A subsidiary of Motorola Mobility, which was acquired in 2014 by...
The personal account of the Beltelecom subscriber is not only a means of managing...
Year of writing:
1924
Reading time:
Description of the work:
The novel The White Guard, which was written by Mikhail Bulgakov, is one of the main works of the writer. Bulgakov wrote 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 from this novel "the sky will become hot."
However, as the years passed, Bulgakov took 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 novel The White Guard.
Winter 1918/19 A certain City, in which Kyiv is clearly guessed. The city is occupied by the German occupation troops, the hetman of "all Ukraine" is in power. However, Petliura's army may enter the City from day to day - fighting is 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 from the moment the hetman was elected, from the spring of 1918.
In the dining room of the Turbins' house at dinner, Alexei 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 in the headquarters of Prince Belorukov, commander of all the military forces of Ukraine - excitedly discussing the fate of their beloved City. Senior Turbin believes that the hetman is to blame for everything with 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 junkers, students, high school students and officers, of which there are thousands, would be formed, and not only would they have defended the City, but Petliura would not have had a spirit in Little Russia, moreover, they would have gone to Moscow and saved Russia.
Elena's husband, Captain of the General Staff Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, announces to his wife that the Germans are leaving the City and that he, Talberg, is being taken on the staff train departing tonight. Talberg is sure that even three months will not pass before he returns to the City with Denikin's army, which is now being formed on the Don. Until then, he can't take Elena into the unknown and she'll 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 Alexei Turbin come to the commander of the emerging mortar division, Colonel Malyshev, and enter the service: Karas and Myshlaevsky - as officers, Turbin - as a divisional doctor. However, the next night - from December 13 to 14 - the hetman and General Belorukov flee from the City in a German train, and Colonel Malyshev disbands the newly formed division: he has no one to defend, there is no legal authority in the City.
Colonel Nai-Tours by December 10 completes the formation of the second department of the first squad. Considering the conduct of the 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 junkers. On the morning of December 14, Petliura attacks the City; Nai-Tours receives an order to guard the Polytechnic Highway and, in the event of the appearance of the enemy, to take the fight. Nai-Turs, having entered into 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 a message that there are no units anywhere, machine-gun fire is in the rear, and the enemy cavalry enters the City. Nye realizes that they are trapped.
An hour earlier, Nikolai Turbin, corporal of the third division 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 running junkers and hears the command of Colonel Nai-Tours, ordering all the junkers - both his own and from Nikolka's team - to tear off shoulder straps, cockades, throw weapons, tear documents, run and hide. The colonel himself covers the withdrawal of the junkers. In front of Nikolka's eyes, the mortally wounded colonel dies. Shocked, Nikolka, leaving Nai-Turs, makes his way to the house through courtyards and lanes.
In the meantime, Alexei, 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 gets an explanation of what is happening: the city is taken by Petliura's troops. Aleksey, tearing off his shoulder straps, goes home, but runs into Petliura's soldiers, who, recognizing him as an officer (in his haste he forgot to tear off the cockade from his hat), pursue him. Wounded in the arm, Alexei is sheltered in her house by a woman unknown to him named Yulia Reise. The next day, having changed Alexei into a civilian dress, Yulia takes him home in a cab. Simultaneously with Aleksey, Larion, Talberg's cousin, comes from Zhytomyr to the Turbins, who has experienced a personal drama: his wife left him. Larion really likes being 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 in the same house, while the Turbins live in 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 gap 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 they take Vasilisa's watch, suit and shoes. After the "guests" left, Vasilisa and his wife guess that they were bandits. Vasilisa runs to the Turbins, and Karas is sent 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 Karas is dozing, 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-Turs in the morgue, and on the same night, a funeral service is held in the chapel at the anatomical theater of Nai-Turs.
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 to save her brother from death. “Let Sergei not return,” she whispers, “but don’t punish this with death.” To the amazement of the doctor on duty with him, Alexei regains consciousness - the crisis has passed.
A month and a half later, the finally recovered Alexei goes to Yulia Reisa, who saved him from death, and gives her the bracelet of his deceased mother. Alexei asks Yulia for permission to visit her. After leaving Yulia, he meets Nikolka, who is returning from Irina Nai-Tours.
Elena receives a letter from a friend from Warsaw, in which she informs her about Thalberg's upcoming marriage to their mutual friend. Elena, sobbing, remembers her prayer.
On the night of February 2-3, Petliura's troops begin to leave the City. The roar of the guns of the Bolsheviks approaching the City is heard.
You have read the summary of the novel The White Guard. We invite you to visit the Summary section for other essays by popular writers.
The action of the novel takes place in the winter of 1918/19 in a certain City, in which Kyiv is clearly guessed. The city is occupied by the German occupation troops, the hetman of "all Ukraine" is in power. However, Petliura's army may enter the City from day to day - fighting is 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 from the moment the hetman was elected, from the spring of 1918.
In the dining room of the Turbins' house at dinner, Alexei 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 in the headquarters of Prince Belorukov, commander of all the military forces of Ukraine - excitedly discussing the fate of their beloved City. Senior Turbin believes that the hetman is to blame for everything with 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 junkers, students, high school students and officers, of which there are thousands, would be formed, and not only would they have defended the City, but Petliura would not have had a spirit in Little Russia, moreover, they would have gone to Moscow and saved Russia.
Elena's husband, Captain of the General Staff Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, announces to his wife that the Germans are leaving the City and that he, Talberg, is being taken on the staff train departing tonight. Talberg is sure that even three months will not pass before he returns to the City with Denikin's army, which is now being formed on the Don. Until then, he can't take Elena into the unknown and she'll 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 Alexei Turbin come to the commander of the emerging mortar division, Colonel Malyshev, and enter the service: Karas and Myshlaevsky - as officers, Turbin - as a divisional doctor. However, the next night - from December 13 to 14 - the hetman and General Belorukov flee from the City in a German train, and Colonel Malyshev disbands the newly formed division: he has no one to defend, there is no legal authority in the City.
