The history of the creation of Bulgakov's novel "White Guard". The composition "Analysis of the novel" The White Guard "by M. Bulgakov

Year of writing:

1924

Reading time:

Description of the work:

The novel White Guard, which was written by Mikhail Bulgakov, is one of the main works of the writer. Bulgakov created the novel in 1923-1925, and at that moment he himself believed that the White Guard was the main work in his creative biography. It is known that Mikhail Bulgakov even once said that this novel would "make the sky hot."

However, over the years Bulgakov had a different look at his work and called the novel "failed." Some believe that most likely Bulgakov's idea was to create an epic in the spirit of Leo Tolstoy, but this did not work out.

Read below a summary of the White Guard novel.

Winter 1918/19 A certain City in which Kiev is clearly guessed. The city is occupied by German occupation troops, the hetman of "All Ukraine" is in power. However, from day to day the army of Petliura may enter the City - battles are already going on 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 rushed 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 the military forces of Ukraine , - excitedly discuss the fate of their beloved City. The elder Turbin believes that the hetman is to blame for his Ukrainization: until the very last moment, he did not allow the formation of the Russian army, and if this happened on time, a select army of cadets, students, gymnasium 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 Little Russia, moreover, they would have gone to Moscow and Russia would have been 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 staff train leaving tonight. Thalberg is sure that within three months he will return to the City with Denikin's army, which is now being formed 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 Petliura, the formation of Russian military formations begins in the City. Karas, Myshlaevsky and Aleksey Turbin appear to the commander of the emerging mortar battalion, Colonel Malyshev, and enter the service: Karas and Myshlaevsky - as officers, Turbin - as a divisional doctor. However, the next night - from 13 to 14 December - the hetman and General Belorukov flee the City in a German train, and Colonel Malyshev dissolves the newly formed division: he has no one to defend, there is no legitimate authority in the City.

Colonel Nye Tours finishes the formation of the second division of the first squad by December 10. Considering the conduct of a war without winter equipment for soldiers is impossible, Colonel Nye Tours, threatening the head of the supply department with a colt, receives boots and hats for his one hundred and fifty cadets. On the morning of December 14, Petliura attacks the City; Nai Tours receives an order to guard the Polytechnic Highway and, if an enemy appears, to take battle. Nai-Tours, having entered the battle with the advanced detachments of the enemy, sends three cadets to find out where the hetman's units are. The sent ones 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. Nye realizes that they are trapped.

An hour earlier, Nikolai Turbin, corporal of the third division of the first infantry squad, receives the order to lead the team along the route. Arriving at the appointed place, Nikolka with horror sees the running junkers and hears the command of Colonel Nai-Tours, ordering all the junkers - both his own and Nikolka's - to tear off epaulettes, cockades, throw weapons, tear documents, run and hide. The colonel himself is covering the withdrawal of the cadets. In front of Nikolka's eyes, the mortally wounded colonel dies. Shaken, Nikolka, leaving Nai-Tours, makes his way to the house in courtyards and alleys.

Meanwhile, Alexei, who was not informed about the dissolution of the division, having appeared, as he was ordered, by two o'clock, finds an empty building with abandoned guns. Having found Colonel Malyshev, he gets an explanation of what is happening: The city is taken by the troops of Petliura. Alexei, having ripped off his shoulder straps, goes home, but runs into Petliura's soldiers, who, recognizing him as an officer (in a hurry, he forgot to rip off the cockade from his hat), pursue him. Alexei, who was wounded in the arm, is sheltered in his house by an unfamiliar woman named Julia Reisse. The next day, after dressing Alexei in civilian dress, Yulia takes him home in a cab. Simultaneously with Alexei, Talberg's cousin Larion comes from Zhitomir to Turbin, who has gone through a personal drama: his wife left him. Larion really likes the Turbins' house, and all Turbins find him very attractive.

Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, nicknamed Vasilisa, the owner of the house in which the Turbins live, occupies the first floor in the same house, while the Turbins live in the second. On the eve of the day when Petliura entered the City, Vasilisa builds a cache in which he 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 people come to Vasilisa with a search warrant. First of all, they open the cache, and then take away Vasilisa's watch, suit and boots. After the “guests” leave, Vasilisa and his wife guess that they were bandits. Vasilisa runs to the Turbins, and Karas is sent to them to protect against a possible new attack. Usually avaricious Vanda Mikhailovna, Vasilisa's wife, is not stingy here: there is cognac, veal, and pickled mushrooms on the table. Happy Crucian doze, listening to Vasilisa's plaintive speeches.

