The main character in the novel is the White Guard. White Guard - list of roles and very brief description of characters

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.
• Myshlaevsky Viktor Viktorovich - 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 edition had only 4.

Criticism

Modern critics consider “Days of the Turbins” to be the pinnacle of Bulgakov’s theatrical success, but it 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? Because 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 gives more benefit 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 productions by 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 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 standing and the audience listens 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 with head-turning speed... Toporkov plays Myshlaevsky first-class... The actors were so worried that they turned pale under the makeup,<…>and the eyes were tormented, wary, questioning...
The curtain was given 20 times.

- “When I will soon die...” Correspondence between M. A. Bulgakov and P. S. Popov (1928-1940). - M.: EKSMO, 2003. - P. 117-118

• 2013 -

Winter 1918/19. A certain City in which Kyiv is clearly visible. The city is occupied by German occupation forces, and the hetman of “all Ukraine” is in power. However, any day now Petlyura’s army may enter the City - fighting is already taking place twelve kilometers from the City. The city lives a strange, unnatural life: it is full of visitors from Moscow and St. Petersburg - bankers, businessmen, journalists, lawyers, poets - who have flocked there since the election of the hetman, since the spring of 1918.

In the dining room of the Turbins' house at dinner, Alexey Turbin, a doctor, his younger brother Nikolka, a non-commissioned officer, their sister Elena and family friends - Lieutenant Myshlaevsky, Second Lieutenant Stepanov, nicknamed Karas, and Lieutenant Shervinsky, adjutant at the headquarters of Prince Belorukov, commander of all military forces of Ukraine , - excitedly discussing the fate of their beloved City. The elder Turbin believes that the hetman is to blame for everything with his Ukrainization: right down to last moment he did not allow the formation of the Russian army, and if this had happened on time, a selected army of cadets, students, high school students and officers, of whom there are thousands, would have been formed, and not only would they have defended the City, but Petliura would not have been in the spirit of Little Russia, and what’s more - if we went to Moscow and Russia would be saved.

Elena's husband, Captain of the General Staff Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, announces to his wife that the Germans are leaving the City and he, Talberg, is being taken on the headquarters train leaving tonight. Talberg is confident that within three months he will return to the City with Denikin’s army, which is now forming on the Don. In the meantime, he cannot take Elena into the unknown, and she will have to stay in the City.

To protect against the advancing troops of Petlyura, the formation of Russian military formations begins in the City. Karas, Myshlaevsky and Alexey Turbin appear to the commander of the emerging mortar division, Colonel Malyshev, and enter service: Karas and Myshlaevsky - as officers, Turbin - as a division doctor. However, the next night - from December 13 to 14 - the hetman and General Belorukov flee the City on a German train, and Colonel Malyshev dissolves the newly formed division: he has no one to protect, there is no legal authority in the City.

By December 10, Colonel Nai-Tours completes the formation of the second department of the first squad. Considering waging war without winter equipment for soldiers impossible, Colonel Nai-Tours, threatening the head of the supply department with a Colt, receives felt boots and hats for his one hundred and fifty cadets. On the morning of December 14, Petlyura attacks the City; Nai-Tours receives orders to guard the Polytechnic Highway and, if the enemy appears, to take the fight. Nai-Tours, having entered into battle with the advanced detachments of the enemy, sends three cadets to find out where the hetman’s units are. Those sent return with the message that there are no units anywhere, there is machine-gun fire in the rear, and the enemy cavalry is entering the City. Nai realizes that they are trapped.

An hour earlier, Nikolai Turbin, corporal of the third section of the first infantry squad, receives an order to lead the team along the route. Arriving at the appointed place, Nikolka sees with horror the fleeing cadets and hears the command of Colonel Nai-Tours, ordering all the cadets - both his own and those from Nikolka’s team - to rip off their shoulder straps, cockades, throw away their weapons, tear up documents, run and hide. The colonel himself covers the retreat of the cadets. Before Nikolka's eyes, the mortally wounded colonel dies. Shocked Nikolka, leaving Nai-Tours, makes his way through courtyards and alleys to the house.

