The history of the creation of the novel The White Guard. “The White Guard”, novel

"The White Guard" is Bulgakov's very first novel!

The action of the work takes place in 1918-1919 in the unknown City N, which resembles Kyiv. It is occupied by the German occupiers, power is concentrated in the hands of the hetman. Everyone is waiting for Petlyura’s fighters to enter the City. Live in locality proceeds strangely and unnaturally.

In the Turbins' house, the owners and guests of the family are having a conversation about the fate of their beloved City. Alexey Turbin is confident that the blame lies with the hetman, who did not form the Russian army in time. Then it would have been possible to defend the City, save Russia and there would have been no Petliura troops.

Elena's husband Sergei Talberg tells her that he is leaving by train with the Germans. He hopes that in a couple of months he will arrive with Denikin's army. The captain does not take his wife with him.

To protect themselves from the Petliura army, Russian divisions are formed. Karas, Myshlaevsky and the elder Turbin go to serve Malyshev. But the next night the hetman and General Belorukov leave on a German train. The colonel disbands his army, since the city government is no longer there.

Colonel Nai-Tours forms the second department of the first squad by December. Under the threat of a Colt, he forces the supply chief to issue winter clothing for his soldiers. The next morning, the Petliura army advances on the City, the colonel’s soldiers desperately go into battle. Nai-Tours sends scouts to find out where the hetman's units are. It turns out that they are nowhere to be found. It becomes obvious to the Colonel that they are trapped.

Nikolai Turbin, by order of the commander, comes to specified place. There appears before him scary picture: Nai-Tours shouts to all the fighters to tear up all documents, tear off shoulder straps and cockades, throw away weapons and hide in shelters. Before Turbin's eyes, the colonel dies from a gunshot wound. Kolya is trying to get to the house.

Senior Turbin, who did not know about the dissolution of the army, comes to headquarters. There he sees abandoned weapons and Malyshev, who explains that the City was captured by the Petliura army. Alexey takes off his shoulder straps and goes home, but on the way Petliura’s soldiers shoot at him. The wounded Turbin is sheltered by an unknown lady, Julia Reiss, and the next day she helps him get home. Larion, Sergei's brother, arrives at the Turbins and stays with them.

Lisovich Vasily Ivanovich, the owner of the house in which the Turbins live, settles on the first floor. The Turbin family is in second place. Before the Petliurists enter the City, Vasily hides jewelry and money in a cache. Someone is closely watching him and the next day armed guys come and search him. The contents of the cache, the owner's clothes and watches are taken away. The Lisovich couple suspect that they were criminals and ask the Turbins for help. Karas is sent to help them.

Nikolai informs Nai-Tours's relatives about his death. With the colonel's sister Ira, he finds the body of the deceased. At night they hold a funeral service for him.

A couple of days later, Alexei becomes seriously ill from his wound, and doctors say he will soon die. His sister locks herself in her room and prays to the Mother of God that Lesha survives. At the same time, she says that it is better that her husband does not return, and that her brother remains alive. Suddenly Turbin comes to his senses in front of the amazed doctor.

A little over a month later, Alyosha, who has finally recovered, comes to Julia Reiss and gives her his late mother’s bracelet as a token of gratitude for saving her. Turbin asks if he can come visit. On the way, he meets a brother coming from his sister Nai-Turs.

Elena receives a letter from a close friend, informing her that her husband is marrying a completely different lady. The woman, crying, remembers that night prayer...

In February, the Petliurists leave. The Bolsheviks are hastily approaching the City.

A short retelling of “The White Guard” was prepared by Oleg Nikov for the reader’s diary.

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 traditions realistic literature 19th century Bulgakov uses traditional technique and through family history describes the history of an entire people and country. Thanks to this, the novel takes on the features of an epic.

The piece begins as family romance, 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 subjective perception 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 moves away from 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 good people who do not turn into rats running from the ship, 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 asks himself 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 Petliura 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, living 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 vortex historical events detailed snowstorm, so it’s easy to get confused and go astray, not knowing where good man, where is the robber?

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. Saves him unknown 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 new power, 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 informs in the hand of a friend that tickets to Hades have been taken for Lena (in hell). 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

Main character and older brother - 28-year-old Alexey.

He weak person, “a rag man,” and the care of 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 - bad guy, 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.

M.A. Bulgakov twice, in two different works of his, recalls how his work on the novel began "White Guard"(1925). The hero of the “Theatrical Novel” Maksudov says: “It was born at night when I woke up after a sad dream. I dreamed of my hometown, snow, winter, the Civil War... In my dream, a silent blizzard passed in front of me, and then an old piano appeared and near it people who were no longer in the world.” The story “To a Secret Friend” contains other details: “I pulled my barracks lamp as far as possible to the table and put a cap of pink paper, causing the paper to come to life. On it I wrote the words: “And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their deeds.” Then he began to write, not yet knowing very well what would come of it. I remember that I really wanted to convey how good it is when it’s warm at home, the clock chiming like a tower in the dining room, sleepy slumber in bed, books and frost...” With this mood, Bulgakov began to create a new novel.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov began writing the novel “The White Guard,” the most important book for Russian literature, in 1922.

In 1922-1924, Bulgakov wrote articles for the newspaper “Nakanune”, constantly published in the railway workers’ newspaper “Gudok”, where he met I. Babel, I. Ilf, E. Petrov, V. Kataev, Yu. Olesha. According to Bulgakov himself, the concept of the novel “The White Guard” finally took shape in 1922. During this time, several important events in his personal life occurred: during the first three months of this year, he received news of the fate of his brothers, whom he never saw again, and a telegram about the sudden death of his mother from typhus. During this period, the terrible impressions of the Kyiv years received additional impetus for embodiment in creativity.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Bulgakov planned to create a whole trilogy, and spoke about his favorite book like this: “I consider my novel a failure, although I distinguish it from my other things, because I took the idea very seriously.” And what we now call the “White Guard” was conceived as the first part of the trilogy and initially bore the names “Yellow Ensign”, “Midnight Cross” and “White Cross”: “The action of the second part should take place on the Don, and in the third part Myshlaevsky will end up in the ranks of the Red Army." Signs of this plan can be found in the text of The White Guard. But Bulgakov did not write a trilogy, leaving it to Count A.N. Tolstoy (“Walking through Torment”). And the theme of “flight”, emigration, in “The White Guard” is only outlined in the story of Thalberg’s departure and in the episode of reading Bunin’s “The Gentleman from San Francisco”.

The novel was created in an era of greatest material need. The writer worked at night in an unheated room, worked impetuously and enthusiastically, and was terribly tired: “The third life. And my third life blossomed at the desk. The pile of sheets kept swelling. I wrote with both pencil and ink.” Subsequently, the author returned to his favorite novel more than once, reliving the past. In one of the entries dating back to 1923, Bulgakov noted: “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...” And in 1925 he wrote: “It will be a terrible pity, if I’m mistaken and the “White Guard” is not a strong thing.” On August 31, 1923, Bulgakov informed Yu. Slezkine: “I finished the novel, but it has not yet been rewritten, it lies in a heap, over which I think a lot. I’m fixing something.” This was a draft version of the text, which is mentioned in the “Theatrical Novel”: “The novel takes a long time to edit. It is necessary to cross out many places, replace hundreds of words with others. A lot of work, but necessary!” Bulgakov was not satisfied with his work, crossed out dozens of pages, created new editions and variants. But at the beginning of 1924, I already read excerpts from “The White Guard” from the writer S. Zayaitsky and from my new friends the Lyamins, considering the book finished.

The first known mention of the completion of the novel dates back to March 1924. The novel was published in the 4th and 5th books of the Rossiya magazine in 1925. But the 6th issue with the final part of the novel was not published. According to researchers, the novel “The White Guard” was written after the premiere of “Days of the Turbins” (1926) and the creation of “Run” (1928). The text of the last third of the novel, corrected by the author, was published in 1929 by the Parisian publishing house Concorde. Full text The novel was published in Paris: volume one (1927), volume two (1929).