Colonel Nai-Tours by December 10 completes the formation of the second department of the first squad. Considering the conduct of the 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 junkers. On the morning of December 14, Petliura attacks the City; Nai-Tours receives an order to guard the Polytechnic Highway and, in the event of the appearance of the enemy, to take the fight. Nai-Turs, having entered into 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 a message that there are no units anywhere, machine-gun fire is 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 an order to lead the team along the route. Arriving at the appointed place, Nikolka sees with horror the running junkers and hears the command of Colonel Nai-Tours, ordering all the junkers - both his own and from Nikolka's team - to tear off shoulder straps, cockades, throw weapons, tear documents, run and hide. The colonel himself covers the withdrawal of the junkers. In front of Nikolka's eyes, the mortally wounded colonel dies. Shocked, Nikolka, leaving Nai-Turs, makes his way to the house through courtyards and lanes.
In the meantime, Alexei, 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 gets an explanation of what is happening: the city is taken by Petliura's troops. Aleksey, tearing off his shoulder straps, goes home, but runs into Petliura's soldiers, who, recognizing him as an officer (in his haste he forgot to tear off the cockade from his hat), pursue him. Wounded in the arm, Alexei is sheltered in her house by a woman unknown to him named Yulia Reise. The next day, having changed Alexei into a civilian dress, Yulia takes him home in a cab. Simultaneously with Aleksey, Larion, Talberg's cousin, comes from Zhytomyr to the Turbins, who has experienced a personal drama: his wife left him. Larion really likes being 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 in the same house, while the Turbins live in 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 gap 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 they take Vasilisa's watch, suit and shoes. After the "guests" left, Vasilisa and his wife guess that they were bandits. Vasilisa runs to the Turbins, and Karas is sent 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 Karas is dozing, 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-Turs in the morgue, and on the same night, a funeral service is held in the chapel at the anatomical theater of Nai-Turs.
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 to save her brother from death. “Let Sergei not return,” she whispers, “but don’t punish this with death.” To the amazement of the doctor on duty with him, Alexei regains consciousness - the crisis has passed.
A month and a half later, the finally recovered Alexei goes to Yulia Reisa, who saved him from death, and gives her the bracelet of his deceased mother. Alexei asks Yulia for permission to visit her. After leaving Yulia, he meets Nikolka, who is returning from Irina Nai-Tours.
Elena receives a letter from a friend from Warsaw, in which she informs her about Thalberg's upcoming marriage to their mutual friend. Elena, sobbing, remembers her prayer.
On the night of February 2-3, Petliura's troops begin to leave the City. The roar of the guns of the Bolsheviks approaching the City is heard.
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 Kyiv in late 1918 and early 1919.
The Turbin family is largely the Bulgakov family. Turbines is the maiden name of Bulgakov's grandmother on her mother's side. The "White Guard" was started in 1922, after the death of the writer's mother. The manuscripts of the novel have not survived. According to the typist Raaben, who retyped the novel, The White Guard was originally conceived as a trilogy. As possible titles of the novels of the proposed trilogy appeared "Midnight Cross" and "White Cross". Kyiv friends and acquaintances of Bulgakov became the prototypes of the heroes of the novel.
So, Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky was written off from a childhood friend of Nikolai Nikolaevich Sigaevsky. Another friend of Bulgakov's youth, Yuri Leonidovich Gladyrevsky, an amateur singer, served as the prototype for Lieutenant Shervinsky. In The White Guard, Bulgakov seeks to show the people and the intelligentsia in the flames of the civil war in Ukraine. The main character, Aleksey Turbin, although clearly autobiographical, but, unlike the writer, is not a zemstvo doctor, who was only formally registered in the military service, but a real military doctor who has seen and experienced a lot during the years of World War II. The novel contrasts two groups of officers - those who “hate the Bolsheviks with a hot and direct hatred, one that can move into a fight” and “who returned from the war to their homes with the thought, like Alexei Turbin, to rest and arrange a new non-military, but ordinary human life.
Bulgakov sociologically accurately shows the mass movements of the era. He demonstrates the centuries-old hatred of the peasants for the landlords and officers, and the newly emerged, 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 stubborn portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in an impudent country.
In particular, the image of an intelligentsia-noble family, by the will of historical fate thrown into the camp of the White Guard during the Civil War, in the tradition of "War and Peace". “The White Guard” is a Marxist criticism of the 1920s: “Yes, Bulgakov's talent was precisely not as deep as it was brilliant, and the talent was great ... And yet Bulgakov's works are not popular. There is nothing in them that affected the people as a whole. There is a mysterious and cruel crowd.” Bulgakov's talent was not imbued with an interest in the people, in his life, his joys and sorrows cannot be recognized from Bulgakov.
M.A. Bulgakov twice, in two different works, 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 a 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 “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 that strikes towers in the dining room, sleepy slumber in bed, books and frost ... ”With such a mood, Bulgakov began to create a new novel.
The novel "The 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", was constantly published in the railway newspaper "Gudok", where he met I. Babel, I. Ilf, E. Petrov, V. Kataev, Yu. Olesha. According to Bulgakov himself, the idea of the novel The White Guard finally took shape in 1922. At this time, several important events in his personal life took place: during the first three months of this year, he received news of the fate of his brothers, whom he never saw again, and a telegram about the sudden death of his mother from typhus. During this period, the terrible impressions of the Kyiv years received 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 like this: “I consider my novel a failure, although I single it out from my other things, because. I took the idea very seriously." And what we now call the "White Guard" was conceived as the first part of the trilogy and 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 the trilogy, leaving it to Count A.N. Tolstoy ("Walking through the torments"). And the theme of "running", emigration, in "The White Guard" is only hinted at in the history of Thalberg's departure and in the episode of reading Bunin's "The Gentleman from San Francisco".
