And New York

« Days of the Turbins" - a play by M. A. Bulgakov, written based on the novel "The White Guard". Exists in three editions.

History of creation

On April 3, 1925, Bulgakov was offered at the Moscow Art Theater to write a play based on the novel “The White Guard.” Bulgakov began work on the first edition in July 1925. In the play, as in the novel, Bulgakov based his own memories of Kyiv during the Civil War. The author read the first edition in the theater at the beginning of September of the same year; on September 25, 1926, the play was allowed to be staged.

Subsequently, it was edited several times. Currently, three editions of the play are known; the first two have the same title as the novel, but due to censorship problems it had to be changed. The title “Days of the Turbins” was also used for the novel. In particular, its first edition (1927 and 1929, Concorde publishing house, Paris) was entitled “Days of the Turbins (White Guard)”. There is no consensus among researchers as to which edition is considered the latest. Some point out that the third appeared as a result of the ban on the second and therefore cannot be considered the final manifestation of the author's will. Others argue that “Days of the Turbins” should be recognized as the main text, since performances based on it have been staged for many decades. No manuscripts of the play have survived. The third edition was first published by E. S. Bulgakova in 1955. The second edition was first published in Munich.

In 1927, the rogue Z. L. Kagansky declared himself the copyright holder for translations and production of the play abroad. In this regard, M. A. Bulgakov on February 21, 1928 turned to the Moscow Soviet with a request for permission to travel abroad to negotiate the production of the play. [ ]

Characters

• Turbin Alexey Vasilievich - artillery colonel, 30 years old.
• Turbin Nikolay - his brother, 18 years old.
• Talberg Elena Vasilievna - their sister, 24 years old.
• Talberg Vladimir Robertovich - General Staff colonel, her husband, 38 years old.
• Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky - staff captain, artilleryman, 38 years old.
• Shervinsky Leonid Yurievich - lieutenant, personal adjutant of the hetman.
• Studzinsky Alexander Bronislavovich - captain, 29 years old.
• Lariosik - cousin from Zhitomir, 21 years old.
• Hetman of All Ukraine (Pavel Skoropadsky).
• Bolbotun - commander of the 1st Petliura Cavalry Division (prototype - Bolbochan).
• Galanba is a Petliurist centurion, a former Uhlan captain.
• Hurricane.
• Kirpaty.
• Von Schratt - German general.
• Von Doust - German major.
• German army doctor.
• Sich deserter.
• Man with a basket.
• Chamber footman.
• Maxim - former gymnasium teacher, 60 years old.
• Gaydamak the telephone operator.
• First officer.
• Second officer.
• Third officer.
• The first cadet.
• Second cadet.
• Third cadet.
• Junkers and Haidamaks.

Plot

The events described in the play take place at the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919 in Kyiv and cover the fall of the regime of Hetman Skoropadsky, the arrival of Petliura and his expulsion from the city by the Bolsheviks. Against the backdrop of a constant change of power, a personal tragedy occurs for the Turbin family, and the foundations of the old life are broken.

The first edition had 5 acts, while the second and third editions had only 4.

Criticism

Modern critics consider “Days of the Turbins” to be the pinnacle of Bulgakov’s theatrical success, but its stage fate was difficult. First staged at the Moscow Art Theater, the play enjoyed great audience success, but received devastating reviews in the then Soviet press. In an article in the magazine “New Spectator” dated February 2, 1927, Bulgakov emphasized the following:

We are ready to agree with some of our friends that “Days of the Turbins” is a cynical attempt to idealize the White Guard, but we have no doubt that “Days of the Turbins” is an aspen stake in its coffin. Why? Because for a healthy Soviet viewer, the most ideal slush cannot present a temptation, and for dying active enemies and for passive, flabby, indifferent ordinary people, the same slush cannot provide either emphasis or charge against us. Just as a funeral hymn cannot serve as a military march.

Stalin himself, in a letter to the playwright V. Bill-Belotserkovsky, indicated that he liked the play, on the contrary, because it showed the defeat of the whites. The letter was subsequently published by Stalin himself in his collected works after Bulgakov’s death, in 1949:

Why are Bulgakov's plays staged so often? Therefore, it must be that there are not enough plays of our own suitable for production. Without fish, even “Days of the Turbins” is a fish. (...) As for the play “Days of the Turbins” itself, it is not so bad, because it does more good than harm. Do not forget that the main impression that remains with the viewer from this play is an impression favorable to the Bolsheviks: “if even people like the Turbins are forced to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people, recognizing their cause as completely lost, it means that the Bolsheviks are invincible, “Nothing can be done with them, the Bolsheviks,” “Days of the Turbins” is a demonstration of the all-crushing power of Bolshevism.

