1918-1919 is the time of action in the novel, when tense events are growing in the country civil war. A certain City, in which Kyiv can be guessed, is occupied by German occupation forces. The confrontation is between them and Petliura’s army, which can enter the city any day now. There is an atmosphere of unrest and confusion in the city. Since the election of the Hetman of “all Ukraine”, in the spring of 1918, a continuous stream of visitors from Moscow and St. Petersburg rushed to the City: bankers, journalists, lawyers, literary figures.
The action begins in the Turbins’ house, where Alexey Turbin, a doctor, gathered for dinner; Nikolka, his younger brother, non-commissioned officer; their sister Elena and family friends - Lieutenant Myshlaevsky, Second Lieutenant Stepanov, nicknamed Karas, and Lieutenant Shervinsky, adjutant at the headquarters of the commander of all military forces of Ukraine, Prince Belorukov. They are occupied with one single question: “How to live? How to live?”
Alexey Turbin is firmly convinced that his beloved city could have been saved if not for the negligence and frivolity of the hetman. If he had gathered the Russian army in time, Petliura’s army would not have threatened now, but would have been destroyed. And besides, Russia could have been saved if the army had marched on Moscow.
Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, Elena’s husband, talks about the impending separation from his wife: he should be taken away along with her leaving the city German army. But according to his plans, he will return in three months, because there will be help from Denikin’s emerging army. Elena will have to live in the City during his absence.
The formation of the Russian army that began in the City was completely stopped. By this time, Karas, Myshlaevsky and Alexey Turbin had already joined the military forces. They readily come to Colonel Malyshev and enter the service. Karas and Myshlaevsky were appointed to the position of officers, and Turbin began to serve as a division doctor. But on the night of December 13-14, the hetman and General Belorukov flee the City on a German train. The army is being disbanded. Nikolai Turbin watches with horror the inglorious escape of officers and cadets of the Russian army. Colonel Nai-Tours gives everyone the command to hide as best they can. He orders to tear off shoulder straps, throw away weapons or hide them, and destroy everything that could give away rank or affiliation with the army. Horror freezes on Nikolai's face when he sees the valiant death of the colonel covering the departure of the cadets.
The fact is that on December 10, the formation of the second department of the first squad is completed. With great difficulty, Colonel Nai-Tours obtains uniforms for his soldiers. He understands perfectly well that fighting a war like this, without proper ammunition, is simply pointless. The morning of December 14 does not bode well: Petlyura goes on the attack. The city is under siege. Nai-Tours, by order of its superiors, must protect the Polytechnic Highway. The colonel sends some cadets on reconnaissance: their task is to find out the location of the hetman's units. Intelligence brings bad news. It turned out that there were no military units, and the enemy cavalry had just burst into the city. This meant only one thing - a trap.
Alexey Turbin, who until now did not know about the hostilities and the failure, finds Colonel Malyshev, from whom he learns everything that is happening: The city was taken by Petlyura’s troops. Alexey is trying to hide. He tears off his shoulder straps and strives to break through to his home. However, on the way he comes across the Hetman’s soldiers. They recognize him as an officer, since he completely forgot to take off the badge from his cap. The chase begins. Alexei is wounded. Turbin finds salvation in the house of Yulia Reise. She helps him bandage the wound and changes him into civilian dress the next morning. That same morning, Alexey gets to his home.
At the same time he arrives from Zhitomir cousin Talberga Larion. He is looking for salvation from mental anguish, worried about his wife leaving.
In a large house, the Turbins live on the second floor, the first is occupied by Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich. Vasilisa (this is the nickname of the owner of the house) the day before Petliura’s troops arrive in the City, decides to take care of her property. He makes a kind of hiding place where he hides money and jewelry. But his hiding place turns out to be declassified: an unknown person is closely watching his cunning from a crack in the curtained window. And here's a coincidence - the next night they come to Vasilisa with a search. First of all, the searchers open the cache and take away all of Vasilisa’s savings. And only after they leave, the owner of the house and his wife begin to understand that they were bandits. Vasilisa is trying to gain the trust of the Turbins in order to have protection from a possible next attack. Karas undertakes to protect the Lisovichs.
Three days later, Nikolka Turbin goes to look for Nai-Tours’ relatives. He tells the colonel's mother and sister the details of his death. After this, Nikolka makes a painful trip to the morgue, where he finds the body of Nai-Tours, and on the same night the funeral service for the valiant colonel is held in the chapel at the anatomical theater.
And at this time, Alexei Turbin’s condition is deteriorating: the wound becomes inflamed, and to top it off, he has typhus. The doctors gather for a consultation and decide almost unanimously that the patient will soon die. Elena, locked in her bedroom, passionately prays for her brother. To the great surprise of the doctor, Alexey regains consciousness - the crisis is over.
A few months later, Alexey visits Julia Reise and, in gratitude for saving her life, gives her his late mother's bracelet.
Soon Elena receives a letter from Warsaw. It immediately reminds her of her prayer for her brother: “Mother intercessor, beg him. There he is. What is it worth to you? Have pity on us. Have pity. Your days are coming, your holiday. Maybe he will do something good, and you too I beg you for your sins. Let Sergei not return... Take it away, take it away, but don’t punish this with death..." In a letter, a friend reports that Sergei Talberg is getting married. Elena sobs, remembering her prayer.
Soon Petliura’s troops leave the City. The Bolsheviks are approaching the City.
The novel ends with a philosophical discussion about the eternity of nature and the insignificance of man: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger, 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 wouldn't know this. So why don't we want to turn our gaze to them? Why?"
White Guard- novel by M. Bulgakov.
Part one
Chapter 1. In the Turbin family, 1918 was marked by Elena’s wedding to Captain Sergei Talberg, the return of her brothers from the war and the death of her mother.
The last event saddened everyone very much. The oldest Alexey is 28 years old - he is a doctor, Elena is 24, and the youngest Nikolka is 17 and a half. Before her death, the mother told the children: “Live.” But they are wondering how they can live now.
Sitting in the room, they all think about those things that are so dear to them. Explosions are heard around, society is discussing the possibility of entering the city of Petlyura. Elena worries about Talberg.
Chapter 2. Elena is waiting for her husband, it’s 10 pm, but he’s still not there. He was supposed to arrive at three o'clock in the afternoon. There is a knock at the door. Myshlaevsky, one of the military officers and a family friend, comes inside. He reports that there is confusion among the troops and he himself almost froze his feet while he was waiting for his unit to be replaced by cadets. He is let in and spends the evening with his family.
Then the bell rings, after which the husband (Thalberg) enters the house. He, in turn, said that his train with money was attacked. He himself, serving in the War Ministry, is in a difficult situation. The brothers do not really like him, feeling a certain duplicity of this nature.
Elena goes with him to another room, where he told his wife that he was forced to leave. He doesn’t take her with him on his wanderings. Having told his brothers about the danger of the situation, he packs his bags and leaves.
Chapter 3. The officers gather at the Turbins' house and discuss all the events that happened during their stay in the army. They curse the hetman very much for all his misdeeds. They claim that in the city it is possible to gather an army of fifty thousand fighters and drive even Trotsky and the Bolsheviks.
These conversations wake up the house manager. He is called Vasilisa due to the manner of signing on documents. He has a dream in which his money, which was hidden, was stolen in three places behind the wallpaper. All those present are very angry that the hetman did not give the opportunity to form the Russian army.
The chapter ends with Elena lying and thinking about Talberg as a poor man, and realizing that he will not come back for her. Turbin Sr., thinking about him, considers him a coward and a woman.
Chapter 4. This chapter describes the life of the city. Briefly talk about the beautiful landscapes. In addition, the author describes the fact that many people were constantly arriving in the city.