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

A few days later, Alexei's wound becomes inflamed, and besides, he has typhus: high fever, delirium. According to the conclusion of the council, the patient is hopeless; The agony begins on December 22nd. Elena locks herself in her bedroom and fervently prays to the Most Holy Theotokos, begging to save her brother from death. "Let Sergei not come back," she whispers, "but don't punish this with death." To the amazement of the doctor on duty, Alexei regains consciousness - the crisis is over.

A month and a half later, Alexey, who finally recovered, goes to Julia Reisa, who saved him from death, and gives her a bracelet of his late mother. Alexei asks Julia for permission to visit her. Leaving Julia, he meets Nikolka, returning from Irina Nai Tours.

Elena receives a letter from a friend from Warsaw, in which she informs her about the upcoming marriage of Thalberg to their mutual friend. Elena, sobbing, recalls her prayer.

On the night of February 2–3, the Petliura troops began to leave the City. The roar of the guns of the Bolsheviks, which approached the City, is heard.

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M. Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard" was written in 1923-1925. At that time, the writer considered this book to be the main one in his life, said that from this novel "the sky will become hot." Years later, he called it "failed." Perhaps the writer meant that that epic in the spirit of L.N. Tolstoy, which he wanted to create, did not work out.

Bulgakov witnessed the revolutionary events in Ukraine. He expressed his view of the past in the stories "The Red Crown" (1922), "The Extraordinary Adventures of a Doctor" (1922), "Chinese History" (1923), "Raid" (1923). Bulgakov's first novel with the bold title "The White Guard" was, perhaps, the only work at that time in which the writer was interested in human experiences in a raging world, when the foundation of the world order is crumbling.

One of the most important motives of M. Bulgakov's work is the value of home, family, simple human affections. The heroes of the White Guard are losing the warmth of their home, although they are desperately trying to preserve it. In prayer to the Mother of God, Elena says: “You send too much grief at once, intercessor mother. So in one year you end your family. For what? .. Mother took from us, I have no husband and will not be, I understand that. Now I understand very clearly. And now you take away the older one. For what? .. How are we going to be together with Nikol? .. Look what is going on around, you look ... Mother-intercessor, can you really not take pity? .. Maybe we are people and bad, but why punish so what? "

The novel begins with the words: "Great was the year after the Nativity of Christ, 1918, and the second from the beginning of the revolution." Thus, as it were, two systems of time, chronology, two value systems are proposed: the traditional and the new, revolutionary.

Remember how at the beginning of the 20th century A.I. Kuprin portrayed the Russian army in the story "Duel" - decayed, rotten. In 1918, the same people who made up the pre-revolutionary army and Russian society in general found themselves on the battlefields of the Civil War. But on the pages of Bulgakov's novel we have before us not Kuprin's heroes, but rather Chekhov's. The intellectuals, who even before the revolution yearned for the bygone world, understood that something needed to be changed, found themselves in the epicenter of the Civil War. They, like the author, are not politicized, they live their own lives. And now we find ourselves in a world in which there is no place for neutral people. Turbines and their friends are desperately defending what is dear to them, singing "God Save the Tsar", tearing the fabric hiding the portrait of Alexander I. Like Chekhov's uncle Vanya, they do not adapt. But, like him, they are doomed. Only Chekhov's intellectuals were doomed to vegetation, while Bulgakov's intellectuals were doomed to defeat.

Bulgakov likes a cozy apartment in Turbino, but life for a writer is not valuable in itself. Life in the White Guard is a symbol of the strength of being. Bulgakov leaves no illusion to the reader about the future of the Turbins. The inscriptions are washed away from the tiled stove, the cups are beating, slowly, but irreversibly, the inviolability of everyday life and, consequently, of being is crumbling. The Turbins' house behind cream curtains is their fortress,

Shelter from the blizzard, blizzard raging outside, but it is still impossible to protect yourself from it.