Well, we watched “Days of the Turbins”<…>Tiny ones, from officers’ meetings, with the smell of “drink and snacks,” passions, love affairs, affairs. Melodramatic patterns, a little bit of Russian feelings, a little bit of music. I hear: What the hell!<…>What have you achieved? The fact that everyone watches the play, shaking their heads and remembering the Ramzin affair...

- “When I will soon die...” Correspondence between M. A. Bulgakov and P. S. Popov (1928-1940). - M.: EKSMO, 2003. - P. 123-125

For Mikhail Bulgakov, who did odd jobs, a production at the Moscow Art Theater was perhaps the only opportunity to support his family.

Productions

• - Moscow Art Theater. Director Ilya Sudakov, artist Nikolai Ulyanov, artistic director of the production K. S. Stanislavsky. Roles performed by: Alexey Turbin- Nikolay Khmelev, Nikolka- Ivan Kudryavtsev, Elena- Vera Sokolova, Shervinsky- Mark Prudkin, Studzinski- Evgeny Kaluzhsky, Myshlaevsky- Boris Dobronravov, Thalberg- Vsevolod Verbitsky, Lariosik- Mikhail Yanshin, Von Schratt- Victor Stanitsyn, von Doust- Robert Schilling, Hetman- Vladimir Ershov, deserter- Nikolai Titushin, Bolbotun- Alexander Anders, Maxim- Mikhail Kedrov, also Sergei Blinnikov, Vladimir Istrin, Boris Maloletkov, Vasily Novikov. The premiere took place on October 5, 1926.

In the excluded scenes (with the Jew captured by the Petliurists, Vasilisa and Wanda) Joseph Raevsky and Mikhail Tarkhanov with Anastasia Zueva were supposed to play, respectively.

Typist I. S. Raaben (daughter of General Kamensky), who typed the novel “The White Guard” and whom Bulgakov invited to the performance, recalled: “The performance was amazing, because everything was vivid in people’s memory. There were hysterics, fainting, seven people were taken away by ambulance, because among the spectators there were people who survived Petliura, these horrors in Kyiv, and the difficulties of the civil war in general...”

Publicist I. L. Solonevich subsequently described the extraordinary events associated with the production:

… It seems that in 1929 the Moscow Art Theater staged Bulgakov’s then-famous play “Days of the Turbins.” It was a story about deceived White Guard officers stuck in Kyiv. The audience at the Moscow Art Theater was not an average audience. It was "selection". Theater tickets were distributed by trade unions, and the top of the intelligentsia, bureaucracy and party received, of course, the best seats in the best theaters. I was among this bureaucracy: I worked in the very department of the trade union that distributed these tickets. As the play progresses, the White Guard officers drink vodka and sing “God Save the Tsar! " It was the best theater in the world, and the best artists in the world performed on its stage. And so it begins - a little chaotic, as befits a drunken company: “God Save the Tsar”...

And then the inexplicable comes: the hall begins get up. The artists' voices are growing stronger. The artists sing while standing and the audience listens while standing: sitting next to me was my boss for cultural and educational activities - a communist from the workers. He also stood up. People stood, listened and cried. Then my communist, confused and nervous, tried to explain something to me, something completely helpless. I helped him: this is mass suggestion. But this was not only a suggestion.

For this demonstration, the play was removed from the repertoire. Then they tried to stage it again - and they demanded from the director that “God Save the Tsar” be sung like a drunken mockery. Nothing came of it - I don’t know why exactly - and the play was finally removed. “All of Moscow” knew about this incident at one time.

- Solonevich I. L. The mystery and solution of Russia. M.: Publishing house "FondIV", 2008. P.451

After being removed from the repertoire in 1929, the performance was resumed on February 18, 1932 and remained on the stage of the Art Theater until June 1941. In total, the play was performed 987 times between 1926 and 1941.