Due to the fact that “The White Guard” 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 was not awarded special attention press. Famous critic A. Voronsky (1884-1937) at the end of 1925, the “White Guard” together with “ Fatal eggs" called works of "outstanding literary quality." The response to this statement was a sharp attack from the head of the Russian Association Proletarian Writers(RAPP) L. Averbakh (1903-1939) in the Rapp organ - the magazine “At the Literary Post”. Later, the production of the play “Days of the Turbins” based on the novel “The White Guard” at the Moscow Art Theater in the fall of 1926 turned the attention of critics to this work, and the novel itself was forgotten.

K. Stanislavsky, worried about the censorship of “The Days of the Turbins,” originally called, like the novel, “The White Guard,” strongly advised Bulgakov to abandon the epithet “white,” which seemed openly hostile to many. But the writer treasured this very word. He agreed with the “cross”, and with “December”, and with “buran” instead of “guard”, but he did not want to give up the definition of “white”, seeing in it a sign of a special moral purity favorite heroes, their belonging to the Russian intelligentsia as part of the best stratum in the country.

"The White Guard" is a largely autobiographical novel based on the writer's personal impressions of Kyiv at the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. Members of the Turbin family reflected character traits relatives of Bulgakov. Turbines - maiden name Bulgakov's maternal grandmothers. No manuscripts of the novel have survived. The prototypes of the novel's heroes were Bulgakov's Kyiv friends and acquaintances. Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky was copied from his childhood friend Nikolai Nikolaevich Syngaevsky.

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. The prototype of Elena Talberg (Turbina) was Bulgakov’s sister, Varvara Afanasyevna. Captain Thalberg, her husband, has a lot common features with Varvara Afanasyevna Bulgakova’s husband, Leonid Sergeevich Karuma (1888-1968), a German by birth, a career officer who served first Skoropadsky and then the Bolsheviks.

The prototype of Nikolka Turbin was one of the brothers M.A. Bulgakov. The writer’s second wife, Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya-Bulgakova, wrote in her book “Memoirs”: “One of Mikhail Afanasyevich’s brothers (Nikolai) was also a doctor. Here's to the individual younger brother, Nikolai, I want to stop. The noble and cozy little man Nikolka Turbin has always been dear to my heart (especially in the novel “The White Guard.” In the play “Days of the Turbins” he is much more sketchy). In my life I never managed to see Nikolai Afanasyevich Bulgakov. This is the youngest representative of the profession favored by the Bulgakov family - doctor of medicine, bacteriologist, scientist and researcher, who died in Paris in 1966. He studied at the University of Zagreb and was assigned to the department of bacteriology there.”

The novel was created at a difficult time for the country. Young Soviet Russia, which did not have a regular army, found itself drawn into the Civil War. The dreams of the traitor hetman Mazepa, whose name was not accidentally mentioned in Bulgakov’s novel, came true. The White Guard is based on events related to the consequences Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, according to which Ukraine was recognized as an independent state, a “Ukrainian state” was created headed by Hetman Skoropadsky, and refugees from all over Russia rushed “abroad.” Bulgakov clearly described their social status in the novel.

The philosopher Sergei Bulgakov, the writer’s cousin, in his book “At the Feast of the Gods” described the death of his homeland as follows: “There was a mighty power, needed by friends, terrible by enemies, and now it is rotting carrion, from which piece by piece falls off to the delight of the crows that have flown in. In place of a sixth of the world there was a stinking, gaping hole...” Mikhail Afanasyevich agreed with his uncle in many respects. And it is no coincidence that this terrible picture is reflected in the article by M.A. Bulgakov “Hot Prospects” (1919). Studzinsky speaks about this in his play “Days of the Turbins”: “We had Russia - a great power...” So for Bulgakov, an optimist and talented satirist, despair and sorrow became starting points in creating a book of hope. It is this definition that most accurately reflects the content of the novel “The White Guard.” In the book “At the Feast of the Gods,” the writer found another thought closer and more interesting: “What Russia will become depends largely on how the intelligentsia determines itself.” Bulgakov's heroes are painfully searching for the answer to this question.

In The White Guard, Bulgakov sought to show the people and intelligentsia in flames Civil War in Ukraine. The main character, Alexey Turbin, although clearly autobiographical, but, unlike the writer, is not a zemstvo doctor, only formally registered as a military service, but a real military medic who saw and experienced a lot during the years of the World War. There are many things that bring the author closer to his hero: calm courage, faith in old Russia, and most importantly, the dream of a peaceful life.

“You have to love your heroes; if this does not happen, I do not advise anyone to take up the pen - you will get into the biggest troubles, so you know,” says the “Theatrical Novel”, and this main law creativity of Bulgakov. In the novel "The White Guard" he speaks of white officers and intelligentsia as ordinary people, reveals their young world of soul, charm, intelligence and strength, shows enemies as living people.

The literary community refused to recognize the novel's merits. Out of almost three hundred reviews, Bulgakov counted only three positive ones, and classified the rest as “hostile and abusive.” The writer received rude comments. In one of the articles, Bulgakov was called “a new bourgeois scum, splashing poisoned but powerless saliva on the working class, on its communist ideals.”

“Class untruth”, “a cynical attempt to idealize the White Guard”, “an attempt to reconcile the reader with the monarchical, Black Hundred officers”, “hidden counter-revolutionism” - this is not a complete list of characteristics that were attributed to the “White Guard” by those who believed that the main thing in literature is political position the writer, his attitude towards the “whites” and “reds”.

One of the main motives of the “White Guard” is faith in life and its victorious power. Therefore, this book, considered banned for several decades, found its reader, found a second life in all the richness and splendor of Bulgakov’s living word. Kiev writer Viktor Nekrasov, who read The White Guard in the 60s, quite rightly noted: “Nothing, it turns out, has faded, nothing has become outdated. It was as if these forty years had never happened... before our eyes an obvious miracle happened, something that happens very rarely in literature and not to everyone - a rebirth took place.” The life of the novel's heroes continues today, but in a different direction.

"The White Guard", Chapter 1 - summary

The intelligent Turbin family living in Kyiv - two brothers and a sister - finds themselves in the middle of the revolution in 1918. Alexey Turbin, a young doctor - twenty-eight years old, he has already fought in First World War. Nikolka is seventeen and a half. Sister Elena is twenty-four, a year and a half ago she married staff captain Sergei Talberg.

This year, the Turbins buried their mother, who, dying, told the children: “Live!” But the year is ending, it’s already December, and still the terrible blizzard of revolutionary unrest continues. How to live in such a time? Apparently you will have to suffer and die!

White Guard. Episode 1 Film based on the novel by M. Bulgakov (2012)

The priest who performed the funeral service for his mother, Father Alexander, prophesies to Alexei Turbin that it will be even more difficult in the future. But he urges not to lose heart.

"The White Guard", Chapter 2 - summary

The power of the hetman planted by the Germans in Kyiv Skoropadsky staggers. Socialist troops are marching towards the city from Bila Tserkva Petlyura. He is as much a robber as Bolsheviks, differs from them only in Ukrainian nationalism.

On a December evening, the Turbins gather in the living room, hearing through the windows cannon shots already close to Kyiv.

A family friend, a young, courageous lieutenant Viktor Myshlaevsky, unexpectedly rings the doorbell. He is terribly cold, cannot walk home, and asks permission to spend the night. With abuse he tells how he stood in the outskirts of the city on the defensive from the Petliurists. 40 officers were thrown into an open field in the evening, not even given felt boots, and almost without ammunition. Because of the terrible frost, they began to bury themselves in the snow - and two froze, and two more would have to have their legs amputated due to frostbite. The careless drunkard, Colonel Shchetkin, never delivered his shift in the morning. She was brought only to dinner by the brave Colonel Nai-Tours.