These were aristocrats, bankers, moneylenders, journalists and other people who fled from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Often this overcrowding led to constant shooting on the outskirts of the city. All those who arrived hated the Bolsheviks. I also remember the cries about the Germans, thanks to whom the hetman held power in his hands.
Chapter 5. The chapter describes that Petlyura was released from prison in September. Attention was paid to him not so much through the legend about his greed, but about the anger of those men whose horses and grain were taken by the Germans for their own purposes. If there had been no Petlyura, there would have been someone else. Alexey Turbin falls asleep and sees a dream about heaven at night, where the Lord says that there will be enough room for many in heaven, but he wakes up at the moment when he is accepted as a orderly in the regiment. The last to be remembered is Petlyura, who leads his troops to Kyiv.
Chapter 6. Myshlaevsky and Turbin go to the parade ground to sign up as volunteers for the defense of the city from the Petliurists. On the way to the place, Turbin takes a newspaper, which says that the enemy is demoralized. There are coffins with the bodies of officers in the square. Hearing an insult towards the fallen, Turbin loses his temper, but soon calms down and quickly leaves this place. Seeing my native gymnasium, main character remembers for a long time the years spent there.
Exercises are taking place on the parade ground, together with Myshlaevsky. After listening to a report about the inability of the cadets to shoot, he releases them until the morning. Seeing the old watchman Turbin, he wants to run up to him, but stops himself. Turbin put on his military uniform again.
Chapter 7. In the middle of the night, a certain person was taken from the palace to the hospital. He was all wrapped in bandages, and the doctors said he was wounded in the neck. Malyshev is given a message early in the morning. He later announces that the artillery regiment will be disbanded. He is suspected of treason, but reports that the hetman has fled the city. Myshlaevsky proposes to burn the gymnasium building, but he is forbidden to do so. Now nothing will block Petlyura’s path.
Second part
Chapter 8. On the morning of December 14, 1918, the city was surrounded by Petliura’s troops. But no one in the city felt the presence of the enemy. Adjutants, colonels, and officers did not give any orders at headquarters. There was no headquarters. Shots and explosions were heard around the city. Nobody understood what was happening. Please note that it is possible that they will never understand. Suddenly a certain Colonel Bolbotun appears. But it is not known who he is. Everyone is waiting for enemy troops to enter the city.
Chapter 9 Bolbotun, meeting no resistance, enters the city along with the cavalry. Only upon reaching the Nikolaev Horse School, the enemy was met by 30 cadets and a machine-gun burst. Only one armored car was sent to help them. There is treason among the entire division. However, Bolbotun himself understands that if all the armored cars met at once, he would have to retreat. But Shpolyansky, who prepared the sabotage among the detachment, decided that there was no point in defending the hetman.
Chapter 10. Nai-Tours, defending one of the buildings, saw the enemy and ordered to open fire. But after information that they were alone, he gave the order to retreat. Alexey Turbin, moving along one of the streets, sees detachments of Petliurists. He sees that the gymnasium is empty, the weapons are abandoned. He goes into a fashion store and sees Malyshev. He burns documents and calls on Turbin to tear off his shoulder straps and hide. He himself dismissed his fighters. A shot rang out. Turbin tore off his shoulder straps and threw them into the firebox, after which he ran away.
Chapter 11. Turbin Jr. (Nikolka) leads his fighters to a disastrous intersection, but no one is there. Suddenly from the alley he sees his own people instead of the enemy. They run away, simultaneously tearing off their shoulder straps. Nai-Tours runs up to Nikolka and begins to tear his shoulder straps and orders him to destroy the documents. Nai-Tours loads the machine gun, Nikolka hands the tape. Horsemen appear and a shootout begins. A moment later, Nai-Tours was killed by a bullet. In a fit, Nikolka runs away to Podol. Returns home.
There are constant orders over the phone to attack the enemy. Near the dugout, the enemies surround and kill the cadets. In the dugout, the officer puts a bullet in his mouth.
Lariosik arrives to reassure his relatives from his wife’s betrayal. Nikolka falls asleep and has a nightmare. Waking up in front of him, his wounded brother stands. Turbin runs for the doctor.
The third part
Chapter 12. Talberg's nephew appears at the house several hours before Alexey arrives. The latter comes to his senses and is told about all the events that happened in the city. Lariosik's nephew is allowed to live in the house for now. He shares how his train was attacked by bandits and his wife cheated on him.
Turbin takes all the weapons and shoulder straps and safely hides them in a hiding place. Alexey's temperature is rising and he is getting worse. The family decides to tell everyone that he has typhus.
Chapter 13. Delirious, Alexei relives all the events. He sets off from one building to another, realizing that he is late. Then he meets with Malyshev, who is burning documents. After the shot, Alexey runs away, but is met by crowds of Petliurists. Realizing that he needs to run away, he rushes away from them with all his might, but he is wounded.
The turbine is saved by a woman who suddenly emerges from a gate in a blank wall. She hides it with her for a while. In the morning, the woman takes Alexei home.
Chapter 14. Everything around shook from a great roar. Alexey is in a coma. Elena is next to him and worries that everything will be fine. Again incomprehensible shooting and roar. Eventually, they start banging on the door. Several family friends enter at once.
Chapter 15. Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky gathered in the Turbins’ house. Together they decide that Alexei has typhus. Soon a sound and noise was heard from below them. Everyone decides that the neighbors have guests. However, after a while there was a knock on their door. As it turned out, it was Vasilisa and his wife. Unknown men with weapons burst into their home, ransacked all their belongings, and took their money. We changed clothes and left. Turbin runs to his hiding place, it is empty.
Chapter 16. Like a huge gray cloud, a parade of Petlyura’s troops takes place on Sofievskaya Square. There are a lot of them. It seems as if there was never such a quantity of artillery in the entire war. The horses are well-fed and well-groomed. The fighters are all as one. Karas and Myshlaevsky watch the parade, waiting for Petlyura himself to appear, but this does not happen for a long time. Suddenly a shot is heard and the whole crowd runs away, crushing each other.
Chapter 17. Nikolka is doing what she has long dreamed of. He finds Ney-Turs's house and his mother. The guy tells her about how her son died. The younger Turbin explained how the deceased covered the cadets with machine-gun fire and died a heroic death. That same night, he and his sister Ney-Turs go in search of the body of the deceased. By morning he is buried as expected. Mother thanks Nikolka. He can't stand it and cries.
Chapter 18. Turbin began to die, his death throes began in his illness. Doctors said there was no chance of survival. Out of despair, Elena refused to accept priests and immediately rushed to the face of the icon. Having started the prayer, she begged to leave Alexei alive, and it seemed to her as if the face came to life and heeded her pleas. At this time, she loses consciousness from exhaustion. Alexey is experiencing the most difficult period and remains alive.
Chapter 19. Returning to life, Turbin changed a lot. It seemed as if he would never smile again. His skin became pale and he was very gloomy. He returns to the woman who saved him and gives her his mother's bracelet. At the same time, he asks for future meetings. Thalberg sends a letter in which he says that he is leaving for Paris. Turbin gets angry with him and tears the letter to shreds. Elena cries like a woman. Petliura has been in the capital for 47 days now.
Chapter 20. Petlyura left the city as quickly as he occupied it. Instead, in 1919 the Bolsheviks came here. No one could understand why so much effort was spent on conquering it, and then just give away the shed blood. It all ends with thoughts about the stars and eternity.
The action of the novel takes place in a certain City (meaning Kyiv) in the winter of 1918/19. The City is ruled by German occupation forces, and the hetman of “all Ukraine” is in power. After the election of the hetman (in the spring of 1918), the City was flooded with visitors from St. Petersburg and Moscow - bankers, journalists, poets and others. Petlyura's army is striving to occupy the City, and fierce battles are already taking place very close by.