Bulgakov's novel includes a blizzard symbol as a sign of the times. For the author of The White Guard, a blizzard is not a symbol of the transformation of the world, not of sweeping away everything that has become obsolete, but of an evil principle, violence. “Well, I think, that will stop, the life that is written about in chocolate books will begin, but it not only does not begin, but all around it becomes more and more scary. In the north, a blizzard howls and howls, but here underfoot the alarmed womb of the earth rumbles dully, grumbles. " Blizzard force destroys the life of the Turbins family, the life of the City. Bulgakov's white snow does not become a symbol of purification.

“The defiant novelty of Bulgakov's novel was that five years after the end of the Civil War, when the pain and heat of mutual hatred had not yet subsided, he dared to show the officers of the White Guard not in the poster face of an“ enemy ”, but as ordinary, good and bad ones, tormented and deluded, intelligent and limited people, showed them from the inside, and the best in this environment - with obvious sympathy. What does Bulgakov like about these stepchildren of history, who lost their battle? And in Aleksey, and in Malyshev, and in Nai-Tours, and in Nikolka, he most of all values \u200b\u200bcourageous directness, loyalty to honor, "notes the literary critic V.Ya. Lakshin. The concept of honor is the starting point that determines Bulgakov's attitude to his heroes and which can be taken as a basis in a conversation about the system of images.

But for all the sympathy of the author of The White Guard for his heroes, his task is not to decide who is right and who is wrong. Even Petliura and his henchmen, in his opinion, are not the culprits of the horrors taking place. This is a product of the elements of rebellion, doomed to quickly disappear from the historical arena. Trump, who was a bad school teacher, would never have become an executioner and did not know about himself that his calling is war, if this war had not begun. Many actions of the heroes were brought to life by the Civil War. “War is a mother’s mother” for Kozyr, Bolbotun and other Petliurists who enjoy killing defenseless people. The horror of war is that it creates a situation of permissiveness, shakes the foundations of human life.

Therefore, for Bulgakov, it does not matter which side his heroes are on. In the dream of Alexei Turbin, the Lord says to Zhilin: “One believes, the other does not believe, but your actions are the same: now each other's throats, and as for the barracks, Zhilin, then this is how you have to understand, all of you are with me, Zhilin, the same - slain in the battlefield. This, Zhilin, must be understood, and not everyone will understand it. " And it seems that this view is very close to the writer.

V. Lakshin noted: “Artistic vision, a creative mind always encompasses a broader spiritual reality than can be evidenced by evidence of a simple class interest. There is a biased class truth that has its rightfulness. But there is a universal, classless morality and humanism, melted by the experience of mankind. " M. Bulgakov took the position of such a universal humanism.

The history of the creation of Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard"

The novel "White Guard" was first published (not completely) in Russia, in 1924. Completely in Paris: volume one - 1927, volume two - 1929. The White Guard is largely an autobiographical novel based on the writer's personal impressions of Kiev in late 1918 - early 1919.

The Turbins are largely the Bulgakovs. Turbines are the maiden name of Bulgakov's grandmother from the mother's side. The White Guard was launched in 1922, after the death of the writer's mother. The manuscripts of the novel have not survived. According to the typist Raaben, who reprinted the novel, the White Guard was originally thought of as a trilogy. Possible titles for novels in the proposed trilogy included Midnight Cross and White Cross. The prototypes of the heroes of the novel were Bulgakov's Kiev friends and acquaintances.

So, Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevskii was copied from childhood friend Nikolai Nikolaevich Sigaevsky. The prototype of Lieutenant Shervinsky was another friend of Bulgakov's youth - Yuri Leonidovich Gladyrevsky, an amateur singer. In "White Guard" Bulgakov seeks to show the people and the intelligentsia in the flames of the civil war in Ukraine. The main character, Alexei Turbin, although clearly autobiographical, but, unlike the writer, is not a zemstvo doctor, only formally listed in the military service, but a real military doctor who has seen and experienced a lot during the years of the world war. The novel opposes two groups of officers - those who “hate the Bolsheviks with hot and direct hatred, the one that can move into a fight” and “those who have returned from the warriors to their homes with the thought, like Alexei Turbin, - to rest and rebuild a non-military one, but an ordinary human life ”.

