldier is standing in front of them. The thing is that, having removed his shoulder straps, Alexey completely forgot about the cockade. Thus, the enemies realized that there was a soldier in front of them and opened fire on him. A few minutes later, the young man was wounded in the shoulder. He tried to hide, but accidentally ran into an impenetrable yard. A few more minutes and the Petliurists would have found him. Alexey no longer hoped for salvation, when suddenly an unfamiliar woman opened the gate of her house and let him inside. She later introduced herself as Yulia and began caring for the wounded soldier. The woman bandaged his wound and hid his bloody clothes. The next morning, having changed Turbin’s clothes, she sent him home as a cab driver.

If we download Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard,” we will find out that together with Alexei, their distant relative Larion Surzhansky arrives at the Turbins’ apartment. A young man is upset after his wife cheated on him. Therefore, his mother decides to send him to his Kyiv relatives to rest. Lariosik (as everyone calls him) quickly fell in love with all family members. He turned out to be a kind, albeit a little strange person. The only things that bring him genuine pleasure are canaries and reading books. Larion himself was a rather clumsy person. Already on the first day of his stay in Kyiv, he managed to break the service and cause a minor injury to Nikolka. However, his sincerity won over his relatives, and they were not against him living here as long as he wanted.

After everyone learned about Alexei’s injury, it was decided to call a doctor home. He carefully examined and treated the wound. However, the wound that Trubin received was complicated by one detail - along with the bullet, pieces of his overcoat penetrated into the shoulder, which could provoke the man’s illness. A few hours later, Alexey’s temperature rose sharply. The doctor gave him a morphine injection, after which the man felt relief and fell asleep.

The family decides not to tell anyone about the wounded Turbine and tells the neighbors that the man, as the head of the family in , caught typhus. After some time, it turns out that Alexei actually contracted this terrible disease. He gets worse and cannot get out of bed.

Meanwhile, Nikolka, following the orders of the late Nai-Tours, tries to destroy any evidence that soldiers live in the house. It reliably hides shoulder straps, weapons and documents. Suddenly neighbor Vasily knocks on the door. He is in a semi-fainting state and tells what happened to him a few hours ago. While having dinner with his wife, strangers burst into his room. They handed over some piece of paper with a seal and claimed that they had the right to search the apartment. A few minutes later they found a cache of valuables hidden for a rainy day. Threatening the owners of the house with pistols, the uninvited guests took away everything they managed to find. Before leaving, they demanded that Vasily sign a document of voluntary transfer of valuables.

Nikolka and Myshlaevsky go and inspect Lisovich’s apartment. They tell the man not to file a complaint with the authorities and to be glad that he is alive. Nikolka later realizes that the weapon the robbers came with belonged to him. He discovers that the box with his shoulder straps and documents, which was hanging outside the window, has disappeared.

If we read Bulgakov’s “The White Guard” briefly, we learn that Nikolka is gathering strength to go to Nai-Tours’ relatives and inform them of his death. He arrives at the specified address and meets the colonel's sister Irina. The corporal volunteers to help a woman find her brother's body. They find Nai-Tours and arrange a funeral, for which Irina is very grateful to Nikolka. Meanwhile, Alexei is getting worse. Several doctors arrive at the house. After a long examination, they all come to the conclusion that the man will not recover. In despair, Elena goes to her room, where behind a closed door she begins to pray. After her mother died and her husband left, the girl does not want to lose her older brother. After a few days, Alexei feels much better.

Further in the novel “The White Guard,” a brief summary tells that after the stormy January 1919, in February there was news that Petliura’s troops were leaving the city. During this time, Alexey practically recovered and could already move around the apartment, albeit relying on a cane. He comes to visit Julia, wanting to thank his savior. Turbin brings the woman a gift - a precious bracelet that once belonged to his late mother. On the way back, he meets Nikolka, who was returning from his sister Nai-Turs.

Despite the fact that the post office was working intermittently at that time, Turbin received a letter from Warsaw. In it, Elena's friend talks about Thalberg getting married again. She is very surprised because she has not heard about the couple’s divorce. Elena cannot hold back her tears and does not want to believe in her husband’s betrayal. Meanwhile, having driven out the Petliurists, the Bolsheviks entered the city.

The novel “The White Guard” on the Top books website

White Guard