They are having dinner at the Turbins' house. The Turbin family gathered at the table: Alexey Turbin, a doctor, his younger brother Nikolka, a non-commissioned officer, and their sister Elena. Family friends are also present: Second Lieutenant Stepanov (nickname Karas), Lieutenant Myshlaevsky and Lieutenant Shervinsky, who serves as an aide-de-camp to Prince Belorukov, the main commander of the military forces of Ukraine.
Those gathered discuss fate hometown. Alexei Turbin accuses the hetman of not allowing the Russian army to be formed in time, which could now defend the city and then save Russia.
Elena's husband, Talberg Sergei Ivanovich, captain of the general staff, informs his wife that the Germans are leaving the City, and he himself will have to leave tonight on the headquarters train. Talberg says that he cannot take Elena with him, but is sure that in a couple of months he will return to the City along with Denikin’s army, which is being formed on the Don.
To protect the City from Petliura’s troops, the rapid formation of Russian military formations begins. Senior Turbin, Myshlaevsky and Karas enter service in the division being formed under the command of Colonel Malyshev (Turbin as a doctor).
But the very next day Malyshev is forced to disband the division, because at night (from December 13 to 14) the hetman and Belorukov fled on a German train and there is now no legal authority in the City, which means there is no one to protect.
By the tenth of December, Colonel Nai-Tours had completed the formation of the first squad. In order to issue felt boots and hats to his one hundred and fifty soldiers, the colonel had to negotiate with the head of the supply department using his Colt. On the morning of December 14, Petliura’s troops attack the city, Nai-Turs takes the battle and sends three of his cadets to scout out where the hetman’s units are located. The scouts return with a report that there is no help anywhere, and the enemy’s cavalry is already entering the City. Nai-Tours realizes that he and his fighters are trapped.
Corporal of the first infantry squad Nikolai Turbin carries out the received order and leads the team along a given route, but upon arriving at the place, he sees the cadets running in panic. Colonel Nai-Tours covers the retreating fighters and commands everyone to tear off their shoulder straps, throw away their weapons, tear up documents and escape. Then the mortally wounded Nai-Tours dies, and the shocked Nikolai makes his way to the house.
Alexey Turbin, not knowing about the dissolution of the division, appears at two o’clock (as ordered), but finds only abandoned guns. Having found Malyshev, he learns that the City is occupied by Petlyura’s troops. Alexey takes off his shoulder straps and goes home. But he encounters Petlyura’s fighters, who recognize him as an officer by the cockade on his hat and pursue him. Turbin is wounded in the arm and takes refuge in the house of a woman he doesn’t know, whose name is Yulia Reise. The next day she helps him get home. The cousin of Elena’s husband, Larion, whose wife had left him, came to the Turbins from Zhitomir. Everyone finds him cute, and Larion likes to stay at the Turbins' house.
Turbines occupy the second floor of a house that belongs to Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, nicknamed Vasilisa. The owner himself lives with his wife Vanda Mikhailovna on the first floor of the same house. On the eve of the arrival of Petliura's troops, Vasilisa hides all her money and jewelry in a hiding place, and an unknown person watches his actions through the window. The next day, armed men come to him with a search warrant. They open the cache and take everything from the house, even Vasilisa’s shoes. The husband and wife understand that bandits have come to them and run to the Turbins for help. To protect against a second attack, Karas is invited into the house, whom Vanda Mikhailovna generously treats with cognac and veal.
Nikolai Turbin finds the family of Colonel Nai-Tours and goes to his relatives to tell his mother and sister about the death of a person close to them. He helps the colonel's sister take the body from the morgue and attends the funeral service.
A few days later, Alexey fell ill with typhus, his wound became inflamed, his temperature rose, and delirium began. A council of doctors decides that he is hopeless. Elena prays in her bedroom for her brother’s salvation and is even ready to never see her husband again, if only Alexei survives. To everyone's amazement, Alexey regains consciousness and is confidently on the mend.
After a month and a half, Alexei recovered completely and visited Julia Reise, who saved his life. He gave her his late mother's bracelet in gratitude and asked permission to visit her house. On way back Alexey met Nikolai, who was returning from Irina Nai-Tours.
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See also the work "The White Guard"
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Retelling plan
1. The Turbin family.
2. The city is in danger.
3. Thalberg's escape.
4. Conversation about the formation of the Russian army.
5. Life of the City in the winter of 1918
6. Petlyura is advancing on the City.
7. A division to protect the City is created.
8. Flight of the hetman and army commander. Dissolution of the division.
9. Nikolai Turbin is forced to disband the detachment of cadets. Death of Nai-Tours.
10. Alexey Turbin is wounded. Arrival of Lariosik.
11. Evening at the Turbins’ house. The attack on Vasilisa and the disappearance of pistols from the Turbinnykh’s hiding place.
12. Nikolka finds Nai-Turs’ mother and sister and tells them about his heroic death.
13. Elena's prayer. Recovery of Alexey Turbin.
14. Elena finds out that Talberg got married abroad.
15. Death of Petlyura. Philosophical thoughts of the author.
Retelling
Chapters 1, 2 and 3
“It was a great year and a terrible year after the Nativity of Christ, 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution... The young Turbins did not notice how a white, shaggy December came in the bitter frost... In May, “a year after their daughter Elena got married with captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, and in the week when the eldest son, Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, after difficult campaigns, service and troubles returned to Ukraine to the City, to his native nest, the white coffin with the body of his mother was carried down the steep Alekseevsky descent to Podol , to the small church of St. Nicholas the Good.”
Alexey Turbin, Elena, Nikolka - everyone seemed stunned by the death of their mother. They had a funeral service and buried him in the cemetery where his father, the professor, had been lying for a long time. The turbines live in house number 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk. The house is filled with objects familiar and loved from childhood. A tiled stove, covered with inscriptions and drawings of the Turbins and their friends, a bronze clock, cream curtains, old red velvet furniture, Turkish carpets, a bronze lamp under a lampshade, a cabinet with books, with Natasha Rostova, “The Captain’s Daughter” - “all this is mother at the very She left a difficult time for the children and, already out of breath and weakening, clinging to the hand of Elena, who was crying, said: “United... live together.” “But how to live? How to live? Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, the eldest, is a young doctor - twenty-eight years old, Elena is twenty-four, and Nikolka is seventeen and a half. Their lives were interrupted at dawn... The walls would fall, the fire in the bronze lamp would go out, and “ Captain's daughter"will be burned in a furnace. The mother told the children: “Live.” And they will have to suffer and die.
The painted tiles glow with heat, the black clock runs as it did thirty years ago: a tonk-tank.” In the dining room, “senior Turbin, shaven, fair-haired, aged and gloomy since October 25, 1917,” Nikolka, a non-commissioned officer, and his guitar girlfriend. “It’s alarming in the City, foggy, bad... But, despite everything, in the dining room, essentially speaking, it’s wonderful. It’s hot, cozy, the cream curtains are drawn.” Elena is worried: where is Talberg? Outside the windows you can hear the roar of guns and shots. “Nikolka finally can’t stand it:
“I’d like to know why they’re shooting so close?” It can't be...
“They shoot because the Germans are scoundrels,” the elder suddenly mutters.
Elena looks up at her watch and asks:
- Will they really, 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 footsteps were heard and a knock on the door. A “tall, broad-shouldered figure in a gray overcoat,” wearing a frosty cap, entered. It was Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky. His head “was very beautiful, strange and sad and attractive with the beauty of an ancient, real breed and degeneration.” He asks to spend the night: he is very cold, even frostbitten. Myshlaevsky “abused with obscene words Colonel Shchetkin, the frost, Petliura, and the Germans, and the blizzard, and ended up accusing the Hetman of All Ukraine himself of the most vile vulgar words.” He said that they spent a day in the cold, lightly dressed, without felt boots, defending the City, and only at two o’clock in the afternoon did a shift come - “about two hundred cadets” under the command of Colonel Nai-Turs. Two froze to death, two will have to have their legs amputated. 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 Talberg has been killed.