M. A. Bulgakov wrote in a letter to P. S. Popov on April 24, 1932 about the resumption of the performance:

From Tverskaya to the Theater, male figures stood and muttered mechanically: “Is there an extra ticket?” The same thing happened on the Dmitrovka side.
I was not in the hall. I was backstage, and the actors were so worried that they infected me. I began to move from place to place, my arms and legs became empty. There are ringing calls in all directions, then the light will hit the spotlights, then suddenly, as in a mine, darkness, and<…>it seems that the performance is going on at head-spinning speed...

The novel “The White Guard” took about 7 years to create. Initially, Bulgakov wanted to make it the first part of a trilogy. The writer began work on the novel in 1921, moving to Moscow, and by 1925 the text was almost finished. Once again Bulgakov ruled the novel in 1917-1929. before publication in Paris and Riga, reworking the ending.

The name options considered by Bulgakov are all connected with politics through the symbolism of flowers: “White Cross”, “Yellow Ensign”, “Scarlet Swoop”.

In 1925-1926 Bulgakov wrote a play, in the final version called “Days of the Turbins,” the plot and characters of which coincide with the novel. The play was staged at the Moscow Art Theater in 1926.

Literary direction and genre

The novel “The White Guard” was written in the tradition of realistic literature of the 19th century. Bulgakov uses a traditional technique and, through the history of a family, describes the history of an entire people and country. Thanks to this, the novel takes on the features of an epic.

The work begins as a family novel, but gradually all events receive philosophical understanding.

The novel "The White Guard" is historical. The author does not set himself the task of objectively describing the political situation in Ukraine in 1918-1919. The events are depicted tendentiously, this is due to a certain creative task. Bulgakov’s goal is to show the subjective perception of the historical process (not revolution, but civil war) by a certain circle of people close to him. This process is perceived as a disaster because there are no winners in a civil war.

Bulgakov balances on the brink of tragedy and farce, he is ironic and focuses on failures and shortcomings, losing sight of not only the positive (if there was any), but also the neutral in human life in connection with the new order.

Issues

Bulgakov in the novel avoids social and political problems. His heroes are the White Guard, but the careerist Talberg also belongs to the same guard. The author's sympathies are not on the side of the whites or the reds, but on the side of good people who do not turn into rats running from the ship and do not change their opinions under the influence of political vicissitudes.

Thus, the problem of the novel is philosophical: how to remain human at the moment of a universal catastrophe and not lose yourself.

Bulgakov creates a myth about a beautiful white City, covered with snow and, as it were, protected by it. The writer wonders whether historical events, changes in power, which Bulgakov experienced in Kyiv during the civil war 14, depend on him. Bulgakov comes to the conclusion that myths rule over human destinies. He considers Petlyura to be a myth that arose in Ukraine “in the fog of the terrible year of 1818.” Such myths give rise to fierce hatred and force some who believe in the myth to become part of it without reasoning, and others who live in another myth to fight to the death for their own.

Each of the heroes experiences the collapse of their myths, and some, like Nai-Tours, die even for something they no longer believe in. The problem of the loss of myth and faith is the most important for Bulgakov. For himself, he chooses the house as a myth. The life of a house is still longer than that of a person. And indeed, the house has survived to this day.

Plot and composition

In the center of the composition is the Turbin family. Their house, with cream curtains and a lamp with a green lampshade, which in the writer’s mind has always been associated with peace and homeliness, looks like Noah’s Ark in the stormy sea of ​​life, in a whirlwind of events. Invited and uninvited, all like-minded people, come to this ark from all over the world. Alexei's comrades in arms enter the house: Lieutenant Shervinsky, Second Lieutenant Stepanov (Karas), Myshlaevsky. Here they find shelter, table, and warmth in the frosty winter. But the main thing is not this, but the hope that everything will be fine, so necessary for the youngest Bulgakov, who finds himself in the position of his heroes: “Their lives were interrupted at dawn.”

The events in the novel take place in the winter of 1918-1919. (51 days). During this time, the power in the city changes: the hetman flees with the Germans and enters the city of Petliura, who ruled for 47 days, and at the end the Petliuraites flee under the cannonade of the Red Army.

The symbolism of time is very important for a writer. Events begin on the day of St. Andrew the First-Called, the patron saint of Kyiv (December 13), and end with Candlemas (on the night of December 2-3). For Bulgakov, the motive of the meeting is important: Petlyura with the Red Army, past with future, grief with hope. He associates himself and the world of the Turbins with the position of Simeon, who, having looked at Christ, did not take part in the exciting events, but remained with God in eternity: “Now you release your servant, Master.” With the same God who at the beginning of the novel is mentioned by Nikolka as a sad and mysterious old man flying into the black, cracked sky.

