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Page de couverture de The White Guard, Chapters 1–5

The White Guard, Chapters 1–5

The White Guard, Chapters 1–5

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 This is the first of four posts in which I’ll walk through The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov. I’m a bit behind schedule due to a family funeral, but I still intend to complete the series by the end of October and host a live video call for paid subscribers on Tuesday, 4 November at 8 p.m. UK time. My goal is to publish the second post at the start of next week.Welcome to Kiev in December 1918, and to the Turbin family’s world amid historic upheaval. Though the city is in crisis, what makes Bulgakov’s story compelling is his focus on daily life — on emotion, loyalty and survival as the old world collapses.At the time Bulgakov wrote, readers would have known the political background instinctively. That gap in my own knowledge made it harder to enter the novel: who was Petlyura? What was a hetman? Why were Germans in Kiev? This was an era of military fragmentation and moral confusion — whose aftershocks still echo today. Yet Bulgakov’s craftsmanship in voice and character draws even the modern reader into his lost world.(If you missed my earlier background post on the historical setting, you might want to start there.)Main Characters (Chapters 1–5)* Yelena Turbina, 24 — loosely based on Bulgakov’s sister* Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, 31 — colonel under Hetman Skoropadsky, Yelena’s husband (inspired by Bulgakov’s brother-in-law)* Alexei Turbin, 28 — the elder brother, medical officer (a stand-in for Bulgakov)* Nikolka Turbin, 17 — the youngest brother (reflecting Bulgakov’s younger sibling)Their flat is modeled on the Bulgakov family home in Kiev, now the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum.The Tiled Dutch StoveOne of the novel’s most memorable fixtures is the tiled Dutch stove, which Bulgakov almost turns into a character. It’s even given a name, from The Shipwright of Saardam by P. R. Furman. The stove both warms the room and anchors the narrative. On its tiles Nikolka has scrawled graffiti, including — “Thrash Petlyura!” — a quick shorthand for the Turbins’ loyalties.“… the tiled Dutch stove continued, even in the most difficult times, to radiate warmth and life.”The stove, like the family’s clocks and books, represents cultural continuity. These details — the smell of old chocolate, the ticking clocks, the lamplight — form a cocoon of civilization even as snow and chaos encroach outside.The 2012 television adaptation depicts the stove wonderfully, glowing amid blizzards and fear.But exactly how were they to live? How?The warmth shatters with descriptions of blizzards and death. The family turns to Father Alexander, who tells them that “despair must not be permitted,” and we end the chapter with a chilling reading from the Book of Revelation:And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.Chapter Two: Guitar, Gunfire and FissuresChapter Two opens with Alexei strumming a seven-string guitar — the instrument that dominated Russian and Ukrainian music before the six-string Spanish guitar took over in the 1920s. In Vladimir Basov’s 1976 adaptation The Days of the Turbins, that same seven-string is used, matching the period perfectly.Gunfire interrupts the moment. Though the source isn’t yet clear, we soon learn that Nikolka has enlisted — he wears a cadet’s epaulettes — and that Talberg is late returning. He is accompanying a train carrying the Hetman’s gold reserves and state documents, the wealth of the collapsing Ukrainian government. In effect, Talberg is helping the regime — and its German backers — flee Kiev.Yelena’s marriage to him has already fractured:“Ever since the day of Yelena’s wedding … it was as if a crack in the vase of the Turbins’ life had formed …”Political differences are at the heart of it. Talberg is an opportunist. In March 1917, he was the first to wear a red armband, signalling revolutionary sympathy; now he serves the Hetman, and by the chapter’s end he is preparing to desert to Denikin’s White Army on the Don. His allegiances shift with the wind.At a quarter past ten the bell rings — not Talberg, but Lieutenant Myshlayevsky, frostbitten and furious after defending Kiev from Petlyura’s advancing troops. (He will become important later.)When Talberg finally appears, he announces that he’s leaving the city with the retreating Germans. As he packs, Bulgakov gives us one of the novel’s great lines:“Never ever remove a shade from a lamp! A shade is sacred. Never scuttle like a rat into the unknown and away from adversity. Sit by the lampshade and doze or read. Let the storm howl outside and wait for people to come to you.”Talberg, of course, does the opposite. He scuttles into the storm while the Turbins stay behind by the lamplight.The “Baggy Trousers”Bulgakov writes:“When … people had begun to appear on its streets without boots, but wearing wide baggy trousers under their grey military coats …”This refers to the ...
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