Exhausted, Myshlaevsky falls asleep. Elena's husband returns home, the dry and prudent opportunist Captain Talberg, a Baltic by birth. He quickly explains to his wife: Hetman Skoropadsky is being abandoned German troops, on which all his power rested. At one o'clock in the morning General von Bussow's train leaves for Germany. Thanks to his staff contacts, the Germans agree to take Talberg with them. He must get ready to leave immediately, but “I can’t take you, Elena, on your wanderings and the unknown.”

Elena cries quietly, but doesn’t mind. Thalberg promises that he will make his way from Germany through Romania to the Crimea and the Don in order to come to Kyiv with Denikin's troops. He busily packs his suitcase, quickly says goodbye to Elena’s brothers, and at one in the morning leaves with the German train.

"The White Guard", Chapter 3 - summary

The turbines occupy the 2nd floor of a two-story house No. 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk, and the owner of the house, engineer Vasily Lisovich, lives on the first floor, whom acquaintances call Vasilisa for his cowardice and womanly vanity.

That night, Lisovich, having curtained the windows in the room with a sheet and blanket, hides an envelope with money in a secret place inside the wall. He does not notice that a white sheet on a green-painted window has attracted the attention of one street passerby. He climbed the tree and through the gap above the upper edge of the curtain saw everything that Vasilisa was doing.

Having counted the balance of Ukrainian money saved for current expenses, Lisovich goes to bed. He sees in a dream how thieves are opening his hiding place, but soon he wakes up with curses: upstairs they are loudly playing the guitar and singing...

It was two more friends who came to the Turbins: staff adjutant Leonid Shervinsky and artilleryman Fyodor Stepanov (gymnasium nickname - Karas). They brought wine and vodka. The whole company, together with the awakened Myshlaevsky, sits down at the table. Karas is encouraging everyone who wants to defend Kyiv from Petliura to join the mortar division being formed, where Colonel Malyshev is an excellent commander. Shervinsky, clearly in love with Elena, is glad to hear about Thalberg’s departure and begins to sing a passionate epithalamium.

White Guard. Episode 2. Film based on the novel by M. Bulgakov (2012)

Everyone drinks to the Entente allies to help Kyiv fight off Petliura. Alexei Turbin scolds the hetman: he oppressed the Russian language, until last days did not allow the formation of an army from Russian officers - and at the decisive moment he found himself without troops. If from April the hetman began to create officer corps, we would now drive the Bolsheviks out of Moscow! Alexey says that he will go to Malyshev’s division.

Shervinsky conveys staff rumors that Emperor Nicholas is not killed, but escaped from the hands of the communists. Everyone at the table understands that this is unlikely, but they still sing in delight “God Save the Tsar!”

Myshlaevsky and Alexey get very drunk. Seeing this, Elena puts everyone to bed. She is alone in her room, sadly sitting on her bed, thinking about her husband’s departure and suddenly clearly realizing that in a year and a half of marriage, she never had respect for this cold careerist. Alexey Turbin also thinks about Talberg with disgust.

"The White Guard", Chapter 4 - summary

Throughout the last year (1918), a stream of wealthy people fleeing Bolshevik Russia poured into Kyiv. It intensifies after the election of the hetman, when with German help it is possible to establish some order. Most of the visitors are an idle, depraved crowd. Countless cafes, theaters, clubs, cabarets, full of drugged prostitutes, open for her in the city.

Many officers also come to Kyiv - with haunted eyes after the collapse of the Russian army and the soldiers' tyranny of 1917. Lousy, unshaven, poorly dressed officers do not find support from Skoropadsky. Only a few manage to join the hetman's convoy, sporting fantastic shoulder straps. The rest are hanging around doing nothing.

So the 4 cadet schools that were in Kyiv before the revolution remain closed. Many of their students fail to complete the course. Among these is the ardent Nikolka Turbin.

The city is calm thanks to the Germans. But there is a feeling that peace is fragile. News is coming from the villages that the revolutionary robberies of the peasants cannot be stopped.

"The White Guard", Chapter 5 - summary

Signs of imminent disaster are multiplying in Kyiv. In May there is a terrible explosion of weapons depots in the suburb of Bald Mountain. On July 30, in broad daylight, on the street, the Socialist Revolutionaries killed the commander-in-chief of the German army in Ukraine, Field Marshal Eichhorn, with a bomb. And then the troublemaker Simon Petlyura is released from the hetman’s prison - mysterious man, who immediately goes to lead the peasants rioting in the villages.

A village revolt is very dangerous because many men have recently returned from the war - with weapons, and having learned to shoot there. And by the end of the year, the Germans were defeated in the First World War. They themselves are starting revolution, overthrow the emperor Wilhelm. That is why they are now in a hurry to withdraw their troops from Ukraine.

White Guard. Episode 3. Film based on the novel by M. Bulgakov (2012)

...Aleksey Turbin is sleeping, and he dreams that on the eve of Paradise he met Captain Zhilin and with him his entire squadron of Belgrade Hussars, who died in 1916 in the Vilna direction. For some reason, their commander, the still living Colonel Nai-Tours in the armor of a crusader, also jumped here. Zhilin tells Alexei that the Apostle Peter allowed his entire detachment into Paradise, although they took with them several cheerful women along the way. And Zhilin saw mansions in heaven painted with red stars. Peter said that the Red Army soldiers would soon go there and kill many of them under fire. Perekop. Zhilin was surprised that the atheist Bolsheviks would be allowed into Paradise, but the Almighty himself explained to him: “Well, they don’t believe in me, what can you do. One believes, the other doesn’t believe, but you all have the same actions: now you’re at each other’s throats. All of you, Zhilin, are the same - killed on the battlefield.”

Alexey Turbin also wanted to rush into the gates of heaven - but woke up...

"The White Guard", Chapter 6 - summary

Registration for the mortar division takes place in the former Parisian Chic store of Madame Anjou, in the city center. In the morning after a drunken night, Karas, already in the division, brings Alexei Turbin and Myshlaevsky here. Elena baptizes them at home before leaving.

The division commander, Colonel Malyshev, is a young man of about 30, with lively and intelligent eyes. He is very happy about the arrival of Myshlaevsky, an artilleryman who fought on the German front. At first, Malyshev is wary of Doctor Turbin, but is very happy to learn that he is not a socialist, like most intellectuals, but an ardent hater of Kerensky.

Myshlaevsky and Turbin are enrolled in the division. In an hour they must report to the parade ground of the Alexander Gymnasium, where soldiers are being trained. Turbin runs home at this hour, and on the way back to the gymnasium he suddenly sees a crowd of people carrying coffins with the bodies of several warrant officers. The Petliurites surrounded and killed that night an officer detachment in the village of Popelyukha, gouged out their eyes, cut out shoulder straps on their shoulders...

Turbin himself studied at the Aleksandrovskaya Gymnasium, and after the front, fate brought him here again. There are no high school students now, the building stands empty, and on the parade ground young volunteers, students and cadets, run around the scary, blunt-nosed mortars, learning to handle them. The classes are led by senior division officers Studzinsky, Myshlaevsky and Karas. Turbine is assigned to train two soldiers to be paramedics.

Colonel Malyshev arrives. Studzinsky and Myshlaevsky quietly report to him their impressions of the recruits: “They will fight. But complete inexperience. For one hundred and twenty cadets, there are eighty students who do not know how to hold a rifle in their hands.” Malyshev, with a gloomy look, informs the officers that the headquarters will not give the division either horses or shells, so they will have to give up classes with mortars and teach rifle shooting. The Colonel orders dismissal for the night. most recruits, leaving only 60 of the best cadets in the gymnasium as a guard for weapons.