The bell rings. This is Thalberg - a tall, stately man with “double-layer eyes”, with an “eternal patented smile.” He serves in the Hetman's War Ministry. The Turbin brothers do not like Talberg; they feel a certain two-facedness and falseness in him. Although Thalberg “smiles favorably on everyone,” his arrival sows anxiety. He tells “slowly and cheerfully” that the train with money that he was escorting was attacked by “an unknown person.”
Elena and Talberg go to their half. Thalberg informs his wife that circumstances force him to flee the City now, immediately. Elena, “thinner and stricter,” packs his suitcase. Talberg says that it is dangerous for him to stay in the City, since there is a possibility that “Petliura will enter” soon. Thalberg says that he cannot take her with him “on the wanderings and the unknown.” Elena asks Thalberg why he doesn’t inform his 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 his black trimmed mustache.” Thalberg flees with the Germans.
At night, in the apartment on the floor below, the housekeeper Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, nicknamed Vasilisa (out of fear, from January 1918, he began to write his name “Vas. Lis.” on all documents), hid a wad of money in a hiding place under the wallpaper. There were three caches in total. At the same time, a wolfish, ragged gray figure was watching him from a tree branch on a deserted street through a crack in the sheet on the window. Vasilisa went to bed and dreamed that thieves used master keys to open the cache, and the jack of hearts shot at him point-blank. Vasilisa jumped up screaming, but the house was quiet, and the sounds of a guitar were heard from above from the Turbins.
In the Turbins’ room, their friends were sitting at the table: Leonid Yuryevich Shervinsky, now an adjutant at the headquarters of Prince Belorukov, the “little uhlan”, he brought roses to Elena; Second Lieutenant Stepanov - by the gymnasium nickname Karas, “small, sleek, really very similar to crucian carp,” and Myshlaevsky. Myshlaevsky’s eyes “are in red rings - cold, experienced fear, vodka, anger.” Karas reports the news: “everyone needs to go fight... The commander is Colonel Malyshev, the division is wonderful - student.”
Shervinsky joyfully accepts the news of Talberg'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 in La Sca1a and in Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Friends discuss the situation in the City. Turbin shouts that the hetman should be hanged; for six months he “mocked Russian officers, everyone”: he banned the formation of the Russian army. He, Turbin, is going to enlist in Malyshev’s division, if not as a doctor, then as a simple private. Alexey thinks that in the City it would be possible to recruit an army of fifty thousand, “selected, the best, because all the cadets, all the students, high school students, officers, and there are thousands of them in the City, everyone would go with dear souls. Not only would there be no spirit in Little Russia for Petlyura, but we would have swatted Trotsky in Moscow like a fly.”
The friends went to bed, Elena did not sleep in her room: “a huge black sadness covered Elena’s head like a bonnet.” Elena tries to find an excuse for Talberg’s action: “he is a very reasonable person,” but she understands that “the most important thing was not in her soul” - respect for him.
Alexey also cannot sleep for a long time. And he is tormented by the thought of Thalberg’s betrayal and cowardice: “He’s a bastard. Nothing else! ...Oh, a damn doll, devoid of the slightest concept of honor!” In the morning, Alexey falls asleep and “a short nightmare appeared to him in large-checked trousers and mockingly said: “Holy Rus' is a wooden country, poor and ... dangerous, and for a Russian man honor is just an extra burden.” Turbin is about to shoot him, but the nightmare disappears. At dawn, Turbin dreams of the City.
Chapter 4
“Like a multi-tiered honeycomb, the City smoked and made noise and lived. Beautiful in the frost and fog on the mountains, above the Dnieper... And there were so many gardens in the City, like in no other city in the world... The city played with light and shimmered, shone, and danced, and shimmered at night until the morning, and in the morning it faded away, covered with smoke and fog. But best of all sparkled the electric white cross in the hands of the enormous Vladimir on Vladimirskaya Hill...” In the winter of 1918, the life of the City was “strange, unnatural.” Crowds of “new newcomers” flocked to the City. Bankers, homeowners, journalists, aristocrats, secretaries of department directors, poets, money lenders, actresses, etc., who fled from Moscow and St. Petersburg. “The city swelled, expanded, and came out like sourdough from a pot.” At night, shots were heard on the outskirts. “No one knows who shot whom.”
All the inhabitants of the City hated the Bolsheviks, hated them with a “cowardly, hissing” hatred. Some of the new townspeople, such as Colonel Nai-Tours, “hundreds of warrant officers 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, the kind that could lead to 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 men: “Now they will remember the revolution! The Germans will learn them.” “Okay: here are the Germans, and there, beyond the distant cordon, the Bolsheviks. Only two forces."
Chapter 5
In September, Semyon Vasilyevich Petliura was released from prison by the Hetman authorities. “His past was plunged into the deepest darkness.” This would be “a myth generated in Ukraine in the fog of the terrible year 18.” ...And there was something else - fierce hatred. There were four hundred thousand Germans, and around them four times forty times four hundred thousand men with hearts burning with unquenchable anger.” Hatred was generated by backs mutilated by ramrods, requisitioned horses, and confiscated bread. Among the peasants there were those who returned from the war and knew how to shoot. In a word, it wasn’t about Petliura specifically. If it weren't for him, there would be someone else. The Germans are leaving Ukraine, which means that someone will pay with their lives, and, of course, not those who flee the city.
Alexey Turbin sees paradise in a dream. There is Colonel Nai-Tours in the guise of a knight with a luminous helmet and Sergeant Zhilin, killed in 16. Zhilin says that there is a lot of space in heaven and is enough for all the Bolsheviks who will die at Perekop in 2020, talks about his conversation with God. God said: “All of you, Zhilin, are the same to me - killed in the battlefield.” Turbin extended his hands to the sergeant and asked to join his team as a doctor. 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 was advancing on the City.
Chapter 6
In the center of the City, on the window of the former Parisian Chic store, hung a large poster calling for volunteers to enroll in the mortar division. At noon Myshlaevsky and Turbin came here. Colonel Malyshev assigned Myshlaevsky as commander of the fourth platoon and Alexey Turbin 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. In an hour, 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 stated that Petlyura’s troops were in complete disarray and would soon collapse.
The guns roared. Suddenly, Turbin saw a procession of coffins with the bodies of officers on Vladimirskaya Street. The dead were cut and mutilated by the men and Petliurists. In the crowd gathered around the coffins, Turbin heard a voice: “That’s what they need.” In a rage, he grabbed the sleeve of the one who said this, intending to shoot the scoundrel, but realized that he was mistaken. Someone else spoke. Indignant, Turbin poked a crumpled sheet of Vesti into the newspaper boy’s nose: “Here’s some news for you. It is for you. Bastard! “This is where his fit of rage passed. ...Feeling ashamed, Turbin pulled his head into his shoulders and, turning sharply...” ran out onto the gymnasium parade ground.
Turbin approached his native gymnasium, where he studied for eight years. He hadn't seen her for that long. “For some reason his heart sank with fear. It suddenly seemed to him that a black cloud had obscured the sky, that some kind of whirlwind had flown in and washed away all his life, like a terrible wave washes away a pier.” He remembers his high school years: “there was so much absurdity and sadness and despair, but there was so much joy.” “Where did it all go?”
A hasty training exercise was taking place 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 out of one hundred and twenty cadets, there were eighty students who did not know how to handle a rifle. The colonel orders the division to disband and go home for the night. Studzinski tries to argue, insists that the recruits spend the night on the parade ground. However, the colonel abruptly cuts him off.