The novel was created in an era of greatest material need. The writer worked at night in an unheated room, worked impulsively and enthusiastically, terribly tired: “Third life. And my third life blossomed at the desk. The pile of sheets was all swollen. I wrote with both pencil and ink. Subsequently, the author returned to his favorite novel more than once, 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 a terrible pity, 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 pile, over which I think a lot. I'm fixing something." It was a draft version of the text, which is said in the "Theatrical Novel": "The novel must be corrected for a long time. You need to cross out many places, replace hundreds of words with others. Big but necessary work!” Bulgakov was not satisfied with his work, crossed out dozens of pages, created new editions and versions. But at the beginning of 1924, he was already reading excerpts from The White Guard by the writer S. Zayaitsky and his new friends Lyamins, considering the book finished.
The first known reference to the completion of the novel is in March 1924. The novel was published in the 4th and 5th books of the Rossiya magazine in 1925. And the 6th issue with the final part of the novel was not released. According to researchers, the novel The White Guard was completed after the premiere of Days of the Turbins (1926) and the creation of Run (1928). The text of the last third of the novel, corrected by the author, was published in 1929 by the Parisian publishing house Concorde. The full text of the novel was published in Paris: volume one (1927), volume two (1929).
Due to the fact that the White Guard was not published in the USSR, and foreign editions of the late 1920s were inaccessible in the writer's homeland, Bulgakov's first novel did not receive much press attention. The well-known critic A. Voronsky (1884-1937) at the end of 1925 called The White Guard, together with The 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 Rapp's organ - the magazine "At the Literary Post". Later, the production of the play Days of the Turbins based on the novel The White Guard at the Moscow Art Theater in the autumn of 1926 turned the attention of critics to this work, and the novel itself was forgotten.
K. Stanislavsky, worried about the passage of the Days of the Turbins, originally called, like the novel, The White Guard, through censorship, strongly advised Bulgakov to abandon the epithet "white", which seemed to many openly hostile. But the writer valued precisely this word. He agreed to “cross”, and “December”, and “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 Kyiv in late 1918 - early 1919. The members of the Turbin family reflected the characteristic features of Bulgakov's relatives. Turbines is the maiden name of Bulgakov's grandmother on her mother's side. The manuscripts of the novel have not survived. Kyiv friends and acquaintances of Bulgakov became the prototypes of the heroes of the novel. Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky was written off from a childhood friend of Nikolai Nikolaevich Syngaevsky.
The prototype of Lieutenant Shervinsky was another friend of Bulgakov's youth - Yuri Leonidovich Gladyrevsky, an amateur singer (this quality also passed 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 Afanasievna. Captain Talberg, her husband, has many features in common with the husband of Varvara Afanasievna Bulgakova, Leonid Sergeevich Karuma (1888-1968), a German by birth, a career officer who served at first Skoropadsky, and then the Bolsheviks.
The prototype of Nikolka Turbin 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 of Mikhail Afanasyevich (Nikolai) was also a doctor. It is on the personality of my younger brother, Nikolai, that I would like to dwell. The noble and cozy little man Nikolka Turbin has always been dear to my heart (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 youngest representative of the profession chosen in 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 in a difficult time for the country. Young Soviet Russia, which did not have a regular army, was drawn into the Civil War. The dreams of the hetman-traitor Mazepa, whose name is not accidentally mentioned in Bulgakov's novel, came true. The "White Guard" is based on the events related to 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, the writer's cousin, in his book "At the Feast of the Gods" described the death of the motherland as follows: "There was a mighty power, needed by friends, terrible by enemies, and now it is a rotting carrion, from which piece after 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 agreed with his uncle in many respects. And it is no coincidence that this terrible picture is reflected in the article by M.A. Bulgakov "Hot prospects" (1919). Studzinsky speaks about the same in the play "Days of the Turbins": "We had Russia - a great power ..." So for Bulgakov, an optimist and talented satirist, despair and sorrow became the starting points in creating a book of hope. It is this definition that most accurately reflects the content of the novel "The White Guard". In the book “At the Feast of the Gods,” another thought seemed closer and more interesting to the writer: “How Russia will become self-determined largely depends on what Russia will become.” The heroes of Bulgakov are painfully looking for the answer to this question.
In The White Guard, Bulgakov sought to show the people and the intelligentsia in the flames of the Civil War in Ukraine. The main character, Aleksey Turbin, although clearly autobiographical, but, unlike the writer, is not a zemstvo doctor, who was only formally registered in the 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.
“Heroes must be loved; if this does not happen, I do not advise anyone to take up the pen - you will get the biggest trouble, just know it, ”the Theater Novel says, and this is the main law of Bulgakov’s creativity. 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 the 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, and classified the rest as "hostile and abusive." The writer received rude comments. In one of the articles, Bulgakov was called "a new-bourgeois offspring, splashing poisoned, 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 counter-revolutionary” - this is not a complete list of characteristics that were given to the White Guard by those who believed that the main thing in literature is the political position of the writer, his attitude towards the "whites" and "reds".
One of the main motives of the "White Guard" is faith in life, its victorious power. That is why 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. Viktor Nekrasov, a writer from Kiev who read The White Guard in the 1960s, quite rightly remarked: “Nothing, it turns out, has faded, nothing has become outdated. It was as if those forty years had never happened... an obvious miracle happened before our eyes, which happens very rarely in literature and far from everyone - a second birth took place. The life of the heroes of the novel continues today, but in a different direction.