In the lobby of the gymnasium, officers remove the drapery from the portrait of its founder, Emperor Alexander I, which had been hanging closed since the first days of the revolution. The Emperor points his hand to the Borodino regiments in the portrait. Looking at the picture, Alexey Turbin remembers the happy pre-revolutionary days. “Emperor Alexander, save the dying house by the Borodino regiments! Revive them, take them off the canvas! They would have beaten Petlyura.”

Malyshev orders the division to reassemble on the parade ground tomorrow morning, but he allows Turbin to arrive only at two o’clock in the afternoon. The remaining guard of cadets under the command of Studzinsky and Myshlaevsky stoked the stoves in the gymnasium all night long." Domestic notes"and "Library for Reading" for 1863...

"The White Guard", Chapter 7 - summary

There is indecent fuss in the Hetman's palace this night. Skoropadsky, rushing in front of the mirrors, changes into the uniform of a German major. The doctor who came in tightly bandaged his head, and the hetman was taken away in a car from the side entrance under the guise of the German Major Schratt, who allegedly accidentally wounded himself in the head while discharging a revolver. No one in the city knows about Skoropadsky’s escape yet, but the military informs Colonel Malyshev about it.

In the morning, Malyshev announces to the fighters of his division gathered at the gymnasium: “During the night in state situation dramatic and sudden changes have occurred in Ukraine. Therefore, the mortar division has been disbanded! Take here in the workshop all the weapons that everyone wants, and go home! I would advise those who want to continue the fight to make their way to Denikin on the Don.”

There is a dull murmur among the stunned, uncomprehending young men. Captain Studzinsky even makes an attempt to arrest Malyshev. However, he calms the excitement with a loud shout and continues: “Do you want to defend the hetman? But today, at about four o’clock in the morning, shamefully leaving us all to the mercy of fate, he fled like the last scoundrel and coward, along with the army commander, General Belorukov! Petliura has an army of over one hundred thousand on the outskirts of the city. In unequal battles with her today, a handful of officers and cadets, standing in the field and abandoned by two scoundrels who should have been hanged, will die. And I’m disbanding you to save you from certain death!”

Many cadets are crying in despair. The division disperses, having damaged as many of the thrown mortars and guns as possible. Myshlaevsky and Karas, not seeing Alexei Turbin in the gymnasium and not knowing that Malyshev ordered him to come only at two o’clock in the afternoon, think that he has already been notified of the dissolution of the division.

Part 2

"The White Guard", Chapter 8 - summary

At dawn, December 14, 1918, in the village of Popelyukhe near Kiev, where the ensigns had recently been slaughtered, Petliura’s Colonel Kozyr-Leshko raises his cavalry detachment, 400 Sabeluks. Singing a Ukrainian song, he rides out to a new position, on the other side of the city. This is how the cunning plan of Colonel Toropets, commander of the Kyiv obloga, is carried out. Toropets plans to distract the city defenders with artillery cannonade from the north, and launch the main attack in the center and south.

Meanwhile, the pampered Colonel Shchetkin, leading detachments of these defenders in the snowy fields, secretly abandons his fighters and goes to a rich Kyiv apartment, to a plump blonde, where he drinks coffee and goes to bed...

The impatient Petliura Colonel Bolbotun decides to speed up Toropets' plan - and without preparation he bursts into the city with his cavalry. To his surprise, he does not meet resistance until the Nikolaev Military School. Only there are 30 cadets and four officers firing at him from their only machine gun.

Bolbotun's reconnaissance team, headed by the centurion Galanba, rushes along the empty Millionnaya Street. Here Galanba chops with a saber on the head of Yakov Feldman, a famous Jew and supplier of armored parts to Hetman Skoropadsky, who accidentally came out to meet them from the entrance.

"The White Guard", Chapter 9 - summary

An armored car approaches a group of cadets near the school to help. After three shots His guns stop the movement of Bolbotun's regiment completely.

Not one armored car, but four, should have approached the cadets - and then the Petliurists would have had to flee. But recently, Mikhail Shpolyansky, a revolutionary ensign awarded personally by Kerensky, black, with velvet tanks, similar to Eugene Onegin, was appointed commander of the second vehicle in the hetman’s armored regiment.

This reveler and poet, who came from Petrograd, squandered money in Kyiv, founded the poetic order “Magnetic Triolet” under his chairmanship, maintained two mistresses, played iron and spoke in clubs. Recently Shpolyansky treated the head of “Magnetic Triolet” in a cafe in the evening, and after dinner the aspiring poet Rusakov, already suffering from syphilis, cried drunkenly on his beaver cuffs. Shpolyansky went from the cafe to his mistress Yulia on Malaya Provalnaya Street, and Rusakov, arriving home, looked at the red rash on his chest with tears and on his knees prayed for the forgiveness of the Lord, who punished him with a serious illness for writing anti-God poems.

The next day, Shpolyansky, to everyone’s surprise, entered Skoropadsky’s armored division, where instead of beavers and a top hat, he began to wear a military sheepskin coat, all smeared with machine oil. Four Hetman armored cars had big success in battles with the Petliurists near the city. But three days before the fateful December 14, Shpolyansky, having slowly gathered gunners and car drivers, began to convince them: it was stupid to defend the reactionary hetman. Soon both he and Petliura will be replaced by a third, the only correct historical force - the Bolsheviks.

On the eve of December 14, Shpolyansky, together with other drivers, poured sugar into the engines of armored cars. When the battle with the cavalry that entered Kyiv began, only one of the four cars started up. He was brought to the aid of the cadets by the heroic ensign Strashkevich. He detained the enemy, but could not drive him out of Kyiv.

"The White Guard", Chapter 10 - summary

Hussar Colonel Nai-Tours is a heroic front-line soldier who speaks with a burr and turns his whole body, looking to the side, because after being wounded his neck is cramped. In the first days of December, he recruits up to 150 cadets into the second department of the city defense squad, but demands papas and felt boots for all of them. Clean General Makushin in the supply department replies that he doesn’t have that much uniform. Nye then calls several of his cadets with loaded rifles: “Write a request, your Excellency. Live up. We don’t have time, we have an hour to go. Nepgiyatel under the very godod. If you don’t write, you stupid stag, I’ll hit you in the head with a Colt, you’re dragging your feet.” The general writes on the paper with a jumping hand: “Give up.”

All morning on December 14th, Nye’s detachment sat in the barracks, receiving no orders. Only during the day does he receive an order to go guard the Polytechnic Highway. Here, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Nai sees the approaching Petlyura regiment of Kozyr-Leshko.

By order of Nye, his battalion fires several volleys at the enemy. But, seeing that the enemy has appeared from the side, he orders his soldiers to retreat. A cadet sent to reconnaissance into the city returned and reported that the Petliura cavalry was already on all sides. Nay loudly shouts to his chains: “Save yourself as best you can!”

...And the first section of the squad - 28 cadets, among whom is Nikolka Turbin, languishes idle in the barracks until lunch. Only at three o’clock in the afternoon the phone suddenly rings: “Go outside along the route!” There is no commander - and Nikolka has to lead everyone, as the eldest.

…Alexey Turbin sleeps late that day. Having woken up, he hastily gets ready to go to the division gymnasium, knowing nothing about the city events. On the street he is surprised by the nearby sounds of machine gun fire. Having arrived in a cab to the gymnasium, he sees that the division is not there. “They left without me!” - Alexey thinks in despair, but notices with surprise: the mortars remain in the same places, and they are without locks.

Guessing that a catastrophe has happened, Turbin runs to Madame Anjou's store. There, Colonel Malyshev, disguised as a student, burns lists of division fighters in the oven. “You don’t know anything yet? – Malyshev shouts to Alexey. “Take off your shoulder straps quickly and run, hide!” He talks about the flight of the hetman and the fact that the division was dissolved. Waving his fists, he curses the staff generals.

“Run! Just not out into the street, but through the back door!” - Malyshev exclaims and disappears into the back door. The stupefied Turbin tears off his shoulder straps and rushes to the same place where the colonel disappeared.