Malyshev greets the division: “Gunners! I won’t waste words... We will beat Petliura, the son of a bitch, and, rest assured, we will!” Memories of his high school years came flooding back to Turbin. He saw an old man - the guard of the gymnasium, Maxim, who once dragged them, the boys who had gotten into trouble, to the gymnasium authorities. In a fit of emotion, he intends to catch up with Maxim, but he stops himself: “It’s enough to be sentimental. They sentimentalized their lives. Enough".
Chapter 7
On a dark night, a certain man, all wrapped in bandages, was secretly taken from the palace to a German hospital under the name of Major von Schratto. He allegedly accidentally wounded himself in the neck.
At the beginning of five o'clock, an artillery colonel from the palace conveyed a certain message to Colonel Malyshev's headquarters. And at seven, Malyshev announced to the audience: “During the night, sharp and sudden changes occurred in the state situation in Ukraine. Therefore, I announce to you that the division is disbanded! Go home immediately!” Everyone was stunned, some officers suspected Malyshev of treason and wanted to arrest him. The Colonel had to explain himself. It turned out that there was no one else to protect: the hetman fled, followed by the army commander, General Belorukov. Petlyura is already approaching the City, he has a huge army.
Myshlaevsky proposes to burn down the gymnasium building, Malyshev does not allow this, he says that soon Petlyura will get something 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 surrounded 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 aides also disappeared. Nobody understood what was happening. “And in the future, they probably won’t understand soon.” The staff phones were calling less and less often. There was shooting and roaring all around the City. But the City was still living its normal life. A certain Colonel Bolbotun appears. Who is he for?
Chapter 9
Bolbotun and his cavalry regiment entered the City without hindrance. Only at the Nikolaev Column School he was met by a machine gun and fire from 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 disabled. The traitor was Mikhail Semenovich Shpolyansky. If all the armored cars had arrived, Bolbotun would have gotten away. But Shpolyansky decided that it was not worth defending the hetman, let him clash with Petliura.
Chapter 10
Nai-Tours with cadets guards the Polytechnic Highway. Seeing the mounted Haidamaks, he gives the command “Fire!”, not yet knowing that the forces of the defenders are negligible compared to several regiments of the attackers. The cadets sent by Nai-Tours for reconnaissance returned with the message: “Mr. Colonel, no of our units... are anywhere...” And Nai-Tours, realizing that they had been betrayed and left to die, “gave the cadets something they had never heard of before.” , 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 commander, Staff Captain Bezrukov, and his two assistant warrant officers left for headquarters in the morning and did not return.” Nikolai Turbin receives an order over the phone and takes twenty-eight people out into the street.
Alexey Turbin decides to go to his division. His soul “was very anxious.” He didn't understand what was going on in the City. Arriving in a cab, Turbin saw an armed crowd near the museum. He thought that he was late, then he realized: “It’s a disaster... But here’s the horror - they probably left on foot. Petlyura probably came up unexpectedly...” He finds Colonel Malyshev burning documents in the stove. Malyshev tells him: “Take off your shoulder straps quickly and run, hide... Petlyura 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 everyone of my own. I didn’t send you to slaughter! I didn’t send it for shame!” Hearing a machine gun, he advises Turbin to run and goes into hiding. “The thoughts in Turbin’s head huddled together in a shapeless heap. Then, in silence, the lump gradually unraveled.” 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 into the City. “The route led Turbin to a completely dead crossroads,” although a telephone voice ordered to find a detachment of the third squad here and reinforce it. Nikolka decided to wait for the detachment. In the end, expectations were met, but not at all as Turbin had imagined. “Our people” appeared, but they behaved in a strange way: they ran away, tearing off their shoulder straps, tearing up documents. Nikolka’s pride did not allow him to flee shamefully, and he tried to get involved in the battle. Colonel Nai-Tours suddenly appeared. He tore off Nikolka’s shoulder straps and ordered the cadets to flee, tear off their shoulder straps, throw away their weapons, and tear up their documents. But Nikolka was suddenly seized by a “strange drunken ecstasy.” “I don’t want to, Mr. Colonel,” he answered in a cloth voice, squatted down, grabbed the tape with both hands and launched it into the machine gun.” Nai-Tours fell to the machine gun - the horsemen chasing the cadets disappeared. Nye “shook his fist at the sky and shouted: “Guys! Guys! Staff bitches! Nai-Turs was killed in front of Turbin. “Nikolka’s brain was covered in 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 Podil, indicated to him by Nai-Tours. People were fussing around, running in panic. “Nikolka’s path was long.” At dusk he returned home and learned from Elena that Alexey had not returned. Elena thinks that Alexey was killed.
Someone’s voice from the headquarters continues to give commands to the firing points of the city’s defenders: “Fire with hurricane fire at the tract, at the cavalry!” A hundred cavalry swooped in and killed several cadets and officers near a dugout, located about eight versts from the city. “The commander, who remained in the dugout near the telephone, shot himself in the mouth. The commander’s last words 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 absurd figure appears with a cage in which a canary sits, introducing himself as a relative from Zhitomir. Finally, Nikolka finally wakes up, sees her older brother in an unconscious position, and three minutes later she is rushing along Alekseevsky Spusk to get a doctor for the wounded Alexei.
Part III
Chapter 12
Elena tells Alexei, who has regained consciousness, about latest events. Lariosik, Talberg's nephew, appeared at the house a few minutes before some lady brought the wounded Alexei. Lariosik asks to live with the Turbins. “I have never seen such a fool in my life. He started with us by smashing all the dishes. Blue service." Lariosik says about himself that his wife cheated on him, that it took him eleven days to get from Zhitomir, the train was seized by bandits, he was almost shot, and in general he is a “terrible loser.” He “enjoyed it extremely” at the Turbins’.
Alexey Turbin is in serious condition. The temperature is in the forties. He's delusional. Nikolka finds her brother’s weapon, and now the find must be safely hidden. Alexey's Ny-Tursov Colt and Browning, along with shoulder straps enclosed in a box, were hung through the window into the gap between two converging houses on a crutch left over from the fire escape. It was decided to tell all curious neighbors that Turbin Sr. had typhus.
Chapter 13
Alexey, delirious, relives what happened. He sees that he does not have time for verification and comes to the parade ground when the gymnasium building is empty. He hurries to Madame Anjou's store and meets there with Malyshev, who hastily burns all the division's documents. Only then will Alexey find out that it’s all over, Petlyura is in the city and he needs to save himself. However, I really wanted to know what was going on in the city near the museum, and it faces Vladimirskaya Street. Turbin hears Malyshev’s voice whispering to him: “Run!” Petliurists were moving straight towards him along Proriznaya sloping street, from Khreshchatyk. Noticing Turbin, they begin to pursue him. Alexey tries to escape. He is wounded, almost overtaken, when a woman comes to his aid, appearing from a gate in a blank black wall. She hides it in her place. 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 received two riders - a man in black civilian clothes, very pale, and a woman.” They arrive at Alekseevsky Spusk, to house number 13.
Chapter 14
The next evening, Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky gathered in the Turbins’ house - all were alive. There was a consultation at Alexey’s bedside: it was 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 Naya, about the Petliurists. A strange noise was heard from below: it was as if the neighbors had guests - Vasilisa’s laughter and the loud voice of his wife Wanda could be heard. “Then it died down.” The ringing call alarmed everyone in earnest. It turned out that a belated telegram had arrived from Lariosik’s mother. Then a frightened Vasilisa appears in the apartment, having been robbed by armed bandits who had robbed 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 out of his seat and rushed to the window of his room. There was a crash of glass and a scream. There was no box of pistols in the hiding place.