The novel is dedicated to Bulgakov’s second wife, Lyubov Belozerskaya. The work has two epigraphs. The first describes a snowstorm in Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, as a result of which the hero loses his way and meets the robber Pugachev. This epigraph explains that the whirlwind of historical events is as detailed as a snowstorm, so it is easy to get confused and go astray, not to know where the good person is and where the robber is.

But the second epigraph from the Apocalypse warns: everyone will be judged according to their deeds. If you chose the wrong path, getting lost in the storms of life, this does not justify you.

At the beginning of the novel, 1918 is called great and terrible. In the last, 20th chapter, Bulgakov notes that the next year was even worse. The first chapter begins with an omen: a shepherd Venus and a red Mars stand high above the horizon. With the death of the mother, the bright queen, in May 1918, the Turbins' family misfortunes began. He lingers, and then Talberg leaves, a frostbitten Myshlaevsky appears, and an absurd relative Lariosik arrives from Zhitomir.

Disasters are becoming more and more destructive; they threaten to destroy not only the usual foundations, the peace of the house, but also the very lives of its inhabitants.

Nikolka would have been killed in a senseless battle if not for the fearless Colonel Nai-Tours, who himself died in the same hopeless battle, from which he defended, disbanding, the cadets, explaining to them that the hetman, whom they were going to protect, had fled at night.

Alexey was wounded, shot by the Petliurists because he was not informed about the dissolution of the defensive division. He is saved by an unfamiliar woman, Julia Reiss. The illness from the wound turns into typhus, but Elena begs the Mother of God, the Intercessor, for her brother’s life, giving her happiness with Thalberg for her.

Even Vasilisa survives a raid by bandits and loses her savings. This trouble for the Turbins is not a grief at all, but, according to Lariosik, “everyone has their own grief.”

Grief comes to Nikolka too. And it’s not that the bandits, having spied Nikolka hiding the Nai-Tours Colt, steal it and threaten Vasilisa with it. Nikolka faces death face to face and avoids it, and the fearless Nai-Tours dies, and Nikolka’s shoulders bear the responsibility of reporting the death to his mother and sister, finding and identifying the body.

The novel ends with the hope that the new force entering the City will not destroy the idyll of the house on Alekseevsky Spusk 13, where the magic stove that warmed and raised the Turbin children now serves them as adults, and the only inscription remaining on its tiles says in the hand of a friend that tickets to Hades (to hell) have been taken for Lena. Thus, hope in the finale is mixed with hopelessness for a particular person.

Taking the novel from the historical layer to the universal one, Bulgakov gives hope to all readers, because hunger will pass, suffering and torment will pass, but the stars, which you need to look at, will remain. The writer draws the reader to true values.

Heroes of the novel

The main character and older brother is 28-year-old Alexey.

He is a weak person, a “rag”, and caring for all family members falls on his shoulders. He does not have the acumen of a military man, although he belongs to the White Guard. Alexey is a military doctor. Bulgakov calls his soul gloomy, the kind that loves women’s eyes most of all. This image in the novel is autobiographical.

Alexey, absent-minded, almost paid for this with his life, removing all the officer’s insignia from his clothes, but forgetting about the cockade, by which the Petliurists recognized him. The crisis and death of Alexei occurs on December 24, Christmas. Having experienced death and a new birth through injury and illness, the “resurrected” Alexey Turbin becomes a different person, his eyes “have forever become unsmiling and gloomy.”

Elena is 24 years old. Myshlaevsky calls her clear, Bulgakov calls her reddish, her luminous hair is like a crown. If Bulgakov calls the mother in the novel a bright queen, then Elena is more like a deity or priestess, the keeper of the hearth and the family itself. Bulgakov wrote Elena from his sister Varya.

Nikolka Turbin is 17 and a half years old. He is a cadet. With the beginning of the revolution, the schools ceased to exist. Their discarded students are called crippled, neither children nor adults, neither military nor civilian.

Nai-Tours appears to Nikolka as a man with an iron face, simple and courageous. This is a person who neither knows how to adapt nor seek personal gain. He dies having fulfilled his military duty.

Captain Talberg is Elena’s husband, a handsome man. He tried to adapt to rapidly changing events: as a member of the revolutionary military committee, he arrested General Petrov, became part of an “operetta with great bloodshed,” elected “hetman of all Ukraine,” so he had to escape with the Germans, betraying Elena. At the end of the novel, Elena learns from her friend that Talberg has betrayed her once again and is going to get married.