"The White Guard", Chapter 11 - summary

Nikolka leads 28 of his cadets through all of Kyiv. At the last intersection, the detachment lies down on the snow with rifles, prepares a machine gun: shooting can be heard very close.

Suddenly other cadets fly out to the intersection. “Run with us! Save yourself, whoever can!” - they shout to the Nikolkins.

The last of the runners appears Colonel Nai-Tours with a Colt in his hand. “Yunkegga! Listen to my command! - he shouts. - Bend your shoulder straps, kokagdy, bgosai oguzhie! Along Fonagny pegeulok - only along Fonagny! - two-wheeler to Gazyezzhaya, to Podol! The fight is over! The staff are stegvy!..”

The cadets scatter, and Nye rushes to the machine gun. Nikolka, who had not run with everyone else, runs up to him. Nai chases him: “Go away, you stupid mavy!”, but Nikolka: “I don’t want to, Mr. Colonel.”

Horsemen jump out to the crossroads. Nye fires a machine gun at them. Several riders fall, the rest immediately disappear. However, the Petliurists lying down further down the street open up hurricane fire, two at a time, at the machine gun. Nai falls, bleeding, and dies, having only managed to say: “Unteg-tseg, God bless you to go gay... Malo-Pgovalnaya...” Nikolka, grabbing the colonel’s Colt, miraculously crawls under heavy fire around the corner, into Lantern Lane.

Jumping up, he rushes into the first yard. Here he is, shouting “Hold him!” Hold the Junkerey!” - the janitor tries to grab it. But Nikolka hits him in the teeth with the handle of a Colt, and the janitor runs away with a bloody beard.

Nikolka climbs over two high walls as she runs, bleeding her toes and breaking her nails. Running out of breath onto Razyezzhaya Street, he tears up his documents as he goes. He rushes to Podol, as Nai-Tours ordered. Having met a cadet with a rifle along the way, he pushes him into the entrance: “Hide. I am a cadet. Catastrophe. Petlyura took the city!

Nikolka happily gets home through Podol. Elena is crying there: Alexey has not returned!

By nightfall, the exhausted Nikolka falls into an uneasy sleep. But the noise wakes him up. Sitting on the bed, he vaguely sees a strange man in front of him, stranger in a jacket, riding breeches and boots with jockey cuffs. In his hand is a cage with a canary. The stranger says in a tragic voice: “She was with her lover on the very sofa on which I read poetry to her. And after the bills for seventy-five thousand, I signed without hesitation, like a gentleman... And, imagine, a coincidence: I arrived here at the same time as your brother.”

Hearing about his brother, Nikolka flies like lightning into the dining room. There, in someone else’s coat and someone else’s trousers, a bluish-pale Alexey is lying on the sofa, with Elena rushing about next to him.

Alexei is wounded in the arm by a bullet. Nikolka rushes after the doctor. He treats the wound and explains: the bullet did not affect either the bone or large vessels, but shreds of wool from the overcoat got into the wound, so inflammation begins. But you can’t take Alexei to the hospital - the Petliurists will find him there...

Part 3

Chapter 12

The stranger who appeared at the Turbins’ place is Sergei Talberg’s nephew Larion Surzhansky (Lariosik), a strange and careless man, but kind and sympathetic. His wife cheated on him in his native Zhitomir, and, suffering mentally in his city, he decided to go and visit the Turbins, whom he had never seen before. Lariosik's mother, warning of his arrival, sent a 63-word telegram to Kyiv, but due to war time it did not arrive.

That same day, turning awkwardly in the kitchen, Lariosik breaks the Turbins’ expensive set. He comically but sincerely apologizes, and then takes out the eight thousand hidden there from behind the lining of his jacket and gives it to Elena for his maintenance.

It took Lariosik 11 days to travel from Zhitomir to Kyiv. The train was stopped by the Petliurites, and Lariosik, who they mistook for an officer, only miraculously escaped execution. In his eccentricity, he tells Turbin about this as an ordinary minor incident. Despite Lariosik's oddities, everyone in the family likes him.

The maid Anyuta tells how she saw the corpses of two officers killed by Petliurists right on the street. Nikolka wonders if Karas and Myshlaevsky are alive. And why did Nai-Tours mention Malo-Provalnaya Street before his death? With the help of Lariosik, Nikolka hides Nai-Tours' Colt and her own Browning, hanging them in a box outside the window that looks out into a narrow clearing covered with snowdrifts on the blank wall of a neighboring house.

The next day, Alexey’s temperature rises above forty. He begins to rave and from time to time repeats female name – Julia. In his dreams, he sees Colonel Malyshev in front of him, burning documents, and remembers how he himself ran out the back door from Madame Anjou’s store...

Chapter 13

Having then run out of the store, Alexey hears shooting very close. Through the courtyards he gets out into the street, and, having turned one corner, he sees Petliurists on foot with rifles right in front of him.

“Stop! - they shout. - Yes, he’s an officer! Call the officer!" Turbin rushes to run, feeling for the revolver in his pocket. He turns into Malo-Provalnaya Street. Shots are heard from behind, and Alexey feels as if someone was pulling his left armpit with wooden pincers.

He takes a revolver out of his pocket, shoots six times at the Petliurists - “the seventh bullet for himself, otherwise they will torture you, they will cut the shoulder straps off your shoulders.” Ahead is a remote alley. Turbin awaits certain death, but a young female figure emerges from the wall of the fence, shouting with outstretched arms: “Officer! Here! Here…"

She is at the gate. He rushes towards her. The stranger closes the gate behind him with a latch and runs, leading him along, through a whole labyrinth of narrow passages, where there are several more gates. They run into the entrance, and there into the apartment opened by the lady.

Exhausted from loss of blood, Alexey falls unconscious to the floor in the hallway. The woman revives him by splashing water and then bandages him.

He kisses her hand. “Well, you are brave! – she says admiringly. “One Petliurist fell from your shots.” Alexey introduces himself to the lady, and she says her name: Yulia Alexandrovna Reiss.

Turbin sees a piano and ficus trees in the apartment. There is a photo of a man with epaulettes on the wall, but Yulia is alone at home. She helps Alexey get to the sofa.

He lies down. At night he starts to feel feverish. Julia is sitting nearby. Alexey suddenly throws his hand behind her neck, pulls her towards him and kisses her on the lips. Julia lies down next to him and strokes his head until he falls asleep.

Early in the morning she takes him out into the street, gets into a cab with him and brings him home to the Turbins.

Chapter 14

The next evening, Viktor Myshlaevsky and Karas appear. They come to the Turbins in disguise, without an officer's uniform, learning bad news: Alexei, in addition to his wound, also has typhus: his temperature has already reached forty.

Shervinsky also comes. Hot Myshlaevsky curses last words the hetman, his commander-in-chief and the entire “staff crowd”.

Guests stay overnight. Late in the evening everyone sits down to play screw - Myshlaevsky paired with Lariosik. Having learned that Lariosik sometimes writes poetry, Victor laughs at him, saying that out of all the literature he himself recognizes only “War and Peace”: “It was not written by some idiot, but by an artillery officer.”

Lariosik doesn't play cards well. Myshlaevsky yells at him for making wrong moves. In the midst of an argument, the doorbell suddenly rings. Is everyone frozen, assuming Petlyura’s night search? Myshlaevsky goes to open it with caution. However, it turns out that this is the postman who brought the same 63-word telegram that Lariosik’s mother wrote. Elena reads it: “A terrible misfortune befell my son, period Operetta actor Lipsky...”

There is a sudden and wild knock on the door. Everyone turns to stone again. But on the threshold - not those who came with a search, but a disheveled Vasilisa, who, as soon as he entered, fell into the hands of Myshlaevsky.