http://www.litra.ru/composition/get/coid/00023601184864125638/wo
http://www.licey.net/lit/guard/history
Illustrations:
|
See also the work "White Guard"
|
Retelling plan
1. The Turbin family.
2. The city is in danger.
3. Flight of Thalberg.
4. Talk about the formation of the Russian army.
5. City life in the winter of 1918
6. Petlyura advances on the City.
7. A division is created to protect the City.
8. The flight of the hetman and the commander of the army. Dissolution of the division.
9. Nikolai Turbin is forced to disband the junker detachment. Death of Nai-Turs.
10. Alexei Turbin is wounded. Arrival of Lariosik.
11. Evening at the Turbins' house. The attack on Vasilisa and the disappearance of pistols from the Turbins' cache.
12. Nikolka finds Nai-Turs's mother and sister and tells them about his heroic death.
13. Elena's prayer. Recovery of Alexei Turbin.
14. Elena finds out that Thalberg got married abroad.
15. Death of Petliura. Philosophical thoughts of the author.
retelling
Chapters 1, 2 and 3
“The year after the Nativity of Christ 1918 was great and terrible, from the beginning of the second revolution ... Young Turbins did not notice how a white, shaggy December came in a hard frost ... In May, “a year after daughter Elena got married with Captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, and in the week when the eldest son, Alexei Vasilyevich Turbin, after hard campaigns, service and troubles, returned to Ukraine to the City, to his native nest, the white coffin with the body of his mother was taken down the steep Alekseevsky descent to Podol , to the small church of St. Nicholas the Good.
Alexey Turbin, Elena, Nikolka - everyone was as if stunned by the death of their mother. They buried him in the cemetery, where the father-professor had been lying for a long time. Turbines live in house number 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk. The house is filled with objects familiar and loved since childhood. A tiled stove covered with inscriptions and drawings by the Turbinskys and their friends, bronze clocks, cream-colored curtains, old red velvet furniture, Turkish carpets, a bronze lamp under a lampshade, a bookcase with Natasha Rostova, The Captain's Daughter - She left a difficult time for the children and, already suffocating and weakening, clinging to the hand of Elena, crying, she said: "Live together ... live." “But how to live? How to live? Alexei Vasilievich Turbin, the eldest, a young doctor, is twenty-eight years old, Elena is twenty-four, and Nikolka is seventeen and a half. Their life was interrupted at the very dawn ... The walls will fall, the fire in the bronze lamp will go out, and the "Captain's Daughter" will be burned in the furnace. The mother said to the children: "Live." And they will have to suffer and die.
The painted tiles glow with heat, the black clock runs like thirty years ago: thin-tank. In the dining room, “senior Turbin, clean-shaven, fair-haired, aged and gloomy since October 25, 1917,” Nikolka is a non-commissioned officer and his guitar girlfriend. “It's alarming in the City, it's foggy, it's bad... But, in spite of everything, in the dining room, in essence, it's wonderful. It's hot, it's cozy, the cream curtains are drawn." Elena is worried: where is Thalberg? Outside the windows you can hear the roar of guns, shots. “Nikolka, finally, can’t stand it:
“I wish I knew why they were shooting so close?” After all, it can't be...
“Because the Germans are bastards,” the elder mutters unexpectedly.
Elena looks up at her watch and asks:
“Will they really leave us to our fate?” Her voice is sad.
All three are thinking about whether Petlyura will be able to enter the city, and why there are still no allies.
Soon there were footsteps, a knock on the door. A "tall, broad-shouldered figure in a gray greatcoat" entered, wearing a frosted hood. It was Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky. His head "was very beautiful, a strange and sad and attractive beauty of an old, real breed and degeneration." He asks to spend the night: he is very cold, even frostbitten. Myshlaevsky "scolded Colonel Shchetkin with obscene words, frost, Petlyura, and the Germans, and a snowstorm, and ended up by overlaying the hetman of all Ukraine himself with the most vile public words." He said that they spent a day in the cold, lightly dressed, without boots, defending the City, and only at two o'clock in the afternoon did a shift come - "a man of two hundred junkers" under the command of Colonel Nai-Tours. Two froze to death, two will have to amputate their legs. Myshlaevsky talks about complete confusion: “what is being done is incomprehensible to the mind”, about the indifference and betrayal of the command. Listening to Myshlaevsky's story, Elena cries. It seems to her that Thalberg has been killed.
A call rings out. This is Thalberg - a tall, stately man with "two-layer eyes", with an "eternal patented smile." He serves in the Hetman's military ministry. The Turbina brothers do not like Thalberg, they feel in him a certain duplicity, falseness. Although Thalberg "smiles favorably at everyone", his arrival sows alarm. He tells "slowly and cheerfully" that the train with money, which he was escorting, was attacked "by no one knows who."
Elena and Talberg leave for their quarter. Thalberg informs his wife that circumstances force him to flee the City now, immediately. Elena, "thinner and strict", packs a suitcase for him. Talberg says that it is dangerous for him to remain in the City, since there is a possibility that "Petliura will enter" soon. Thalberg says that he cannot take her with him "on wanderings and the unknown." Elena asks Thalberg why he does not inform the brothers about the betrayal of the Germans. Talberg blushes and says that he will warn the Turbins. Saying goodbye to her husband, "Elena cried, but quietly - she was a strong woman." Thalberg told Elena's brothers about the Germans and said goodbye: "he pricked both brothers with brushes of black trimmed mustaches." Thalberg flees with the Germans.
At night, in the apartment on the floor below, the householder Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, nicknamed Vasilisa (out of fear, since January 1918, he began to write his name “Vas. Lis.” on all documents), hid a bundle of money in a cache under the wallpaper. There were three caches in total. At the same time, a tattered gray wolf figure was watching him from a tree branch on a deserted street through a gap in the sheet on the window. Vasilisa went to bed and dreamed that the thieves opened the cache with master keys, and the jack of hearts shot at him point-blank. Vasilisa jumped up with a yell, but the house was quiet, and the sounds of a guitar could be heard from above from the Turbins.
In the Turbins' room, their friends were sitting at the table: Leonid Yuryevich Shervinsky, now an adjutant in the headquarters of Prince Belorukov, a "little lancer", he brought roses to Elena; Lieutenant Stepanov - by the gymnasium nickname Karas, "small, well-groomed, really very similar to a crucian", and Myshlaevsky. Myshlaevsky's eyes are "in red rings - cold, experienced fear, vodka, anger." Karas announces the news: "everyone needs to go to fight ... The commander is Colonel Malyshev, the division is wonderful - student."