Bulgakov shows the mass movements of the era with sociological accuracy. He demonstrates the age-old hatred of the peasants for the landowners and officers, and the newly emerging, but no less deep hatred for the "occupiers. All this fueled the uprising raised against the formation of Hetman Skoropadsky, the leader of the Ukrainian national movement Petliura. Bulgakov called one of the main features of his work. in the "White Guard" the persistent portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in the impudent country.

In particular, the image of an intelligentsia-noble family, by the will of historical fate, was thrown into the camp of the White Guard during the civil war, in the tradition of "War and Peace". “White Guard” - Marxist criticism of the 1920s: “Yes, Bulgakov's talent was not as deep as 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 crowd that is mysterious and cruel. ” Bulgakov's talent was not imbued with interest in the people, in his life, his joy and sorrow 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, Civil War ... In my dream, a soundless blizzard passed in front of me, and then an old piano appeared and near it people who are no longer in the world. " The story "The Secret Friend" contains other details: “I pulled my barracks lamp as far as possible to the table and put on a pink paper cap over 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 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 striking like a tower in the dining room, sleepy doze in bed, books and frost ... ”With this mood Bulgakov set about creating a new novel.

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

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Bulgakov planned to create a whole trilogy, and spoke about his favorite book as follows: “I consider my novel a failure, although I single it out from my other things, because he took the idea very seriously. " And what we now call the "White Guard" was conceived as the first part of the trilogy and originally 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 be 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 the agony"). And the theme of "running", emigration, in the "White Guard" is only outlined in the story of Talberg's departure and in the episode of Bunin's reading "The Lord from San Francisco."

The novel was created in an era of greatest material need. The writer worked at night in an unheated room, worked impulsively and enthusiastically, was terribly tired: “Third life. And my third life bloomed at the writing table. The pile of sheets was all puffy. I wrote with both pencil and ink. " Subsequently, the author repeatedly returned to his favorite novel, reliving the past anew. In one of the entries relating to 1923, Bulgakov noted: "And I will finish the novel, and I dare to assure you, it will be such a novel, from which the sky will become hot ..." And in 1925 he wrote: "It will be terribly sorry, if I am mistaken and the "White Guard" is not a strong thing. " On August 31, 1923, Bulgakov informed Yu. Slezkin: “I have finished the novel, but it has not yet been rewritten, it lies in a heap over which I think a lot. I am correcting something. " It was a rough version of the text, which is said in the "Theatrical novel": "The novel must be corrected for a long time. 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 versions. But at the beginning of 1924 he had already read excerpts from the "White Guard" from the writer S. Zayitsky and from his new friends Lyamin, considering the book finished.

The first known mention of the completion of work on the novel dates back to March 1924. The novel was published in the 4th and 5th books of the magazine "Russia" for 1925. And the 6th issue with the final part of the novel did not come out. According to researchers, the novel "The White Guard" was being finished 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 Paris publishing house "Concorde". The full text of the novel was published in Paris: Volume One (1927), Volume Two (1929).

Due to the fact that in the USSR the White Guard was not finished with publication, and foreign editions of the late 1920s were inaccessible in the writer's homeland, the first Bulgakov novel did not receive special attention from the press. The well-known critic A. Voronsky (1884-1937) at the end of 1925 called the "White Guard" together with "Fatal Eggs" works of "outstanding literary quality." The answer 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 journal 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 passage through the censorship of the "Days of the Turbins", originally called, like the novel, "White Guard", strongly advised Bulgakov to abandon the epithet "white", which seemed to many to be openly hostile. But the writer treasured this very word. He agreed to the "cross", and to "December", and to the "blizzard" 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 layer in the country.

The White Guard is largely an autobiographical novel based on the writer's personal impressions of Kiev in late 1918 - early 1919. The members of the Turbins' family reflected the characteristic features of Bulgakov's relatives. Turbines are the maiden name of Bulgakov's grandmother from the mother's side. The manuscripts of the novel have not survived. The prototypes of the heroes of the novel were Bulgakov's Kiev friends and acquaintances. Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky was copied from childhood friend Nikolai Nikolaevich Syngaevsky.

The prototype of 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 many similarities with the husband of Varvara Afanasyevna Bulgakova, Leonid Sergeevich Karuma (1888-1968), a German by birth, a career officer who first served Skoropadsky, and then the Bolsheviks.