Chapter 15

This evening, Vasilisa and his wife Wanda hid the money again: they pinned it with buttons to the underside of the table top (many Kiev residents did this then). But it was not without reason that a few days ago some passer-by watched from a tree through the window as Vasilisa used her wall hiding place...

Around midnight today, a call comes to his and Wanda’s apartment. “Open up. Don’t go away, otherwise we’ll shoot through the door...” comes a voice from the other side. Vasilisa opens the door with trembling hands.

Three people enter. One has a face with small, deeply sunken eyes, similar to a wolf. The second is of gigantic stature, young, with bare, stubble-free cheeks and womanish habits. The third has a sunken nose, corroded on the side by a festering scab. They poke Vasilisa with a “mandate”: “It is ordered to conduct a thorough search of resident Vasily Lisovich, on Alekseevsky Spusk, house No. 13. Resistance is punishable by rosstril.” The mandate was allegedly issued by some “kuren” of the Petliura army, but the seal is very illegible.

The wolf and the mutilated man take out the Colt and Browning and point it at Vasilisa. He's dizzy. Those who come immediately begin to tap the walls - and by the sound they find the hiding place. “Oh, you bitch tail. Having sealed the pennies into the wall? We need to kill you!” They take money and valuables from the hiding place.

The giant beams with joy when he sees chevron boots with patent-leather toes under Vasilisa’s bed and begins to change into them, throwing off his own rags. “I’ve accumulated things, eaten my face, pink, like a pig, and you’re wondering what good people do they walk? – the Wolf hisses angrily at Vasilisa. “His feet are frozen, he rotted in the trenches for you, and you played the gramophones.”

The disfigured man takes off his pants and, left in only tattered underpants, puts on Vasilisa’s trousers hanging on the chair. The wolf exchanges his dirty tunic for Vasilisa’s jacket, takes a watch from the table and demands that Vasilisa write a receipt that he gave everything he took from him voluntarily. Lisovich, almost crying, writes on paper from Volk’s dictation: “Things... handed over intact during the search. And I have no complaints.” - “Who did you give it to?” - “Write: we received Nemolyak, Kirpaty and Otaman Uragan from the safety.”

All three leave, with a final warning: “If you attack us, our boys will kill you. Do not leave the apartment until the morning, you will be severely punished for this...”

After they leave, Wanda falls on the chest and sobs. "God. Vasya... But it wasn’t a search. They were bandits!” - “I understood it myself!” After marking time, Vasilisa rushes into the Turbins’ apartment...

From there everyone goes down to him. Myshlaevsky advises not to complain anywhere: no one will be caught anyway. And Nikolka, having learned that the bandits were armed with a Colt and a Browning, rushes to the box that he and Lariosik hung outside his window. It's empty! Both revolvers are stolen!

The Lisovichs beg for one of the officers to spend the rest of the night with them. Karas agrees to this. The stingy Wanda, inevitably becoming generous, treats him to pickled mushrooms, veal and cognac at her home. Satisfied, Karas lies down on the ottoman, and Vasilisa sits down in a chair next to her and mournfully laments: “Everything that was acquired through hard work, one evening went into the pockets of some scoundrels... I do not deny the revolution, I am a former cadet. But here in Russia the revolution has degenerated into Pugachevism. The main thing has disappeared - respect for property. And now I have an ominous confidence that only autocracy can save us! The worst dictatorship!

Chapter 16

In the Kiev Cathedral of Hagia Sophia there are a lot of people, you can’t squeeze through. A prayer service is held here in honor of the occupation of the city by Petliura. The crowd is surprised: “But the Petliurites are socialists. What does this have to do with priests? “Give the priests a blue one, so they can serve the devil mass.”

By severe frost people's river flows in procession from the temple to main square. The majority of Petliura's supporters in the crowd gathered only out of curiosity. The women scream: “Oh, I want to spoil Petlyura. It seems like the wine is indescribably handsome.” But he himself is nowhere to be seen.

Petlyura’s troops are parading through the streets to the square under yellow and black banners. The mounted regiments of Bolbotun and Kozyr-Leshko are riding, the Sich Riflemen (who fought in the First World War against Russia for Austria-Hungary) are marching. Shouts of welcome can be heard from the sidewalks. Hearing the cry: “Get them!” Officers! I’ll show them off in uniform!” - several Petliurists grab two people indicated in the crowd and drag them into an alley. A volley is heard from there. The bodies of the dead are thrown right on the sidewalk.

Having climbed into a niche on the wall of one house, Nikolka watches the parade.

A small rally gathers near the frozen fountain. The speaker is lifted onto the fountain. Shouting: “Glory to the people!” and in his first words, rejoicing at the capture of the city, he suddenly calls the listeners “ comrades" and calls them: " Let's take an oath that we will not destroy weapons, docs red the ensign will not flutter over the entire working world. The Soviets of workers, villagers and Cossack deputies live..."

Up close, the eyes and black Onegin sideburns of Ensign Shpolyansky flash in the thick beaver collar. One of the crowd screams heart-rendingly, rushing towards the speaker: “Try yoga! This is a provocation. Bolshevik! Moskal! But a man standing next to Shpolyansky grabs the screamer by the belt, and another yells: “Brothers, the clock has been cut!” The crowd rushes to beat, like a thief, the one who wanted to arrest the Bolshevik.

The speaker disappears at this time. Soon in the alley you can see Shpolyansky treating him to a cigarette from a golden cigarette case.

The crowd drives the beaten “thief” in front of them, who sobs pitifully: “You are wrong! I am a famous Ukrainian poet. My last name is Gorbolaz. I wrote an anthology of Ukrainian poetry!” In response, they hit him on the neck.

Myshlaevsky and Karas are looking at this scene from the sidewalk. “Well done Bolsheviks,” Myshlaevsky says to Karasyu. “Did you see how cleverly the orator was melted down?” Why I love you is for your courage, motherfucker’s leg.”

Chapter 17

After a long search, Nikolka finds out that the Nai-Turs family lives on Malo-Provalnaya, 21. Today, right from procession, runs there.

The door is opened by a gloomy lady in pince-nez, looking suspiciously. But upon learning that Nikolka has information about Naya, she lets him into the room.

There are two more women there, an old one and a young one. Both look like Naya. Nikolka understands: mother and sister.

“Well, tell me, well...” - the eldest stubbornly insists. Seeing Nikolka’s silence, she shouts to the young man: “Irina, Felix has been killed!” - and falls backwards. Nikolka also begins to cry.

He tells his mother and sister how heroically Nai died - and volunteers to go look for his body in the death chamber. Naya's sister, Irina, says that she will go with him...

The morgue has a disgusting, terrible smell, so heavy that it seems sticky; it seems that you can even see him. Nikolka and Irina hand the bill to the guard. He reports them to the professor and receives permission to look for the body among many brought in the last days.

Nikolka persuades Irina not to enter the room where they lie in piles, like firewood, naked human bodies, male and female. Nikolka notices Naya's corpse from above. Together with the watchman, they take him upstairs.

That same night, Nye’s body is washed in the chapel, dressed in a jacket, a crown is placed on his forehead, and a crown is placed on his chest. St. George's ribbon. The old mother with a shaking head thanks Nikolka, and he cries again and leaves the chapel into the snow...

Chapter 18

On the morning of December 22, Alexey Turbin lies dying. The gray-haired professor-doctor tells Elena that there is almost no hope and leaves, leaving his assistant, Brodovich, with the patient just in case.

Elena with distorted face goes to his room, kneels before the icon of the Mother of God and begins to pray passionately. “Most Pure Virgin. Ask your son to send a miracle. Why are you ending our family in one year? My mother took it from us, I don’t have a husband and never will, I already understand that clearly. And now you’re taking Alexei away too. How will Nikol and I be alone at a time like this?”

Her speech comes in a continuous stream, her eyes become crazy. And it seems to her that next to the torn tomb Christ appeared, risen, gracious and barefoot. And Nikolka opens the door to the room: “Elena, go to Alexei quickly!”