Shervinsky joyfully perceives the news of Thalberg's disappearance: he is in love with Elena. Shervinsky has a wonderful voice: "Everything is nonsense in the world, except for such a voice." He dreams that after the war he will leave military service and will sing at La Scala and at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Friends are discussing the situation in the City. Turbin shouts that the hetman should be hanged, he “mocked Russian officers, everyone” for six months: he forbade the formation of the Russian army. He, Turbin, is going to enroll in the Malyshev division, if not a doctor, then a simple private. Aleksey thinks that in the City it would be possible to recruit an army of fifty thousand, “selective, the best, because all the cadets, all the students, high school students, officers, and there are thousands of them in the City, would all go with a dear soul. Not only would there be no spirit in Little Russia, but we would have swatted Trotsky in Moscow like a fly.
Friends went to bed, Elena does not sleep at home: "a huge black sadness dressed Elena's head like a bonnet." Elena is trying to find an excuse for Thalberg's act: "he is a very reasonable person," but she understands that "the most important thing was not in her soul" - respect for him.
Alexei also cannot sleep for a long time. And he is tormented by the thought of Thalberg's betrayal and cowardice: “He is a scoundrel. Nothing else! ...Oh, damn doll, devoid of the slightest notion of honor!” In the morning, Alexei falls asleep and “a small nightmare appeared to him in large-checked trousers and mockingly said:“ Holy Russia is a wooden, impoverished and ... dangerous country, and honor is only an extra burden for a Russian person. Turbin is about to shoot him, but the nightmare disappears. At dawn, Turbine dreams of the City.
Chapter 4
“Like a multi-tiered honeycomb, the City smoked and made noise, and the City lived. Beautiful in the frost and fog on the mountains, over the Dnieper... And there were as many gardens in the City as in no other city in the world... faded in the morning, clothed in smoke and mist. But best of all, the electric white cross sparkled in the hands of the enormous Vladimir on Vladimir Hill ... "In the winter of 1918, the life of the City was "strange, unnatural." Crowds of "new aliens" rushed into the City. Bankers, homeowners, journalists, aristocrats, secretaries of department directors, poets, usurers, actresses, etc., who fled from Moscow and St. Petersburg. "The city swelled, expanded, climbed like dough from a pot." Shots were heard on the outskirts at night. “Who shot whom, no one knows.”
All the inhabitants of the City hated the Bolsheviks, hated them with "cowardly, hissing" hatred. Some of the new townspeople, such as Colonel Nai-Tours, "hundreds of ensigns and second lieutenants, former students, like Stepanov-Karas, knocked off the screws of life by war and revolution, and lieutenants, also former students, but finished for the university forever, like Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky, they hated the Bolsheviks with a hot and direct hatred, one that could move into a fight ... "
The appearance of the hetman rested on the Germans. The city did not know how the Germans dealt with the peasants. Having learned about the punitive measures, people like Vasilisa said about the peasants: “They will remember the revolution! The Germans will learn them." “Okay: the Germans are here, and there, beyond the distant cordon, the Bolsheviks. Only two powers."
Chapter 5
In September Semyon Vasilyevich Petlyura was released from prison by the Hetman's authorities. "His past was plunged into the deepest darkness." This would be "a myth generated in Ukraine in the fog of the terrible 18th year." ... And there was something else - fierce hatred. There were 400,000 Germans, and around them four times forty times four hundred thousand peasants with hearts burning with unsatisfied malice. Hatred was generated by the backs mutilated by ramrods, requisitioned horses, selected bread. Among the peasants were those who returned from the war and knew how to shoot. In a word, it was not precisely Petlyura that mattered. If it wasn't for him, there would be someone else. The Germans are leaving Ukraine, which means that someone will pay with their lives, and certainly not those who flee the city.
Alexei Turbin sees paradise in his dream. There is Colonel Nai-Tours in the guise of a knight with a luminous helmet and Sergeant Zhilin, who was killed in the 16th year. Zhilin says that there is a lot of space in paradise and enough for all the Bolsheviks who will die near Perekop in the year 20, talks about his conversation with God. God said: "All of you with me, Zhilin, are the same - killed in the battlefield." Turbin stretched out his hands to the sergeant-major and asked to be a doctor in his brigade. Zhilin shook his head affirmatively and then Turbin woke up.
In November, the word "Petlyura", pronounced by the Germans as "Peturra", began to sound on everyone's lips. Petliura advanced on the City.
Chapter 6
In the center of the City, on the window of the former Parisian Chic store, there was a large poster calling for volunteers to sign up for the mortar division. At noon Myshlaevsky and Turbin came here. Colonel Malyshev enlisted Alexey Turbin as the commander of the fourth platoon Myshlaevsky and as a doctor. The purpose of the division is to protect the City and the Hetman from Petliura's gangs and, possibly, from the Bolsheviks. An hour later, Turbin was supposed to appear on the parade ground of the Alexander Gymnasium. On the way to the parade ground, Turbin bought the newspaper "Vesti" dated December 13, 1918, which said that Petliura's troops were in complete disarray and would soon collapse.
Cannons roared. Suddenly, Turbin saw a procession of coffins with the bodies of officers on Vladimirskaya Street. The dead were cut and mutilated by peasants with Petliurists. In the crowd gathered near the coffins, Turbin heard a voice: "So they need it." In a rage, he grabbed the sleeve of the one who said this, intending to shoot the villain, but realized that he was mistaken. Someone else spoke. Indignantly, Turbin jabbed a crumpled sheet of Vesti into the nose of the newspaper boy: “Here's news for you. It is for you. Bastard! “On this attack of his rabies and passed. ... Feeling shame, Turbin put his head on his shoulders and, turning sharply ... "ran out onto the parade ground of the gymnasium.
