Белая гвардия: Роман Михаила Булгакова

1925 novel by Mikhail Bulgakov
the novel

The White Guard (links=no) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, first published in 1925 in literary journal Rossiya. It was not reprinted in the Soviet Union until 1966.

Set in Ukraine from late 1918, the novel concerns the fate of the Turbin family as the various armies of the Ukrainian War of Independence (the White Army, the Red Army, the Imperial German Army and Ukrainian nationalists) fight over the city of Kiev. Historical figures such as Pyotr Wrangel, Symon Petliura and Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky appear as the Turbin family is caught up in the turbulent effects of the October Revolution. The novel's characters belong to the sphere of Ukrainian and Russian intellectuals and officers in the army of Skoropadsky and participate in defending the city from the Ukrainian nationalist forces, led by Petliura, in December 1918. The character Mikhail Shpolyansky is modelled on Viktor Shklovsky. The novel contains many autobiographical elements. Bulgakov gave the younger Turbin brother some of the characteristics of his own younger brother. The description of the house of the Turbins is that of the house of the Bulgakov family in Kyiv. (It is now preserved and operated as the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum.)

Bulgakov's widow had The White Guard published in large part in the literary journal Moskva in 1966, at the end of the Khrushchev era. It was the basis for the English translation by Michael Glenny, first published in 1971, which lacks the dream flashback sections. In 2008, Yale University Press published a translation by Marian Schwartz of the complete novel, an edition that won an award. The White Guard, translated by Michael Glenny, London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1971. London: Harvill, 1996. Revised edition. White Guard, translated by Marian Schwartz, introduction by Evgeny Dobrenko. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. The White Guard, translated by Roger Cockrell. Richmond: Alma Classics, 2012. .

The Days of the Turbins, a 1925 stage adaptation written by Bulgakov. The Days of the Turbins (film), a 1976 3 part television adaptation of the play. The White Guard (TV series), a 2012 mini series adaptation of the book.