Alexey's consciousness returns. He understands: he just passed - and did not destroy him - the most dangerous crisis diseases. Brodovich, agitated and shocked, injects him with medicine from a syringe with a trembling hand.

Chapter 19

A month and a half passes. On February 2, 1919, a thinner Alexey Turbin stands at the window and again listens to the sounds of guns in the outskirts of the city. But now it is not Petliura who is coming to expel the hetman, but the Bolsheviks to Petliura. “The horror will come in the city with the Bolsheviks!” - Alexey thinks.

He has already resumed his medical practice at home, and now a patient is calling him. This is a thin young poet Rusakov, sick with syphilis.

Rusakov tells Turbin that he used to be a fighter against God and a sinner, but now he prays to the Almighty day and night. Alexey tells the poet that he can’t have cocaine, alcohol, or women. - “I have already moved away from temptations and bad people, - answers Rusakov. - The evil genius of my life, the vile Mikhail Shpolyansky, who persuades wives to debauchery and young men to vice, left for the city of the devil - Bolshevik Moscow, to lead hordes of angels to Kyiv, as they once went to Sodom and Gomorrah. Satan will come for him - Trotsky." The poet predicts that the people of Kiev will soon face even more terrible trials.

When Rusakov leaves, Alexey, despite the danger from the Bolsheviks, whose carts are already thundering through the city streets, goes to Julia Reiss to thank her for saving her and give her his late mother’s bracelet.

At Julia’s house, he, unable to bear it, hugs and kisses her. Having again noticed a photo of a man with black sideburns in the apartment, Alexey asks Yulia who it is. "This is my cousin, Shpolyansky. He has now left for Moscow,” Yulia answers, looking down. She is ashamed to admit that in fact Shpolyansky was her lover.

Turbin asks Yulia for permission to come again. She allows it. Coming out of Yulia on Malo-Provalnaya, Alexey unexpectedly meets Nikolka: he was on the same street, but in a different house - with Nai-Tours’ sister, Irina...

Elena Turbina receives a letter from Warsaw in the evening. Olya, a friend who has gone there, informs: “your ex-husband Talberg is going from here not to Denikin, but to Paris, with Lidochka Hertz, whom he plans to marry.” Alexey enters. Elena hands him a letter and cries on his chest...

Chapter 20

The year 1918 was great and terrible, but 1919 was worse.

In the first days of February, the Haidamaks of Petliura flee Kyiv from the advancing Bolsheviks. Petlyura is no more. But will anyone pay for the blood he shed? No. Nobody. The snow will simply melt, the green Ukrainian grass will sprout and hide everything underneath...

At night in a Kyiv apartment, the syphilitic poet Rusakov reads Apocalypse, reverently frozen over the words: “...and there will be no more death; There will be no more crying, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away...”

And the Turbins' house is sleeping. On the first floor, Vasilisa dreams that there was no revolution and that he grew a rich harvest of vegetables in the garden, but round piglets came running, tore up all the beds with their snouts, and then began to jump at him, baring their sharp fangs.

Elena dreams that the frivolous Shervinsky, who is increasingly courting her, sings joyfully operatic voice: “We will live, we will live!!” “And death will come, we will die...” Nikolka, who comes in with a guitar, answers him, his neck is covered in blood, and on his forehead there is a yellow aureole with icons. Realizing that Nikolka will die, Elena wakes up screaming and sobs for a long time...

And in the outbuilding, smiling joyfully, the little stupid boy Petka sees a happy dream about a big diamond ball on a green meadow...

The novel “The White Guard” was first published (incompletely) in Russia, in 1924. Completely in Paris: volume one - 1927, volume two - 1929. “The White Guard” is a largely autobiographical novel based on the writer’s personal impressions of Kyiv 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. “White Guard” was started in 1922, after the death of the writer’s mother. No manuscripts of the novel have survived. According to the typist Raaben, who retyped the novel, The White Guard was originally conceived as a trilogy. Possible titles for the novels in the proposed trilogy included “The Midnight Cross” and “The White Cross.” The prototypes of the novel's heroes were Bulgakov's Kyiv friends and acquaintances.

So, Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky was copied from his childhood friend Nikolai Nikolaevich Sigaevsky. The prototype of Lieutenant Shervinsky was another friend of Bulgakov’s youth - Yuri Leonidovich Gladyrevsky, an amateur singer. In “The White Guard” Bulgakov strives to show the people and intelligentsia in the flames of the civil war in Ukraine. The main character, Alexei Turbin, although clearly autobiographical, is, unlike the writer, not a zemstvo doctor who was only formally listed in military service, but a real military medic who has seen and experienced a lot during the years of the World War. The novel contrasts two groups of officers - those who “hate the Bolsheviks with hot and direct hatred, the kind that can lead to a fight” and “those who returned from the war to their homes with the idea, like Alexei Turbin, to rest and re-establish a non-military, but ordinary human life.”

Bulgakov sociologically accurately shows the mass movements of the era. He demonstrates the centuries-old hatred of the peasants for the landowners and officers, and the newly emerged, but no less deep hatred for the “occupiers.” All this fueled the uprising raised against the rise of Hetman Skoropadsky, the leader of the Ukrainian national movement Petlyura. Bulgakov called one of the main features of his work in “The White Guard” there is a persistent portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in an impudent country.

In particular, the image of an intellectual-noble family, by will historical fate thrown into a White Guard camp during the Civil War, in the traditions of “War and Peace.” “The White Guard” - Marxist criticism of the 20s: “Yes, Bulgakov’s talent was not as deep as it was brilliant, and the talent was great... And yet Bulgakov’s works are not popular. There is nothing in them that affected the people as a whole. There is a mysterious and cruel crowd.” Bulgakov's talent was not imbued with interest in the people, in their life, their joys and sorrows cannot be recognized from Bulgakov.

M.A. Bulgakov twice, in two different works of his, recalls how his work on the novel “The White Guard” (1925) began. The hero of the “Theatrical Novel” Maksudov says: “It was born at night when I woke up after a sad dream. I dreamed of my hometown, snow, winter, the Civil War... In my dream, a silent blizzard passed in front of me, and then an old piano appeared and near it people who were no longer in the world.” The story “To a Secret Friend” contains other details: “I pulled my barracks lamp as far as possible to the table and put a pink paper cap on top of its green cap, which made the paper come to life. On it I wrote the words: “And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their deeds.” Then he began to write, not yet knowing very well what would come of it. I remember that I really wanted to convey how good it is when it’s warm at home, the clock chiming like a tower in the dining room, sleepy slumber in bed, books and frost...” With this mood, Bulgakov began to create a new novel.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov began writing the novel “The White Guard,” the most important book for Russian literature, in 1822.

In 1922-1924, Bulgakov wrote articles for the newspaper “Nakanune”, constantly published in the railway workers’ newspaper “Gudok”, where he met I. Babel, I. Ilf, E. Petrov, V. Kataev, Yu. Olesha. According to Bulgakov himself, the concept of the novel “The White Guard” was finally formed in 1922. During this time, several important events in his personal life occurred: during the first three months of this year, he received news of the fate of his brothers, whom he never saw again, and a telegram about the sudden death of his mother from typhus. During this period, the terrible impressions of the Kyiv years received additional impetus for embodiment in creativity.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Bulgakov planned to create a whole trilogy, and spoke about his favorite book like this: “I consider my novel a failure, although I distinguish it from my other things, because I took the idea very seriously.” And what we now call the “White Guard” was conceived as the first part of the trilogy and initially bore the names “Yellow Ensign”, “Midnight Cross” and “White Cross”: “The action of the second part should take place on the Don, and in the third part Myshlaevsky will end up in the ranks of the Red Army." Signs of this plan can be found in the text of The White Guard. But Bulgakov did not write a trilogy, leaving it to Count A.N. Tolstoy (“Walking through Torment”). And the theme of “flight”, emigration, in “The White Guard” is only outlined in the story of Thalberg’s departure and in the episode of reading Bunin’s “The Gentleman from San Francisco”.