Turbin went to his native gymnasium, where he studied for eight years. So much he did not see her. “His heart sank for some reason with fear. It suddenly seemed to him that a black cloud obscured the sky, that some kind of whirlwind swooped in and washed away all life, like a terrible shaft washes away the pier. He recalls his high school years: "how much was absurd and sad and desperate, but how much was joyful." "Where did it all go?"
A hasty exercise was carried out on the parade ground. Faces familiar to Turbin flashed by. Turbin instructs student paramedics. Myshlaevsky explains to the student cadets how to handle rifles. Colonel Malyshev appears on the parade ground. He was saddened when he learned that for every one hundred and twenty junkers there were eighty students who did not know how to handle a rifle. The Colonel orders the division to go home for the night. Studzinsky tries to argue, insists that the recruits spend the night on the parade ground. However, the Colonel abruptly cuts him off.
Malyshev welcomes the division: “Artillerymen! I won’t waste words... We’ll beat Petliura, you son of a bitch, and, rest easy, we’ll beat him!” Memories of the gymnasium years again flooded into Turbin. He saw an old man - the watchman of the gymnasium Maxim, who once dragged them, the boys who had made a mistake, to the gymnasium authorities. In a fit of feelings, he intends to catch up with Maxim, but pulls himself back: “Enough sentimentality. Sentimentalized their lives. Enough".
Chapter 7
On a dark night, a certain person was secretly taken out of the palace to a German hospital under the name of Major von Schratto, all wrapped in bandages. He allegedly wounded himself by accident in the neck.
At the beginning of the fifth from the palace, the artillery colonel transmitted a message to the headquarters of Colonel Malyshev. And at seven, Malyshev announced to the audience: “Sharp and sudden changes took place in the state situation in Ukraine overnight. Therefore, I announce to you that the division is disbanded! Go home immediately!" Everyone is stunned, some officers suspected Malyshev of treason, they wanted to arrest him. The Colonel had to explain himself. It turned out that there was no one else to defend: the hetman fled, followed by the commander of the army, General Belorukov. Petlyura is already approaching the City, he has a huge army.
Myshlaevsky offers to burn the building of the gymnasium, Malyshev does not allow this to be done, says that soon Petliura will get more valuable - hundreds of lives, and there is no way to save them.
Part II
Chapter 8
By the morning of December 14, 1918, the City was besieged by Petliura's troops, but the City did not yet know about it. Colonel Shchetkin was not at the headquarters - the headquarters did not exist. His adjutants also disappeared. Nobody understood what was going on. "And in the future, they probably won't understand soon." Staff phones rang less and less. Around the City there was shooting, roaring. But the city was still living its usual life. A certain Colonel Bolbotun appears. Who is he for?
Chapter 9
Bolbotun with his cavalry regiment entered the City without hindrance. Only at the Nikolaevsky Column School he was met by a machine gun and the fire of 30 cadets and 4 officers. Only one of the four armored cars came to the rescue - there was treason in the armored division: the remaining armored cars were put out of action. The traitor was Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky. If all the armored cars came up, Chatterbox would get out. But Shpolyansky decided that it was not worth defending the hetman, let him face Petliura.
Chapter 10
Nai-Tours with the junkers guards the Polytechnic Highway. Seeing the Gaidamaks on horseback, he gives the command "Fire!", not yet knowing that the forces of the defenders are negligible compared to several regiments of the attackers. The junkers sent by Nai-Turs for reconnaissance returned with the message: “Mr. Colonel, there are no units of ours ... nowhere ...” , a strange team ... "
In the premises of the former barracks, a detachment of the first infantry squad, consisting of twenty-eight cadets, languished. They were commanded by Nikolka Turbin. “The squad leader, staff captain Bezrukov, and two of his assistant ensigns left for headquarters in the morning and did not return.” Nikolai Turbin receives an order by phone and takes twenty-eight people out into the street.
Alexey Turbin decides to go to his division. In his heart he "was very anxious." He did not understand what was going on in the City. Arriving in a cab, Turbin saw an armed crowd outside the museum. He thought that he was late, then he realized: “A catastrophe ... But here's the horror - they must have left on foot. Probably, Petliura approached unexpectedly ... ”He finds Colonel Malyshev, who is burning documents in the stove. Malyshev tells him: “Take off your shoulder straps and run, hide ... Petliura is in the city. The city is taken. The headquarters betrayed us ... I managed to disperse the division ”And suddenly he shouts hysterically:“ I saved all of my own. Not sent to the slaughter! I didn’t send you to shame!” Hearing a machine gun, he advises Turbine to run and hides himself. “Thoughts in Turbin’s head huddled together in a shapeless heap. Then, in silence, the lump gradually unwound. Turbin tore off his shoulder straps, threw them into the oven and ran out into the yard.
Chapter 11
Obeying the order, the younger Turbin led the cadets to the City. “The route led Turbin to a crossroads, completely dead,” although a telephone voice ordered a detachment of the third squad to be found here and reinforce it. Nikolka decided to wait for the detachment. In the end, expectations were justified, but not at all in the way that Turbine imagined. “Friends” appeared, but they behaved in a strange way: they ran away, tearing off their shoulder straps, tearing documents. Nikolka's pride did not allow shameful escape, and he tried to get involved in the fight. Colonel Nai-Thurs suddenly appeared. He tore off Nikolka's shoulder straps and ordered the junkers to flee, tear off their shoulder straps, drop their weapons, and tear up documents. But Nikolka was suddenly seized by a "strange drunken ecstasy." “I don’t want to, Mr. Colonel,” he replied in a cloth voice, squatted down, grabbed the tape with both hands and fired it at the machine gun. Nai-Turs fell to the machine gun - the riders chasing the junkers disappeared. Nai shook his fist at the sky and shouted: “Guys! Guys! Headquarters bitches! Nai-Turs was killed in front of Turbin. "Nikolkin's brain was covered with a black fog." And only when he realized that he was left alone, he still ran. Nikolka realized that the Petliurists had captured the city. He fled to the saving Podol, pointed out to him by Nai-Turs. People fussed around, fled in a panic. "Nikolka's path was long." At dusk, he returned home and learned from Elena that Alexei had not returned. Elena thinks Alexei is dead.