Chapter 16
“It’s not a gray cloud with a snake’s belly that is pouring across the city, or it’s not brown, muddy rivers flowing through the old streets - it’s the countless force of Petliura who is marching to the square of Old Sofia for a parade.” The strength of the Petliurites is amazing: the artillery seems endless, the horses are well-fed, “strong, tough-bodied,” and the horsemen are brave. In the crowd of gathered onlookers is Nikolka Turbin. Everyone is waiting for Petliura to appear. Suddenly, a volley rang out in Rylsky Lane. The crowd went into panic: people fled from the square, crushing each other.
Chapter 17
All three days Nikolka thinks about her cherished goal. Having obtained Nai-Tours' address, Nikolka finds a house and meets Nai-Tours' mother and sister. They understand from Nikolka’s face and confusion that Nai-Tours is dead. When the first attack of grief has passed, Nikolka tells them that his commander “died like a hero.” He drove the cadets away in time, and he covered them with machine-gun fire. The bullets hit Nai-Turs in the head and chest. Nikolka talked and cried. He and his sister Nai-Tursa decide to find the commander’s body. They found him in the storeroom 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 December twenty-second.” The doctor said that there was no hope, that agony was beginning. They already wanted to call the priest, but did not dare. Elena, locked in the room, prayed in front of the icon of the Mother of God: “You are sending too much grief at once, intercessor mother. So in one year you end your family. For what?.. My mother took it from us, I don’t have a husband and never will, I understand that... And now you’re taking away the eldest one too. For what? There is only one hope for You, Most Pure Virgin. At you. Beg your Son, beg the Lord God to send a miracle...” Elena prayed for a long time, earnestly: “We are all guilty of blood, but You do not punish. Don’t punish...” Elena dreamed that the face on the icon came to life and heeded her prayers. She fell unconscious from “fear and drunken joy.” At this time, Alexei's illness crisis occurred. He survived.
Chapter 19
Petlyura was in the city for forty-seven days. The year was 1919. “On the second of February, a black figure walked through the Turbino apartment, with a shaved head, covered with a black silk cap. It was the resurrected Turbin. He changed dramatically. On the face, at the corners of the mouth, two folds, apparently, have dried forever, the color of the skin is waxy, the eyes are sunk in the shadows and forever become unsmiling and gloomy.
Turbin meets with Reiss and, as a token of gratitude for saving her, gives her a bracelet from his late mother. “You are dear to me... Let me come to you again.” “Come...” she answered.
Elena receives a letter from a friend in Warsaw, who reports that Talberg is marrying Lidochka Hertz, and they are leaving for Paris together. Elena gives this letter to Alexei. He reads and mutters: “With what pleasure... I would hit him in the face...” He tears Thalberg’s photograph to shreds. “Elena roared like a woman and buried herself in Turbin’s starchy chest.”
Chapter 20
“It was a great and terrible year after the birth of Christ, 1918, but 1919 was worse than it.” The Petliurists are leaving the City. “Why was it? Nobody will tell. Will anyone pay for the blood? No. Nobody". The Bolsheviks are coming.
The house on Alekseevsky Spusk was sleeping peacefully. The inhabitants of the house were also asleep: Turbin, Myshlaevsky, Karas, Lariosik, Elena and Nikolka. “Over the Dnieper, from the sinful and bloody and snowy ground, the midnight cross of Vladimir rose into the black, gloomy heights. From a distance it seemed that the crossbar had disappeared - it had merged with the vertical, and from this the cross turned into a threatening sharp sword. But he's not scary. All will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, famine and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when the shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on the earth. There is not a single person who does not know this. So why don't we want to turn our gaze to them? Why?"
"The White Guard", Chapter 1 - summary
The intelligent Turbin family living in Kyiv - two brothers and a sister - finds themselves in the middle of the revolution in 1918. Alexey Turbin, a young doctor - twenty-eight years old, he has already fought in First World War. Nikolka is seventeen and a half. Sister Elena is twenty-four, a year and a half ago she married staff captain Sergei Talberg.
This year, the Turbins buried their mother, who, dying, told the children: “Live!” But the year is ending, it’s already December, and still the terrible blizzard of revolutionary unrest continues. How to live in such a time? Apparently you will have to suffer and die!
White Guard. Episode 1 Film based on the novel by M. Bulgakov (2012)
The priest who performed the funeral service for his mother, Father Alexander, prophesies to Alexei Turbin that it will be even more difficult in the future. But he urges not to lose heart.
"The White Guard", Chapter 2 - summary
The power of the hetman planted by the Germans in Kyiv Skoropadsky staggers. Socialist troops are marching towards the city from Bila Tserkva Petlyura. He is as much a robber as Bolsheviks, differs from them only in Ukrainian nationalism.
On a December evening, the Turbins gather in the living room, hearing through the windows cannon shots already close to Kyiv.
A family friend, a young, courageous lieutenant Viktor Myshlaevsky, unexpectedly rings the doorbell. He is terribly cold, cannot walk home, and asks permission to spend the night. With abuse he tells how he stood in the outskirts of the city on the defensive from the Petliurists. 40 officers were thrown into an open field in the evening, not even given felt boots, and almost without ammunition. Because of the terrible frost, they began to bury themselves in the snow - and two froze, and two more would have to have their legs amputated due to frostbite. The careless drunkard, Colonel Shchetkin, never delivered his shift in the morning. She was brought only to dinner by the brave Colonel Nai-Tours.
Exhausted, Myshlaevsky falls asleep. Elena's husband returns home, the dry and prudent opportunist Captain Talberg, a Baltic by birth. He quickly explains to his wife: Hetman Skoropadsky is being abandoned by German troops, on whom all his power rested. At one o'clock in the morning General von Bussow's train leaves for Germany. Thanks to his staff contacts, the Germans agree to take Talberg with them. He must get ready to leave immediately, but “I can’t take you, Elena, on your wanderings and the unknown.”
Elena cries quietly, but doesn’t mind. Thalberg promises that he will make his way from Germany through Romania to the Crimea and the Don in order to come to Kyiv with Denikin’s troops. He busily packs his suitcase, quickly says goodbye to Elena’s brothers, and at one in the morning leaves with the German train.
"The White Guard", Chapter 3 - summary
The turbines occupy the 2nd floor of a two-story house No. 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk, and the owner of the house, engineer Vasily Lisovich, lives on the first floor, whom acquaintances call Vasilisa for his cowardice and womanly vanity.
That night, Lisovich, having curtained the windows in the room with a sheet and blanket, hides an envelope with money in a secret place inside the wall. He does not notice that a white sheet on a green-painted window has attracted the attention of one street passerby. He climbed the tree and through the gap above the upper edge of the curtain saw everything that Vasilisa was doing.
Having counted the balance of Ukrainian money saved for current expenses, Lisovich goes to bed. He sees in a dream how thieves are opening his hiding place, but soon he wakes up with curses: upstairs they are loudly playing the guitar and singing...
It was two more friends who came to the Turbins: staff adjutant Leonid Shervinsky and artilleryman Fyodor Stepanov (gymnasium nickname - Karas). They brought wine and vodka. The whole company, together with the awakened Myshlaevsky, sits down at the table. Karas is encouraging everyone who wants to defend Kyiv from Petliura to join the mortar division being formed, where Colonel Malyshev is an excellent commander. Shervinsky, clearly in love with Elena, is glad to hear about Thalberg’s departure and begins to sing a passionate epithalamium.
White Guard. Episode 2. Film based on the novel by M. Bulgakov (2012)
Everyone drinks to the Entente allies to help Kyiv fight off Petliura. Alexey Turbin scolds the hetman: he oppressed the Russian language, until his last days he did not allow the formation of an army from Russian officers - and at the decisive moment he found himself without troops. If the hetman had begun to create officer corps in April, we would now drive the Bolsheviks out of Moscow! Alexey says that he will go to Malyshev’s division.