The novel was created in an era of greatest material need. The writer worked at night in an unheated room, worked impetuously and enthusiastically, and was terribly tired: “The third life. And my third life blossomed at the desk. The pile of sheets kept swelling. I wrote with both pencil and ink.” Subsequently, the author returned to his favorite novel more than once, reliving the past. In one of the entries dating back to 1923, Bulgakov noted: “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...” And in 1925 he wrote: “It will be a terrible pity, if I’m mistaken and the “White Guard” is not a strong thing.” On August 31, 1923, Bulgakov informed Yu. Slezkine: “I finished the novel, but it has not yet been rewritten, it lies in a heap, over which I think a lot. I’m fixing something.” This was a draft version of the text, which is mentioned in the “Theatrical Novel”: “The novel takes a long time to edit. It is necessary to cross out many places, replace hundreds of words with others. A lot of work, but necessary!” Bulgakov was not satisfied with his work, crossed out dozens of pages, created new editions and variants. But at the beginning of 1924, I already read excerpts from “The White Guard” from the writer S. Zayaitsky and from my new friends the Lyamins, considering the book finished.

The first known mention of the completion of the novel dates back to March 1924. The novel was published in the 4th and 5th books of the Rossiya magazine in 1925. But the 6th issue with the final part of the novel was not published. According to researchers, the novel "The White Guard" was written after the premiere of "Days of the Turbins" (1926) and the creation of "Run" (1928). The text of the last third of the novel, corrected by the author, was published in 1929 by the Parisian publishing house Concorde. The full text of the novel was published in Paris: volume one (1927), volume two (1929).

Due to the fact that “The White Guard” was not completed publication in the USSR, and foreign publications of the late 20s were not readily available in the writer’s homeland, Bulgakov’s first novel did not receive much attention from the press. The famous critic A. Voronsky (1884-1937) at the end of 1925 called The White Guard, together with Fatal Eggs, works of “outstanding literary quality.” The response to this statement was a sharp attack by the head of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) L. Averbakh (1903-1939) in the Rapp organ - the magazine “At the Literary Post”. Later, the production of the play “Days of the Turbins” based on the novel “The White Guard” at the Moscow Art Theater in the fall of 1926 turned the attention of critics to this work, and the novel itself was forgotten.

K. Stanislavsky, worried about the censorship of “The Days of the Turbins,” originally called, like the novel, “The White Guard,” strongly advised Bulgakov to abandon the epithet “white,” which seemed openly hostile to many. But the writer treasured this very word. He agreed with the “cross”, and with “December”, and with “buran” instead of “guard”, but he did not want to give up the definition of “white”, seeing in it a sign of the special moral purity of his beloved heroes, their belonging to the Russian intelligentsia as parts of the best stratum in the country.

"The White Guard" is a largely autobiographical novel based on the writer's personal impressions of Kyiv at the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. The members of the Turbin family reflected the characteristic features of Bulgakov’s relatives. Turbiny is the maiden name of Bulgakov’s grandmother on his mother’s side. No manuscripts of the novel have survived. The prototypes of the novel's heroes were Bulgakov's Kyiv friends and acquaintances. Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky was copied from his childhood friend Nikolai Nikolaevich Syngaevsky.

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. The prototype of Elena Talberg (Turbina) was Bulgakov’s sister, Varvara Afanasyevna. Captain Talberg, her husband, has many similarities with Varvara Afanasyevna Bulgakova’s husband, Leonid Sergeevich Karuma (1888-1968), a German by birth, a career officer who served first Skoropadsky and then the Bolsheviks.

The prototype of Nikolka Turbin was one of the brothers M.A. Bulgakov. The writer’s second wife, Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya-Bulgakova, wrote in her book “Memoirs”: “One of Mikhail Afanasyevich’s brothers (Nikolai) was also a doctor. It’s the personality of my younger brother, Nikolai, that I want to dwell on. The noble and cozy little man Nikolka Turbin has always been dear to my heart (especially in the novel “The White Guard”. In the play “Days of the Turbins” he is much more sketchy.). In my life I never managed to see Nikolai Afanasyevich Bulgakov. This is the youngest representative of the profession favored by the Bulgakov family - doctor of medicine, bacteriologist, scientist and researcher, who died in Paris in 1966. He studied at the University of Zagreb and was assigned to the department of bacteriology there.”

The novel was created at a difficult time for the country. Young Soviet Russia, which did not have a regular army, found itself embroiled in the Civil War. The dreams of the traitor hetman Mazepa, whose name was not accidentally mentioned in Bulgakov’s novel, came true. The “White Guard” is based on events related to the consequences of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, according to which Ukraine was recognized as an independent state, the “Ukrainian State” was created led by Hetman Skoropadsky, and refugees from all over Russia rushed “abroad.” Bulgakov clearly described their social status in the novel.

The philosopher Sergei Bulgakov, the writer’s cousin, in his book “At the Feast of the Gods” described the death of his homeland as follows: “There was a mighty power, needed by friends, terrible by enemies, and now it is rotting carrion, from which piece by piece falls off to the delight of the crows that have flown in. In place of a sixth of the world there was a stinking, gaping hole...” Mikhail Afanasyevich agreed with his uncle in many respects. And it is no coincidence that this terrible picture is reflected in the article by M.A. Bulgakov “Hot Prospects” (1919). Studzinsky speaks about this in his play “Days of the Turbins”: “We had Russia - a great power...” So for Bulgakov, an optimist and talented satirist, despair and grief became the starting points in creating a book of hope. It is this definition that most accurately reflects the content of the novel “The White Guard.” In the book “At the Feast of the Gods,” the writer found another thought closer and more interesting: “What Russia will become depends largely on how the intelligentsia determines itself.” Bulgakov's heroes are painfully searching for the answer to this question.

In The White Guard, Bulgakov sought to show the people and intelligentsia in the flames of the Civil War in Ukraine. The main character, Alexei 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 saw and experienced a lot during the years of the World War. There are many things that bring the author closer to his hero: calm courage, faith in old Russia, and most importantly, the dream of a peaceful life.

“You have to love your heroes; if this does not happen, I do not advise anyone to take up the pen - you will get into the biggest troubles, so you know,” says the “Theatrical Novel”, and this is the main law of Bulgakov’s work. In the novel "The White Guard" he talks about white officers and intelligentsia as ordinary people, reveals their young world of soul, charm, intelligence and strength, and shows their enemies as living people.

The literary community refused to recognize the novel's merits. Out of almost three hundred reviews, Bulgakov counted only three positive ones, and classified the rest as “hostile and abusive.” The writer received rude comments. In one of the articles, Bulgakov was called “a new bourgeois scum, splashing poisoned but powerless saliva on the working class, on its communist ideals.”

“Class untruth”, “a cynical attempt to idealize the White Guard”, “an attempt to reconcile the reader with the monarchical, Black Hundred officers”, “hidden counter-revolutionism” - this is not a complete list of characteristics that were attributed to the “White Guard” by those who believed that the main thing in literature is the political position of the writer, his attitude towards the “whites” and “reds”.

One of the main motives of the “White Guard” is faith in life and its victorious power. Therefore, this book, considered banned for several decades, found its reader, found a second life in all the richness and splendor of Bulgakov’s living word. Kiev writer Viktor Nekrasov, who read The White Guard in the 60s, quite rightly noted: “Nothing, it turns out, has faded, nothing has become outdated. It was as if these forty years had never happened... before our eyes an obvious miracle happened, something that happens very rarely in literature and not to everyone - a rebirth took place.” The life of the novel's heroes continues today, but in a different direction.

http://www.litra.ru/composition/get/coid/00023601184864125638/wo

http://www.licey.net/lit/guard/history

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