Someone's voice from the headquarters continues to give commands to the firing points of the city's defenders: "Beat the tract with hurricane fire, at the cavalry!" The horse hundred swooped in and killed several junkers and officers near the dugout, which was eight versts from the city. “The commander, who remained in the dugout by the telephone, shot himself in the mouth. The last words of the commander were: “Staff bastard. I understand the Bolsheviks very well.”
Nikolka is going to wait for Alexei at home, but falls asleep. He has a nightmare through which he hears Elena calling him, then some ridiculous figure appears with a cage in which a canary sits, appears to be a relative from Zhytomyr. Finally, Nikolka finally wakes up, sees her older brother in an unconscious position, and three minutes later he is already rushing along Alekseevsky Spusk for a doctor for the wounded Alexei.
Part III
Chapter 12
Elena tells Alexei, who has regained consciousness, about the latest events. Lariosik, Talberg's nephew, arrived at the house a few minutes before a lady brought the wounded Alexei. Lariosik asks to live with the Turbins. “I have never seen such a dumbass in my life. With us, he began by slamming all the dishes. Blue Service. Lariosik tells about himself that his wife cheated on him, that he traveled from Zhytomyr for eleven days, bandits seized the train, he was almost shot, and in general he is a “terrible loser.” At the Turbins, he "extremely liked it."
Alexei Turbin is in critical condition. Temperature forty. He is delusional. Nikolka finds her brother's weapon, and now the find must be safely hidden. The Nai-Turs Colt and Alexei's Browning, along with the epaulettes put in the box, were hung through the window into the gap between two converging houses on a crutch left from the fire escape. It was decided to tell all curious neighbors that Turbin Sr. had typhus.
Chapter 13
Alexei is delirious and relives what happened. He sees that he does not have time in fact and comes to the parade ground when the gymnasium building is empty. He hurries to Madame Anjou's store and meets Malyshev there, who hastily burns all the documents of the division. Aleksey only then learns that it's all over, Petlyura is in the city and he needs to save himself. However, I really wanted to find out what was happening in the city near the museum, and it opens onto Vladimirskaya Street. Turbin hears Malyshev's voice whispering to him: "Run!". Directly towards him along the Proreznaya sloping street, from Khreshchatyk, the Petliurists were moving. Noticing Turbine, they begin to pursue him. Alex tries to run away. He is wounded, almost overtaken, when a woman comes to the rescue, appearing from a gate in a blank black wall. She hides it in her. The woman's name is Yulia Aleksandrovna Reiss.
“In the morning, at about nine o’clock, a random cab driver at the extinct Malo-Provalnaya took two riders - a man in a black civilian, very pale, and a woman.” They come to Alekseevsky Spusk, to house number 13.
Chapter 14
The next evening, Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky gathered at the Turbins' house - they were all alive. At the bedside of Alexei, a consultation: they determined that he had typhus.
The officers talk about the betrayal of the commander-in-chief, the hetman and the “staff”, about the fate of Nye, about the Petliurites. A strange noise was heard from below: the neighbors seemed to have guests - Vasilisa's laughter was heard, the loud voice of his wife Wanda. "Then it got quiet." The ringing bell alarmed everyone in earnest. It turned out that a belated telegram had arrived from Lariosik's mother. Then Vasilisa, terrified to death, appears in the apartment, who was robbed by armed bandits who cleaned his hiding places. As soon as Vasilisa said that one of the bandits' pistols was large and black, and the other was small, with a chain, Nikolka jumped up and rushed to the window of his room. There was a clatter of glass and a scream. There was no box of pistols in the cache.
Chapter 16
“It’s not a gray cloud with a snake’s belly spilling over the city, then it’s not brown, muddy rivers flowing through the old streets – then Petlyura’s innumerable force goes to the parade on the square of old Sophia.” The strength of the Petliurists is amazing: the artillery seems to be endless, the horses are well-fed, “strong, strong-bodied”, the riders are brave. In the crowd of onlookers and Nikolka Turbin. Everyone is waiting for the appearance of Petliura. Suddenly, a volley rang out in Rylsky Lane. The crowd went into a panic: the people fled from the square, crushing each other.
Chapter 17
All three days Nikolka thinks about the cherished goal. Having obtained the address of Nai-Turs, Nikolka finds a house, meets Nai-Turs' mother and sister. From Nikolka's face and confusion, they understand that Nai-Tours is dead. When the first bout of grief has passed, Nikolka tells them that his commander "died a hero". He drove the junkers away in time, and he himself covered them with machine-gun fire. The bullets hit Nai-Turs in the head and chest. Nikolka told and wept. He, along with Nai-Tursa's sister, decides to find the commander's body. They found him in the pantry of the barracks, littered with corpses.
“That same night in the chapel, everything was done as Nikolka wanted, and his conscience was completely calm, but sad and strict.” The old mother turned her shaking head to Nikolka and said to him: “My son. Well, thank you." And this made Nikolka cry again.
Chapter 18
"Turbin began to die on the afternoon of the twenty-second of December." The doctor said that there was no hope, that agony was beginning. They already wanted to call the priest, but did not dare. Elena, having locked herself in the room, prayed before the icon of the Mother of God: “You send too much grief at once, intercessor mother. So in one year you end your family. Why?.. Mother took from us, I don’t have a husband and never will, I understand that... And now you’re taking away the elder one too. For what? There is only one hope for You, Blessed Virgin. At you. Pray for your Son, plead with the Lord God to send a miracle ... " Elena prayed for a long time, earnestly: "We are all guilty of blood, but do not punish. Do not punish...” Elena saw that the face on the icon came to life, heeded her prayers. She fell unconscious from "fear and drunken joy". At this time there was a crisis of Alexei's illness. He survived.