Vasilisa (houseowner engineer Vasily Lisovich) occupied the first floor. He is a negative hero, a money-grubber. At night he hides money in a hiding place in the wall. Outwardly similar to Taras Bulba. Having found counterfeit money, Vasilisa figures out how he will use it.

Vasilisa is, in essence, an unhappy person. It is painful for him to save and make money. His wife Wanda is crooked, her hair is yellow, her elbows are bony, her legs are dry. Vasilisa is sick of living with such a wife in the world.

Stylistic features

The house in the novel is one of the heroes. The Turbins’ hope to survive, survive and even be happy is connected with it. Talberg, who did not become part of the Turbin family, ruins his nest by leaving with the Germans, so he immediately loses the protection of the Turbin house.

The City is the same living hero. Bulgakov deliberately does not name Kyiv, although all the names in the City are Kyiv, slightly altered (Alekseevsky Spusk instead of Andreevsky, Malo-Provalnaya instead of Malopodvalnaya). The city lives, smokes and makes noise, “like a multi-tiered honeycomb.”

The text contains many literary and cultural reminiscences. The reader associates the city with Rome during the decline of Roman civilization, and with the eternal city of Jerusalem.

The moment the cadets prepared to defend the city is associated with the Battle of Borodino, which never came.

In the essay “Kyiv-Gorod” of 1923, Bulgakov wrote:

“When heavenly thunder (after all, there is a limit to heavenly patience) kills every single modern writer and 50 years later a new real Leo Tolstoy appears, an amazing book about the great battles in Kyiv will be created.”

Actually, Bulgakov wrote a great book about the battles in Kyiv - this book is called “The White Guard”. And among those writers from whom he counts his tradition and whom he sees as his predecessors, Leo Tolstoy is first of all noticeable.

The works that preceded The White Guard can be called War and Peace, as well as The Captain's Daughter. All three of these works are usually called historical novels. But these are not simple, and maybe not historical novels at all, these are family chronicles. At the center of each of them is family. It is the house and family that Pugachev destroys in “The Captain’s Daughter”, where quite recently Grinev dines with Ivan Ignatievich, at the Mironovs he meets with Pugachev. It is Napoleon who destroys the house and family, and the French rule in Moscow, and Prince Andrei will say to Pierre: “The French ruined my house, killed my father, and are coming to ruin Moscow.” The same thing happens in the White Guard. Where the Turbins' friends gather at home, everything will be destroyed. As will be said at the beginning of the novel, they, the young Turbins, will have to suffer and suffer after the death of their mother.

And, of course, it is no coincidence that the sign of this collapsing life is cabinets with books, where the presence of Natasha Rostova and the captain’s daughter is emphasized. And the way Petliura is presented in The White Guard is very reminiscent of Napoleon in War and Peace. The number 666 is the number of the cell in which Petlyura was sitting, this is the number of the beast, and Pierre Bezukhov, in his calculations (not very accurate, by the way), fits the digital meanings of the letters of the words “Emperor Napoleon” and “Russian Bezukhov” to the number 666. Hence the theme of the beast of the apocalypse.

There are many small overlaps between Tolstoy’s book and Bulgakov’s novel. Nai-Tours in The White Guard burrs like Denisov in War and Peace. But this is not enough. Like Denisov, he violates the regulations in order to obtain supplies for his soldiers. Denisov repels a convoy with provisions intended for another Russian detachment - he becomes a criminal and receives punishment. Nai-Tours violates the regulations in order to get felt boots for his soldiers: he takes out a pistol and forces the quartermaster general to hand over the felt boots. Portrait of Captain Tushin from War and Peace: “a small man with weak, awkward movements.” Malyshev from the “White Guard”: “The captain was small, with a long sharp nose, wearing an overcoat with a large collar.” Both of them cannot tear themselves away from the pipe, which they continuously smoke. Both end up alone on the battery - they are forgotten.

Here is Prince Andrey in War and Peace:

“The very thought that he was afraid lifted him up: “I can’t be afraid,” he thought.<…>“This is it,” thought Prince Andrei, grabbing the flagpole.”

And here is Nikolka, the youngest of the Turbins:

“Nikolka was completely stupefied, but at that very second he controlled himself and, thinking with lightning speed: “This is the moment when you can be a hero,” he shouted in his piercing voice: “Don’t you dare get up!” Listen to the command!’”