Meanwhile, Alexey, who was not informed about the dissolution of the division, having appeared, as he was ordered, at two o’clock, finds an empty building with abandoned guns. Having found Colonel Malyshev, he receives an explanation of what is happening: The city was taken by Petliura’s troops. Alexey, having torn off his shoulder straps, goes home, but runs into Petlyura’s soldiers, who, recognizing him as an officer (in his haste, he forgot to take off the badge from his hat), pursue him. Alexei, wounded in the arm, is hidden in her house by a woman unknown to him named Yulia Reise. The next day, after dressing Alexei in civilian dress, Yulia takes him home in a cab. At the same time as Alexey, Talberg’s cousin Larion comes to the Turbins from Zhitomir, having experienced a personal drama: his wife left him. Larion really likes it in the Turbins' house, and all the Turbins find him very nice.

Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, nicknamed Vasilisa, the owner of the house in which the Turbins live, occupies the first floor of the same house, while the Turbins live on the second. On the eve of the day when Petlyura entered the City, Vasilisa builds a hiding place in which she hides money and jewelry. However, through a crack in a loosely curtained window, an unknown person is watching Vasilisa’s actions. The next day, three armed men come to Vasilisa with a search warrant. First of all, they open the cache, and then take Vasilisa’s watch, suit and shoes. After the “guests” leave, Vasilisa and his wife realize that they were bandits. Vasilisa runs to the Turbins, and Karas goes to them to protect them from a possible new attack. The usually stingy Vanda Mikhailovna, Vasilisa’s wife, does not skimp here: there is cognac, veal, and pickled mushrooms on the table. Happy Crucian dozes, listening to Vasilisa’s plaintive speeches.

Three days later, Nikolka, having learned the address of Nai-Turs’s family, goes to the colonel’s relatives. He tells Nai's mother and sister the details of his death. Together with the colonel's sister Irina, Nikolka finds Nai-Tours's body in the morgue, and that same night the funeral service is held in the chapel at the Nai-Turs anatomical theater.

A few days later, Alexei’s wound becomes inflamed, and in addition, he has typhus: high fever, delirium. According to the conclusion of the consultation, the patient is hopeless; On December 22, the agony begins. Elena locks herself in the bedroom and passionately prays to the Most Holy Theotokos, begging her to save her brother from death. “Let Sergei not return,” she whispers, “but do not punish this with death.” To the amazement of the doctor on duty with him, Alexey regains consciousness - the crisis is over.

A month and a half later, Alexey, who has finally recovered, goes to Yulia Reisa, who saved him from death, and gives her his late mother’s bracelet. Alexey asks Yulia for permission to visit her. After leaving Yulia, he meets Nikolka, returning from Irina Nai-Tours.

Elena receives a letter from a friend from Warsaw, in which she informs her about Talberg’s upcoming marriage to their mutual friend. Elena, sobbing, remembers her prayer.

On the night of February 2-3, the withdrawal of Petliura’s troops from the City began. You can hear the roar of Bolshevik guns approaching the City.

"The White Guard" is Bulgakov's first novel. There is a lot of autobiography in it, but this is already a historical novel. This is a book about Russian history, its philosophy, about the fate of classical Russian culture in new era. That is why “The White Guard” is so close to Bulgakov, he loved it more than his other works.

The nineteenth chapter, relating to the final part of the novel “The White Guard,” has been preserved in Bulgakov’s archive. The chapter differs in content and style from the ending of Bulgakov’s novel, published in its entirety in Paris by the Concord publishing house, in two volumes: volume 1 - 1927, volume 2 - 1929, that is, the main text of the work known to the reader. The novel "The White Guard" was first published in its entirety in 1966 in Bulgakov's one-volume book "Selected Prose". The chapter in question was written before the play “Days of the Turbins” and is genetically connected with the writer’s plan to write a trilogy, the first part of which covers the events of the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919 in Kyiv (mainly the period of Petliurism), the second part - events on the Don (Denikinism) and the third - Myshlaevsky’s stay in parts of the Red Army.