Chapter 19
Petlyura was in the city for forty-seven days. It was 1919. “On the second of February, a black figure walked through the Turbine apartment, with a shaved head, covered with a black silk cap. It was the resurrected Turbin. He has changed dramatically. On the face, at the corners of the mouth, two folds seem to have dried up forever, the color of the skin is waxy, the eyes sunk into the shadows and forever became unsmiling and gloomy.
Turbin meets with Reiss and, as a token of gratitude for saving her, gives her the bracelet of her deceased mother. "You are dear to me ... Let me come to you again." "Come..." she replied.
Elena receives a letter from a friend from Warsaw, who informs that Thalberg will marry Lidochka Hertz, and they will leave for Paris together. Elena gives this letter to Alexei. He reads and sings: “With what pleasure ... I would go in his face ...” He tears Thalberg's photograph to shreds. "Elena roared like a woman and buried herself in Turbine's starched chest."
Chapter 20
“Great was the year and terrible after the birth of Christ 1918, but 1919 was more terrible than it.” Petliurists leave the City. “Why was it? Nobody will say. Will anyone pay for the blood? No. Nobody". The Bolsheviks are coming.
The house on Alekseevsky Spusk slept peacefully. The inhabitants of the house also slept: Turbin, Myshlaevsky, Karas, Lariosik, Elena and Nikolka. “Over the Dnieper, from the sinful and bloodied and snowy land, Vladimir’s midnight cross rose into the black, gloomy heights. From afar, it seemed that the crossbar had disappeared - merged with the vertical, and from this the cross turned into a threatening sharp sword. But he's not terrible. All will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on earth. There is not a single person who does not know this. So why don't we want to turn our eyes to them? Why?"
The action of the novel takes place in the winter of 1918/19 in a certain City, in which Kyiv is clearly guessed. The city is occupied by the German occupation troops, the hetman of "all Ukraine" is in power. However, Petliura's army may enter the City from day to day - fighting is 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 from the moment the hetman was elected, from the spring of 1918.
In the dining room of the Turbins' house at dinner, Alexei 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 in the headquarters of Prince Belorukov, commander of all the military forces of Ukraine - excitedly discussing the fate of their beloved City. Senior Turbin believes that the hetman is to blame for everything with 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 junkers, students, high school students and officers, of which there are thousands, would be formed, and not only would they have defended the City, but Petliura would not have had a spirit in Little Russia, moreover, they would have gone to Moscow and saved Russia.
Elena's husband, Captain of the General Staff Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, announces to his wife that the Germans are leaving the City and that he, Talberg, is being taken on the staff train departing tonight. Talberg is sure that even three months will not pass before he returns to the City with Denikin's army, which is now being formed on the Don. Until then, he can't take Elena into the unknown and she'll 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 Alexei Turbin come to the commander of the emerging mortar division, Colonel Malyshev, and enter the service: Karas and Myshlaevsky - as officers, Turbin - as a divisional doctor. However, the next night - from December 13 to 14 - the hetman and General Belorukov flee from the City in a German train, and Colonel Malyshev disbands the newly formed division: he has no one to defend, there is no legal authority in the City.
Colonel Nai-Tours by December 10 completes the formation of the second department of the first squad. Considering the conduct of the 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 junkers. On the morning of December 14, Petliura attacks the City; Nai-Tours receives an order to guard the Polytechnic Highway and, in the event of the appearance of the enemy, to take the fight. Nai-Turs, having entered into 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 a message that there are no units anywhere, machine-gun fire is 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 an order to lead the team along the route. Arriving at the appointed place, Nikolka sees with horror the running junkers and hears the command of Colonel Nai-Tours, ordering all the junkers - both his own and from Nikolka's team - to tear off shoulder straps, cockades, throw weapons, tear documents, run and hide. The colonel himself covers the withdrawal of the junkers. In front of Nikolka's eyes, the mortally wounded colonel dies. Shocked, Nikolka, leaving Nai-Turs, makes his way to the house through courtyards and lanes.
In the meantime, Alexei, 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 gets an explanation of what is happening: the city is taken by Petliura's troops. Aleksey, tearing off his shoulder straps, goes home, but runs into Petliura's soldiers, who, recognizing him as an officer (in his haste he forgot to tear off the cockade from his hat), pursue him. Wounded in the arm, Alexei is sheltered in her house by a woman unknown to him named Yulia Reise. The next day, having changed Alexei into a civilian dress, Yulia takes him home in a cab. Simultaneously with Aleksey, Larion, Talberg's cousin, comes from Zhytomyr to the Turbins, who has experienced a personal drama: his wife left him. Larion really likes being 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 in the same house, while the Turbins live in 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 gap 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 they take Vasilisa's watch, suit and shoes. After the "guests" left, Vasilisa and his wife guess that they were bandits. Vasilisa runs to the Turbins, and Karas is sent 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 Karas is dozing, 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-Turs in the morgue, and on the same night, a funeral service is held in the chapel at the anatomical theater of Nai-Turs.
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 to save her brother from death. “Let Sergei not return,” she whispers, “but don’t punish this with death.” To the amazement of the doctor on duty with him, Alexei regains consciousness - the crisis has passed.
A month and a half later, the finally recovered Alexei goes to Yulia Reisa, who saved him from death, and gives her the bracelet of his deceased mother. Alexei asks Yulia for permission to visit her. After leaving Yulia, he meets Nikolka, who is returning from Irina Nai-Tours.
Elena receives a letter from a friend from Warsaw, in which she informs her about Thalberg's upcoming marriage to their mutual friend. Elena, sobbing, remembers her prayer.
On the night of February 2-3, Petliura's troops begin to leave the City. The roar of the guns of the Bolsheviks approaching the City is heard.