But Nikolka, of course, has more in common with Nikolai Rostov than with Prince Andrei. Rostov, hearing Natasha’s singing, thinks: “All this, and misfortune, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor - all this is nonsense... but here it is - real.” And here are Nikolka Turbin’s thoughts: “Yes, perhaps everything in the world is nonsense, except for a voice like Shervinsky,” - this is Nikolka listening to Shervinsky, the Turbins’ guest, sing. I'm not even talking about such a passing, but also interesting detail, like the fact that both of them proclaim a toast to the health of the emperor (Nikolka Turbin clearly does this belatedly).

The similarities between Nikolka and Petya Rostov are obvious: both are younger brothers; naturalness, ardor, unreasonable courage, which destroys Petya Rostov; a crush in which both are involved.

The image of the younger Turbin has features of quite a few characters from War and Peace. But something else is much more important. Bulgakov, following Tolstoy, does not attach importance to the role of a historical figure. First, Tolstoy's phrase:

“In historical events, the so-called great people are labels that give a name to the event, which, like labels, have least of all any connection with the event itself.”

And now Bulgakov. Not to mention the insignificant Hetman Skoropadsky, here is what is said about Petlyura:

“Yes, he was not there. There wasn't. So, nonsense, legend, mirage.<…>All this is nonsense. Not him - someone else. Not another, but a third.”

Or this, for example, is also an eloquent roll call. In War and Peace, at least three characters - Napoleon, Prince Andrew and Pierre - compare battle to a game of chess. And in “The White Guard” Bulgakov will talk about the Bolsheviks as the third force that appeared on the chessboard.

Let us remember the scene in the Alexander Gymnasium: Alexey Turbin mentally turns to Alexander I, depicted in the picture hanging in the gymnasium, for help. And Myshlaevsky proposes to burn the gymnasium, just as Moscow was burned in the time of Alexander, so that no one would get it. But the difference is that Tolstoy’s burned Moscow is a prologue to victory. And the Turbines are doomed to defeat - they will suffer and die.

Another quote, and a completely frank one. I think Bulgakov had a lot of fun when he wrote this. Actually, the war in Ukraine is preceded by “a certain clumsy peasant anger”:

“[Anger] ran through the snowstorm and cold in holey bast shoes, with hay in his bare, matted head and howled. In his hands he carried a great club, without which no undertaking in Rus' is complete.”

It is clear that this is the “club of the people’s war”, which Tolstoy sang in “War and Peace” and which Bulgakov is not inclined to glorify. But Bulgakov writes about this not with disgust, but as an inevitability: this peasant anger could not help but exist. Although Bulgakov does not have any idealization of the peasants, it is no coincidence that Myshlaevsky in the novel sarcastically speaks about the local “God-bearing peasants of Dostoevsky.” There is and cannot be any admiration for the people's truth, no Tolstoy's Karataev in The White Guard.

Even more interesting are artistic overlaps, when the key compositional moments of two books are connected with the common vision of the writers’ world. The episode from War and Peace is Pierre's dream. Pierre is in captivity, and he dreams of an old man, a geography teacher. He shows him a ball, similar to a globe, but consisting of drops. Some drops spill and capture others, then they themselves break and spill. The old teacher says: “This is life.” Then Pierre, reflecting on Karataev’s death, says: “Well, Karataev spilled over and disappeared.” Petya Rostov had a second dream that same night, a musical dream. Petya is sleeping in a partisan detachment, a Cossack is sharpening his saber, and all the sounds - the sound of a saber being sharpened, the neighing of horses - are mixed, and Petya thinks he hears a fugue. He hears the harmonious agreement of voices, and it seems to him that he can control. This is an image of harmony, just like the sphere that Pierre sees.

And at the end of the novel “The White Guard” another Petya, Petka Shcheglov, sees in a dream a ball splashing spray. And this is also the hope that history does not end with blood and death, does not end with the triumph of the star of Mars. And the last lines of “The White Guard” are about the fact that we do not look at the sky and do not see the stars. Why don't we detach ourselves from our earthly affairs and look at the stars? Maybe then the meaning of what is happening in the world will be revealed to us.