Shervinsky conveys staff rumors that Emperor Nicholas is not killed, but escaped from the hands of the communists. Everyone at the table understands that this is unlikely, but they still sing in delight “God Save the Tsar!”
Myshlaevsky and Alexey get very drunk. Seeing this, Elena puts everyone to bed. She is alone in her room, sadly sitting on her bed, thinking about her husband’s departure and suddenly clearly realizing that in a year and a half of marriage, she never had respect for this cold careerist. Alexey Turbin also thinks about Talberg with disgust.
"The White Guard", Chapter 4 - summary
Throughout the last year (1918), a stream of wealthy people fleeing Bolshevik Russia poured into Kyiv. It intensifies after the election of the hetman, when with German help it is possible to establish some order. Most of the visitors are an idle, depraved crowd. Countless cafes, theaters, clubs, cabarets, full of drugged prostitutes, open for her in the city.
Many officers also come to Kyiv - with haunted eyes after the collapse of the Russian army and the soldiers' tyranny of 1917. Lousy, unshaven, poorly dressed officers do not find support from Skoropadsky. Only a few manage to join the hetman's convoy, sporting fantastic shoulder straps. The rest are hanging around doing nothing.
So the 4 cadet schools that were in Kyiv before the revolution remain closed. Many of their students fail to complete the course. Among these is the ardent Nikolka Turbin.
The city is calm thanks to the Germans. But there is a feeling that peace is fragile. News is coming from the villages that the revolutionary robberies of the peasants cannot be stopped.
"The White Guard", Chapter 5 - summary
Signs of imminent disaster are multiplying in Kyiv. In May there is a terrible explosion of weapons depots in the suburb of Bald Mountain. On July 30, in broad daylight, on the street, the Socialist Revolutionaries killed the commander-in-chief of the German army in Ukraine, Field Marshal Eichhorn, with a bomb. And then the troublemaker Simon Petlyura, a mysterious man who immediately goes to lead the peasants rioting in the villages, is released from the hetman’s prison.
A village revolt is very dangerous because many men have recently returned from the war - with weapons, and having learned to shoot there. And by the end of the year, the Germans were defeated in the First World War. They themselves are starting revolution, overthrow the emperor Wilhelm. That is why they are now in a hurry to withdraw their troops from Ukraine.
White Guard. Episode 3. Film based on the novel by M. Bulgakov (2012)
...Aleksey Turbin is sleeping, and he dreams that on the eve of Paradise he met Captain Zhilin and with him his entire squadron of Belgrade Hussars, who died in 1916 in the Vilna direction. For some reason, their commander, the still living Colonel Nai-Tours in the armor of a crusader, also jumped here. Zhilin tells Alexei that the Apostle Peter allowed his entire detachment into Paradise, although they took with them several cheerful women along the way. And Zhilin saw mansions in heaven painted with red stars. Peter said that the Red Army soldiers would soon go there and kill many of them under fire. Perekop. Zhilin was surprised that the atheist Bolsheviks would be allowed into Paradise, but the Almighty himself explained to him: “Well, they don’t believe in me, what can you do. One believes, the other doesn’t believe, but you all have the same actions: now you’re at each other’s throats. All of you, Zhilin, are the same - killed on the battlefield.”
Alexey Turbin also wanted to rush into the gates of heaven - but woke up...
"The White Guard", Chapter 6 - summary
Registration for the mortar division takes place in the former Parisian Chic store of Madame Anjou, in the city center. In the morning after a drunken night, Karas, already in the division, brings Alexei Turbin and Myshlaevsky here. Elena baptizes them at home before leaving.
The division commander, Colonel Malyshev, is a young man of about 30, with lively and intelligent eyes. He is very happy about the arrival of Myshlaevsky, an artilleryman who fought on the German front. At first, Malyshev is wary of Doctor Turbin, but is very happy to learn that he is not a socialist, like most intellectuals, but an ardent hater of Kerensky.
Myshlaevsky and Turbin are enrolled in the division. In an hour they must report to the parade ground of the Alexander Gymnasium, where soldiers are being trained. Turbin runs home at this hour, and on the way back to the gymnasium he suddenly sees a crowd of people carrying coffins with the bodies of several warrant officers. The Petliurites surrounded and killed that night an officer detachment in the village of Popelyukha, gouged out their eyes, cut out shoulder straps on their shoulders...
Turbin himself studied at the Aleksandrovskaya Gymnasium, and after the front, fate brought him here again. There are no high school students now, the building stands empty, and on the parade ground young volunteers, students and cadets, run around the scary, blunt-nosed mortars, learning to handle them. The classes are led by senior division officers Studzinsky, Myshlaevsky and Karas. Turbine is assigned to train two soldiers to be paramedics.
Colonel Malyshev arrives. Studzinsky and Myshlaevsky quietly report to him their impressions of the recruits: “They will fight. But complete inexperience. For one hundred and twenty cadets, there are eighty students who do not know how to hold a rifle in their hands.” Malyshev, with a gloomy look, informs the officers that the headquarters will not give the division either horses or shells, so they will have to give up classes with mortars and teach rifle shooting. The colonel orders most of the recruits to be dismissed for the night, leaving only 60 of the best cadets in the gymnasium as a guard for weapons.
In the vestibule of the gymnasium, officers remove the drapery from the portrait of its founder, Emperor Alexander I, which had been hanging closed since the first days of the revolution. The Emperor points his hand to the Borodino regiments in the portrait. Looking at the picture, Alexey Turbin remembers the happy pre-revolutionary days. “Emperor Alexander, save the dying house by the Borodino regiments! Revive them, take them off the canvas! They would have beaten Petlyura.”
Malyshev orders the division to reassemble on the parade ground tomorrow morning, but he allows Turbin to arrive only at two o’clock in the afternoon. The remaining guard of cadets under the command of Studzinsky and Myshlaevsky stoked the stoves in the gymnasium all night long with “Notes of the Fatherland” and “Library for Reading” for 1863...
"The White Guard", Chapter 7 - summary
There is indecent fuss in the Hetman's palace this night. Skoropadsky, rushing in front of the mirrors, changes into the uniform of a German major. The doctor who came in tightly bandaged his head, and the hetman was taken away in a car from the side entrance under the guise of the German Major Schratt, who allegedly accidentally wounded himself in the head while discharging a revolver. No one in the city knows about Skoropadsky’s escape yet, but the military informs Colonel Malyshev about it.
In the morning, Malyshev announces to the fighters of his division gathered at the gymnasium: “During the night, sharp and sudden changes occurred in the state situation in Ukraine. Therefore, the mortar division has been disbanded! Take here in the workshop all the weapons that everyone wants, and go home! I would advise those who want to continue the fight to make their way to Denikin on the Don.”
There is a dull murmur among the stunned, uncomprehending young men. Captain Studzinsky even makes an attempt to arrest Malyshev. However, he calms the excitement with a loud shout and continues: “Do you want to defend the hetman? But today, at about four o’clock in the morning, shamefully leaving us all to the mercy of fate, he fled like the last scoundrel and coward, along with the army commander, General Belorukov! Petliura has an army of over one hundred thousand on the outskirts of the city. In unequal battles with her today, a handful of officers and cadets, standing in the field and abandoned by two scoundrels who should have been hanged, will die. And I’m disbanding you to save you from certain death!”
Many cadets are crying in despair. The division disperses, having damaged as many of the thrown mortars and guns as possible. Myshlaevsky and Karas, not seeing Alexei Turbin in the gymnasium and not knowing that Malyshev ordered him to come only at two o’clock in the afternoon, think that he has already been notified of the dissolution of the division.