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 traitorous hetman Mazepa, whose name is not accidentally mentioned in Bulgakov's novel, have come true. The White Guard is based on the events associated with the consequences of the Brest Treaty, according to which Ukraine was recognized as an independent state, the "Ukrainian State" was created headed by Hetman Skoropadsky, and refugees from all over Russia rushed "abroad". Bulgakov in the novel clearly described their social status.

The philosopher Sergei Bulgakov, a great uncle of the writer, in his book "At the Feast of the Gods" described the death of the homeland as follows: “There was a mighty power that friends needed, terrible for enemies, and now it is rotting carrion, from which piece by piece falls off to the delight of a flying crow. In place of the sixth part of the world there was a fetid, gaping hole ... ”Mikhail Afanasyevich was in many respects in agreement with his uncle. And it is no coincidence that this terrible picture is reflected in the article by M.A. Bulgakov's "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 a talented satirist, despair and grief became the starting points in the creation of the book of hope. It is this definition that most accurately reflects the content of the novel "White Guard". In the book "At the Feast of the Gods" another thought seemed to the writer closer and more interesting: "What Russia will become depends in many ways on how the intelligentsia will determine itself." Bulgakov's heroes are painfully looking for the answer to this question.

In "White Guard" Bulgakov tried to show the people and the intelligentsia in the flames of the Civil War in Ukraine. The protagonist, Alexei Turbin, although clearly autobiographical, but, unlike the writer, is not a zemstvo doctor, only formally enlisted in military service, but a real military doctor who has seen and experienced a lot during the years of the World War. Much brings the author closer to his hero, and calm courage, and faith in old Russia, and most importantly - the dream of a peaceful life.

“You must love your heroes; if this does not happen, I do not advise anyone to take up the pen - you will get the biggest troubles, so you know, "- said in" Theatrical novel ", and this is the main law of Bulgakov's work. In the novel "The White Guard" he speaks of white officers and intellectuals 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 dignity of the novel. Out of almost three hundred reviews Bulgakov counted only three positive ones, while the rest were classified as “hostile and abusive”. The writer received rude responses. In one of his articles, Bulgakov was called "a new bourgeois spawn, splashing poisonous but impotent 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 monarchist, Black Hundred officers", "hidden counterrevolutionary" - this is not a complete list of characteristics that were endowed with the "White Guard" by those who believed that the main thing in literature is the political position of the writer, his attitude towards "white" and "red".

One of the main motives of the White Guard is faith in life, its victorious power. Therefore, this book, considered forbidden for several decades, found its reader, found a second life in all the richness and brilliance of Bulgakov's living word. The writer from Kiev Viktor Nekrasov, who read the White Guard in the 1960s, quite rightly remarked: “It turns out that nothing has faded, nothing is outdated. As if there hadn't been those forty years ... before our very eyes an obvious miracle happened, which happens very rarely in literature and by no means all of them - a rebirth took place. " The life of the heroes of the novel continues today, but in a different direction.

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Illustrations:

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 soundless 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 "The Secret Friend" contains other details: “I pulled my barracks lamp as far as possible to the table and put on a pink paper cap over 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 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 striking like a tower in the dining room, sleepy doze in bed, books and frost ... ”With this mood Bulgakov set about creating a new novel.

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

In 1922-1924 Bulgakov wrote articles for the newspaper "Nakanune", constantly published in the newspaper of railway workers "Gudok", where he met I. Babel, I. Ilf, E. Petrov, V. Kataev, Yu. Olesha. According to Bulgakov himself, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe novel "The White Guard" was finally formed in 1922. At this time, several important events occurred in his personal life: during the first three months of this year, he received news of the fate of the 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 Kiev years received an 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 as follows: “I consider my novel a failure, although I single it out from my other things, because he took the idea very seriously. " And what we now call the "White Guard" was conceived as the first part of the trilogy and originally 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 be 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 the agony"). And the theme of "running", emigration, in the "White Guard" is only outlined in the history of Talberg's departure and in the episode of Bunin's reading "The Lord from San Francisco".