So, how important is the Tolstoyan tradition for Bulgakov? In a letter to the government, which he sent at the end of March 1930, Bulgakov wrote that in “The White Guard” he strove to depict an intellectual-noble family, by the will of fate thrown into the White Guard camp 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. For Bulgakov, Tolstoy was an indisputable writer all his life, absolutely authoritative, following whom Bulgakov considered the greatest honor and dignity. 

Fine snow began to fall and suddenly fell in flakes. The wind howled; there was a snowstorm. In an instant, the dark sky mixed with the snowy sea. Everything has disappeared.

“Well, master,” the coachman shouted, “there’s trouble: a snowstorm!”

"The Captain's Daughter"

And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their deeds...

The year after the birth of Christ, 1918, was a great and terrible year, the second since the beginning of the revolution. It was full of sun in summer and snow in winter, and two stars stood especially high in the sky: the shepherd star - evening Venus and red, trembling Mars.

But the days, both in peaceful and bloody years, fly like an arrow, and the young Turbins did not notice how a white, shaggy December arrived in the bitter cold. Oh, our Christmas tree grandfather, sparkling with snow and happiness! Mom, bright queen, where are you?

A year after daughter Elena got married to captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, and in the week when the eldest son, Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, after difficult campaigns, service and troubles, returned to Ukraine in the City, to his native nest, a white coffin with his mother’s body They demolished the steep Alekseevsky descent to Podol, to the small church of St. Nicholas the Good, which is on Vzvoz.

When the funeral service was held for the mother, it was May, cherry trees and acacias tightly covered the lancet windows. Father Alexander, stumbling from sadness and embarrassment, shone and sparkled by the golden lights, and the deacon, purple in face and neck, all forged and gold to the very toes of his boots, creaking on the welt, gloomily rumbled the words of church farewell to the mother leaving her children.

Alexei, Elena, Talberg, and Anyuta, who grew up in Turbina’s house, and Nikolka, stunned by death, with a cowlick hanging over his right eyebrow, stood at the feet of the old brown Saint Nicholas. Nikolka’s blue eyes, set on the sides of a long bird’s nose, looked confused, murdered. From time to time he led them to the iconostasis, to the arch of the altar, drowning in twilight, where the sad and mysterious old god ascended and blinked. Why such a grudge? Injustice? Why was it necessary to take away my mother when everyone moved in, when relief came?

God, flying away into the black, cracked sky, did not give an answer, and Nikolka himself did not yet know that everything that happens is always as it should be, and only for the better.

They performed the funeral service, went out onto the echoing slabs of the porch and escorted the mother through the entire huge city to the cemetery, where the father had long been lying under a black marble cross. And they buried mom. Eh... eh...

Many years before his death, in house number 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk, the tiled stove in the dining room warmed and raised little Elena, Alexey the elder and very tiny Nikolka. As I often read “The Carpenter of Saardam” near the glowing tiled square, the clock played the gavotte, and always at the end of December there was the smell of pine needles, and multi-colored paraffin burned on the green branches. In response, the bronze ones, with gavotte, which stand in the bedroom of the mother, and now Elenka, beat the black wall towers in the dining room. My father bought them a long time ago, when women wore funny sleeves with bubbles at the shoulders. Such sleeves disappeared, time flashed like a spark, the father-professor died, everyone grew up, but the clock remained the same and chimed like a tower. Everyone is so used to them that if they somehow miraculously disappeared from the wall, it would be sad, as if one’s own voice had died and nothing could fill the empty space. But the clock, fortunately, is completely immortal, the “Carpenter of Saardam” is immortal, and the Dutch tile, like a wise rock, is life-giving and hot in the most difficult times.

Here is this tile, and the furniture of old red velvet, and beds with shiny knobs, worn carpets, variegated and crimson, with a falcon on the hand of Alexei Mikhailovich, with Louis XIV basking on the shore of a silk lake in the Garden of Eden, Turkish carpets with wonderful curls in the oriental the field that little Nikolka imagined in the delirium of scarlet fever, a bronze lamp under a lampshade, the best cabinets in the world with books smelling of mysterious ancient chocolate, with Natasha Rostova, the Captain’s Daughter, gilded cups, silver, portraits, curtains - all seven dusty and full rooms who raised the young Turbins, the mother left all this to the children in the most difficult time and, already out of breath and weakening, clinging to the crying Elena’s hand, said:

- Together... live.

But how to live? How to live?

Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, the eldest, is a young doctor - twenty-eight years old. Elena is twenty-four. Her husband, Captain Talberg, is thirty-one, and Nikolka is seventeen and a half. Their lives were suddenly interrupted at dawn. Revenge from the north has long begun, and it sweeps and sweeps, and does not stop, and the further it goes, the worse. The elder Turbin returned to his hometown after the first blow that shook the mountains above the Dnieper. Well, I think it will stop, the life that is written about in chocolate books will begin, but not only does it not begin, but all around it becomes more and more terrible. In the north the blizzard howls and howls, but here underfoot the disturbed womb of the earth muffles and grumbles dully. The eighteenth year is flying to the end and day by day it looks more menacing and bristly.

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. The mother said to the children:

- Live.

And they will have to suffer and die.

Once, at dusk, shortly after his mother’s funeral, Alexey Turbin, coming to his father Alexander, said:

– Yes, we are sad, Father Alexander. It’s hard to forget your mother, and it’s still such a difficult time. The main thing is that I just returned, I thought we’d improve our lives, and now...

He fell silent and, sitting at the table in the twilight, thought and looked into the distance. The branches in the churchyard also 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. The city was making a dull noise in the evening, and it smelled of lilacs.

“What will you do, what will you do,” the priest muttered embarrassedly. (He was always embarrassed if he had to talk to people.) - God's will.

- Maybe this will all end someday? Will it be better next? – Turbin asked unknown to whom.

The priest stirred in his chair.

“It’s a hard, hard time, what can I say,” he muttered, “but you shouldn’t be discouraged...

Then he suddenly placed his white hand, extending it from the dark sleeve of the duckweed, onto the stack of books and opened the top one, where it was covered with an embroidered colored bookmark.

“Despondency must not be allowed,” he said, embarrassed, but somehow very convincingly. – A great sin is despondency... Although it seems to me that there will be more trials. “Oh, yes, great trials,” he spoke more and more confidently. – Lately, you know, I’ve been sitting on books, my specialty, of course, most of all theological...

He lifted the book so that the last light from the window fell on the page and read:

– “The third angel poured out his cup into the rivers and springs of water; and there was blood."

So, it was a white, furry December. He was quickly approaching half. The glow of Christmas could already be felt on the snowy streets. The eighteenth year will soon end.

Above the two-story house No. 13, an amazing building (the Turbins’ apartment was on the second floor, and the small, sloping, cozy courtyard was on the first), in the garden, which was molded under a steep mountain, all the branches on the trees became palmate and drooping. The mountain was swept away, the sheds in the yard were covered, and there was a giant sugar loaf. The house was covered with the hat of a white general, and on the lower floor (on the street - the first, in the courtyard under the Turbins' veranda - the basement) the engineer and coward, bourgeois and unsympathetic, Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, lit up with weak yellow lights, and on the upper floor - the Turbino windows lit up strongly and cheerfully .

The novel “The White Guard” became the first voluminous work of Mikhail Bulgakov, and in it one can already see themes that were subsequently traced in his work. Initially, the author planned to write three books, but never started creating the second.

In the novel, the writer talks about the difficult period of the Civil War at the turn of 1918-1919. At that time, the worldview was changing, everyone advocated their own idea, it got to the point where members of the same family fought against each other. The events take place in the city of Kyiv, although the author himself never indicated the name of the city. However, from the descriptions of the streets, houses, and the general atmosphere, you can easily recognize that this is it.

The central theme of the novel is the situation of the intelligentsia at that time. Since Kyiv did not fall under Bolshevik rule, it became the place where families of intellectuals went. The German army is in the city, but soon, in accordance with the agreement, it will have to leave it. And Kyiv will be captured by Petliura’s troops. In fact, there is even no one to resist him; the city is defended only by volunteers. But with the arrival of the new government, many people will agree to join it, and everything will become different again.

The author reveals to the readers the characters of many heroes, the main ones being members of the Turbin family. However, there are others, and their actions cause no less emotions. While reading the book, you catch yourself thinking that you are constantly experiencing different emotions: from irritation to admiration. The writer was able to colorfully describe that era, thanks to which you are immersed in it, imbued with the mood, and experience a feeling of anxiety and fear along with the people. And the most important thing is that you understand a lot.

The work belongs to the Prose genre. It was published in 1923 by the World of Books publishing house. The book is part of the series "List of school literature for grades 10-11". On our website you can download the book "The White Guard" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. The book's rating is 4.22 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also turn to reviews from readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In our partner’s online store you can buy and read the book in paper version.