Initially, the novel “The White Guard” was called “The Midnight Cross”, and it is not for nothing that the entire text of the work in the final version, varying, runs through the image of either a two-meter cross shining with electric light in the hands of the huge Vladimir on Vladimirskaya Hill, or a black, extinct one, threatening the great City with disaster .

The nineteenth chapter of “The White Guard” contains precisely the motives that prepare the transition to writing the second part of the trilogy, covering events on the Don.

It is not at all accidental that in the nineteenth chapter one of the notable figures was that of Myshlaevsky. He revealed himself in many aspects - in his relationship with Nikolka (he made fun of his love for Irina Nai-Tours), in his relationship with Anyuta, Elena, Lariosik. The situation between Myshlaevsky and Anyuta developed tensely. Myshlaevsky took advantage of Anyuta’s inexperience, seduced her, and she turned out to be pregnant. This became known after Lariosik, imagining that he had fallen madly in love with Anyuta, proposed to her through Elena. Anyuta confessed everything to Elena. Elena sharply condemned Myshlaevsky: “You know, Victor, you’re still a pig,” Elena said, shaking her head.” Myshlaevsky’s psychological anxiety, caused by his special attitude to the events developing in the City, was aggravated by Anyuta’s pregnancy. Two series of experiences developed in parallel and intensified the heroes’ common anxiety for the future.

The style of the nineteenth chapter is rough. Everything in it indicates that the author’s work on the novel was in full swing. At the same time, his thoughts were not occupied with the completion of the novel, but with new plot nodes, “moves” that would allow him to move on to the creation of the second part of the trilogy, showing the events on the Don.

After intensive work on the play "Days of the Turbins", when Bulgakov established himself in his capabilities as a playwright (the idea of ​​"Run" loomed before the author's gaze), the writer decides to give the first part of the trilogy

"White Guard" internally completed look. There was an important reason for this - the possibility arose of publishing the novel in Russian in a separate issue (in two books). He writes anew two chapters (19 and 20), uses in them textual material and the plays “Days of the Turbins”, and draft material of the nineteenth chapter (the scene with Elena receiving a letter from Warsaw about Talberg’s betrayal; the appearance of the sick Rusakov, who had hit himself, at Alexei Turbin’s reception into theology; Shervinsky’s message about the advance of the Reds and the flight of the Petliurists). Bulgakov creates a new twentieth chapter, begins it with a picture of the atrocities of the Petliurists and their panicked flight under the shelling of the Reds. (The author here uses text from the story “On the Night of the 3rd,” giving it epic expressiveness) He creates vivid pictures of the heroes’ dreams. With the help of dreams, the author alternates fantasy and reality and in a succinct form gives an idea of ​​the end of Petliurism and the disturbing upheavals of the Turbins. Elena's dream is filled with foreboding tragic fate Nikolki. In her dream, the motive for the future story “The Red Crown” is outlined.

In the new final chapters of the novel, Bulgakov abandons the scenes outlined in the draft nineteenth chapter, in which new knots of personal relationships between the characters were tied: Myshlaevsky - Anyuta, Nikolka - Irina Nai-Tours, Lariosik - Anyuta. We learn about Nikolka’s attitude towards Irina Nai-Tours only from an indirect hint (Alexey Turbin’s conversation with Nikolka during a sudden meeting on Malaya Provalnaya: both are returning from a date). Myshlaevsky as a character acts in one episode. He is present during Shervinsky's story about the Reds' offensive. Bulgakov abandons Myshlaevsky’s through line outlined in the nineteenth chapter. Apparently, he considered that Myshlaevsky’s decisive and courageous character was sufficiently fully revealed in the previous chapters. His honest and open attitude towards the hetman’s betrayal is also shown, as well as his admiration for the bold and decisive actions of the Bolsheviks in the scene with the impromptu rally, which we have already analyzed.