The novel was created in an era of greatest material need. The writer worked at night in an unheated room, worked impulsively and enthusiastically, was terribly tired: “Third life. And my third life bloomed at the writing table. The pile of sheets was all plump. I wrote with both pencil and ink. " Subsequently, the author repeatedly returned to his beloved novel, reliving the past anew. In one of the entries relating to 1923, Bulgakov noted: "And I will finish the novel, and I dare to assure you, it will be such a novel, from which the sky will become hot ..." And in 1925 he wrote: "It will be terribly sorry, if I am mistaken and the "White Guard" is not a strong thing. " On August 31, 1923, Bulgakov informed Yu. Slezkin: “I have finished the novel, but it has not yet been rewritten, it lies in a heap over which I think a lot. I am correcting something. " It was a rough version of the text, which is said in the "Theatrical novel": "The novel must be corrected for a long time. 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 versions. But at the beginning of 1924 he had already read excerpts from the "White Guard" from the writer S. Zayitsky and from his new friends Lyamin, considering the book finished.

Due to the fact that in the USSR the White Guard was not finished with publication, and foreign editions of the late 1920s were inaccessible in the writer's homeland, Bulgakov's first novel did not receive special attention from the press. The well-known critic A. Voronsky (1884-1937) at the end of 1925 called the "White Guard" together with "Fatal Eggs" works of "outstanding literary quality." The answer 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 journal 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 passage through the censorship of "Days of the Turbins", originally named, like the novel, "White Guard", strongly advised Bulgakov to abandon the epithet "white", which seemed to many to be openly hostile. But the writer treasured this very word. He agreed to the "cross", and to "December", and to the "blizzard" 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 layer in the country.

Nikolka Turbin's prototype was one of the brothers M.A. Bulgakov. The second wife of the writer, Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya-Bulgakova, wrote in her book “Memoirs”: “One of the brothers Mikhail Afanasyevich (Nikolai) was also a doctor. It’s the personality of my younger brother, Nikolai, that I want to dwell on. My heart has always been dear to the noble and cozy little man Nikolka Turbin (especially based on the novel "The White Guard." In the play "Days of the Turbins" he is much more schematic.). In my life, I never managed to see Nikolai Afanasyevich Bulgakov. This is the junior representative of the profession chosen by the Bulgakov family - a doctor of medicine, bacteriologist, scientist and researcher, who died in Paris in 1966. He studied at the University of Zagreb and was left there at the Department of Bacteriology. "
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 traitorous hetman Mazepa, whose name is not accidentally mentioned in Bulgakov's novel, have come true. The White Guard is based on the events associated with the consequences of the Treaty of Brest, according to which Ukraine was recognized as an independent state, the "Ukrainian State" was created headed by Hetman Skoropadsky, and refugees from all over Russia rushed "abroad". Bulgakov in the novel clearly described their social status.

The literary community refused to recognize the dignity of the novel. Out of almost three hundred reviews Bulgakov counted only three positive ones, while the rest were categorized as “hostile and abusive”. The writer received rude responses. In one of his articles, Bulgakov was called "a new bourgeois spawn, splashing poisonous but impotent saliva on the working class, on its communist ideals."

The writing

M. Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard" was written in 1923-1925. At that time, the writer considered this book to be the main one in his life, he said that from this novel "the sky will become hot." Years later, he called it "failed." Perhaps the writer meant that that epic in the spirit of L.N. Tolstoy, which he wanted to create, did not work out.

Bulgakov's novel includes a blizzard symbol as a sign of the times. For the author of The White Guard, a blizzard is not a symbol of the transformation of the world, not of sweeping away everything that has become obsolete, but of an evil principle, of violence. “Well, I think, that will stop, the life that is written about in chocolate books will begin, but it not only does not begin, but all around it becomes more and more terrible and terrible. In the north, a blizzard howls and howls, but here underfoot the alarmed womb of the earth rumbles dully, grumbles. " Blizzard force destroys the life of the Turbins family, the life of the City. Bulgakov's white snow does not become a symbol of purification.

Therefore, for Bulgakov, it does not matter which side his heroes are on. In Alexei Turbin's dream, the Lord says to Zhilin: “One believes, the other does not believe, but your actions are the same: now each other is by the throat, and as for the barracks, Zhilin, then this is how you need to understand, all of you are with me, Zhilin, the same - slain in the battlefield. This, Zhilin, must be understood, and not everyone will understand it. " And it seems that this view is very close to the writer.

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