When characterizing Alexei Turbin, Bulgakov abandons the idea of ​​​​plunging him into some complex, incomprehensible relationship with Yulia Reise (with hints of her participation in some mysterious, other than intimate, connections with Shpolyansky, which she carefully hides). He discards the scenes of Alexei Turbin's explanation with Yulia Reise - with psychological anguish, with a touch of decadent tossing and torment. Bulgakov removes the contradictions that have arisen when revealing the properties of Turbin’s character. In the scene of explanation with Yulia, the hero behaves in a knightly manner, gives her a bracelet from his late mother, restrainedly but confidently tells her about his feelings: “You are dear to me...” Yulia reciprocates, shows concern for Alexei Turbin: “It’s time. The convoys are on the street. Make sure they don’t touch you.” Two suffering hearts found each other.

All attention in the final episodes is focused on Turbin’s internal thoughts over his fate. The horrors he experienced during Petliurism seem like a nightmare to him. He dreams of one thing - a peaceful life.

IN final scenes In the novel, the plot events receive capacious expressiveness, the entire narrative rushes towards a single goal - a poem about the armored train "Proletary" and a miniature about Petka Shcheglov's happy dream. We see that Bulgakov pulls all the plot motifs of the novel “The White Guard” into one knot. The picture is complete, the style gains unity.

Bulgakov decides in “The White Guard” to limit himself to a historical framework - depicting Hetmanism, Petliurism, its defeat and showing the victory of the Red Army, or rather, its entry into Kyiv on the night of February 3, 1919, and against this background to reveal anxieties, moral upheavals and fate Turbins, the fate of honest intellectuals. The principle of indirect disclosure of events chosen from the very beginning - through a heightened perception of the heroes - helps the author to present in a condensed form historical events, reveal their internal logic.

And here we encounter paradoxical phenomena of typification. The big picture, drawn in the novel "The White Guard", turns out to be so capacious, complete and complete (in revealing the historical logic of events and the fate of the heroes) that the reader gets the impression that everything has happened, the civil war in Kyiv ended with the defeat of the Petliurists and the victory of the Red Army on the night of February 3, 1919.

One should not guess why Bulgakov did not realize his plan to write a trilogy about the civil war. Maybe because he knew: L.N. Tolstoy (with whom he was closely acquainted) in 1927-1928 worked hard on the novel “The Eighteenth Year,” which broadly covered the events of the civil war in the south. And the exceptional possibilities of dramatic forms of generalization and the magical power of theatrical art captured Bulgakov’s feelings while working on the play “The Days of the Turbins,” which brought him fame and mental anguish. In 1927-1928, Bulgakov wrote the play "Running", using the technique of dreams (which he outlined in the novel "The White Guard") and, becoming convinced in practice, what a powerful means of generalization the dramatic art has. In "Running" Bulgakov shows with epic force the historical and moral collapse white movement, saturating the play with the breath of big ideas. In fact, “Running,” from the point of view of the author’s creative plans, is a work closely related to the novel “The White Guard” and completes the author’s plan to create a large canvas (trilogy) about the events of the civil war in the south of the country. Thus, Bulgakov’s work on the novel “The White Guard” was a whole stage in the writer’s work and opened up great prospects in his artistic discoveries.

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 frost. 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 for the mother was held, 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 an insult? 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 blazing hot 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 cones, worn carpets, motley 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 on the eastern field that seemed to little Nikolka in the delirium of scarlet fever, a bronze lamp under a lampshade, the best cabinets in the world with books that smell of mysterious ancient chocolate, with Natasha Rostova, the Captain's Daughter , gilded cups, silver, portraits, curtains - all seven dusty and full rooms that 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 it becomes more and more terrible all around. 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 suddenly he imposed white hand, taking it out of the dark sleeve of the duckweed, onto a stack of books and opening the top one, where it was covered with an embroidered colored bookmark.

“Despondency cannot 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, is mostly 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 cap 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 faint yellow lights, and on the top - the Turbino windows lit up strongly and cheerfully .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Condottierre! Condottiere! – Elena shouted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have mercy, goodness,” they cry.

But then Doctor Turbin steps forward and says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I had nothing to do. I agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– And this, in her opinion, is funny?

- And this is funny too?

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

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

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

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