Part 2
"The White Guard", Chapter 8 - summary
At dawn, December 14, 1918, in the village of Popelyukhe near Kiev, where the ensigns had recently been slaughtered, Petliura’s Colonel Kozyr-Leshko raises his cavalry detachment, 400 Sabeluks. Singing a Ukrainian song, he rides out to a new position, on the other side of the city. This is how the cunning plan of Colonel Toropets, commander of the Kyiv obloga, is carried out. Toropets plans to distract the city defenders with artillery cannonade from the north, and launch the main attack in the center and south.
Meanwhile, the pampered Colonel Shchetkin, leading detachments of these defenders in the snowy fields, secretly abandons his fighters and goes to a rich Kyiv apartment, to a plump blonde, where he drinks coffee and goes to bed...
The impatient Petliura Colonel Bolbotun decides to speed up Toropets' plan - and without preparation he bursts into the city with his cavalry. To his surprise, he does not meet resistance until the Nikolaev Military School. Only there are 30 cadets and four officers firing at him from their only machine gun.
Bolbotun's reconnaissance team, headed by the centurion Galanba, rushes along the empty Millionnaya Street. Here Galanba chops with a saber on the head of Yakov Feldman, a famous Jew and supplier of armored parts to Hetman Skoropadsky, who accidentally came out to meet them from the entrance.
"The White Guard", Chapter 9 - summary
An armored car approaches a group of cadets near the school to help. After three shots from his gun, the movement of the Bolbotun regiment completely stops.
Not one armored car, but four, should have approached the cadets - and then the Petliurists would have had to flee. But recently, Mikhail Shpolyansky, a revolutionary ensign awarded personally by Kerensky, black, with velvet tanks, similar to Eugene Onegin, was appointed commander of the second vehicle in the hetman’s armored regiment.
This reveler and poet, who came from Petrograd, squandered money in Kyiv, founded the poetic order “Magnetic Triolet” under his chairmanship, maintained two mistresses, played iron and spoke in clubs. Recently Shpolyansky treated the head of “Magnetic Triolet” in a cafe in the evening, and after dinner the aspiring poet Rusakov, already suffering from syphilis, cried drunkenly on his beaver cuffs. Shpolyansky went from the cafe to his mistress Yulia on Malaya Provalnaya Street, and Rusakov, arriving home, looked at the red rash on his chest with tears and on his knees prayed for the forgiveness of the Lord, who punished him with a serious illness for writing anti-God poems.
The next day, Shpolyansky, to everyone’s surprise, entered Skoropadsky’s armored division, where instead of beavers and a top hat, he began to wear a military sheepskin coat, all smeared with machine oil. Four Hetman armored cars had great success in the battles with the Petliurists near the city. But three days before the fateful December 14, Shpolyansky, having slowly gathered gunners and car drivers, began to convince them: it was stupid to defend the reactionary hetman. Soon both he and Petliura will be replaced by a third, the only correct historical force - the Bolsheviks.
On the eve of December 14, Shpolyansky, together with other drivers, poured sugar into the engines of armored cars. When the battle with the cavalry that entered Kyiv began, only one of the four cars started up. He was brought to the aid of the cadets by the heroic ensign Strashkevich. He detained the enemy, but could not drive him out of Kyiv.
"The White Guard", Chapter 10 - summary
Hussar Colonel Nai-Tours is a heroic front-line soldier who speaks with a burr and turns his whole body, looking to the side, because after being wounded his neck is cramped. In the first days of December, he recruits up to 150 cadets into the second department of the city defense squad, but demands papas and felt boots for all of them. Clean General Makushin in the supply department replies that he doesn’t have that much uniform. Nye then calls several of his cadets with loaded rifles: “Write a request, your Excellency. Live up. We don’t have time, we have an hour to go. Nepgiyatel under the very godod. If you don’t write, you stupid stag, I’ll hit you in the head with a Colt, you’re dragging your feet.” The general writes on the paper with a jumping hand: “Give up.”
All morning on December 14th, Nye’s detachment sat in the barracks, receiving no orders. Only during the day does he receive an order to go guard the Polytechnic Highway. Here, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Nai sees the approaching Petlyura regiment of Kozyr-Leshko.
By order of Nye, his battalion fires several volleys at the enemy. But, seeing that the enemy has appeared from the side, he orders his soldiers to retreat. A cadet sent to reconnaissance into the city returned and reported that the Petliura cavalry was already on all sides. Nay loudly shouts to his chains: “Save yourself as best you can!”
...And the first section of the squad - 28 cadets, among whom is Nikolka Turbin, languishes idle in the barracks until lunch. Only at three o’clock in the afternoon the phone suddenly rings: “Go outside along the route!” There is no commander - and Nikolka has to lead everyone, as the eldest.
…Alexey Turbin sleeps late that day. Having woken up, he hastily gets ready to go to the division gymnasium, knowing nothing about the city events. On the street he is surprised by the nearby sounds of machine gun fire. Having arrived in a cab to the gymnasium, he sees that the division is not there. “They left without me!” - Alexey thinks in despair, but notices with surprise: the mortars remain in the same places, and they are without locks.
Guessing that a catastrophe has happened, Turbin runs to Madame Anjou's store. There, Colonel Malyshev, disguised as a student, burns lists of division fighters in the oven. “You don’t know anything yet? – Malyshev shouts to Alexey. “Take off your shoulder straps quickly and run, hide!” He talks about the flight of the hetman and the fact that the division was dissolved. Waving his fists, he curses the staff generals.
“Run! Just not out into the street, but through the back door!” - Malyshev exclaims and disappears into the back door. The stupefied Turbin tears off his shoulder straps and rushes to the same place where the colonel disappeared.
"The White Guard", Chapter 11 - summary
Nikolka leads 28 of his cadets through all of Kyiv. At the last intersection, the detachment lies down on the snow with rifles, prepares a machine gun: shooting can be heard very close.
Suddenly other cadets fly out to the intersection. “Run with us! Save yourself, whoever can!” - they shout to the Nikolkins.
The last of the runners appears Colonel Nai-Tours with a Colt in his hand. “Yunkegga! Listen to my command! - he shouts. - Bend your shoulder straps, kokagdy, bgosai oguzhie! Along Fonagny pegeulok - only along Fonagny! - two-wheeler to Gazyezzhaya, to Podol! The fight is over! The staff are stegvy!..”
The cadets scatter, and Nye rushes to the machine gun. Nikolka, who had not run with everyone else, runs up to him. Nai chases him: “Go away, you stupid mavy!”, but Nikolka: “I don’t want to, Mr. Colonel.”
Horsemen jump out to the crossroads. Nye fires a machine gun at them. Several riders fall, the rest immediately disappear. However, the Petliurists lying down further down the street open up a hurricane of fire, two at a time, at the machine gun. Nai falls, bleeding, and dies, having only managed to say: “Unteg-tseg, God bless you to go gay... Malo-Pgovalnaya...” Nikolka, grabbing the colonel’s Colt, miraculously crawls under heavy fire around the corner, into Lantern Lane.
Jumping up, he rushes into the first yard. Here he is, shouting “Hold him!” Hold the Junkerey!” - the janitor tries to grab it. But Nikolka hits him in the teeth with the handle of a Colt, and the janitor runs away with a bloody beard.
Nikolka climbs over two high walls as she runs, bleeding her toes and breaking her nails. Running out of breath onto Razyezzhaya Street, he tears up his documents as he goes. He rushes to Podol, as Nai-Tours ordered. Having met a cadet with a rifle along the way, he pushes him into the entrance: “Hide. I am a cadet. Catastrophe. Petlyura took the city!
Nikolka happily gets home through Podol. Elena is crying there: Alexey has not returned!
By nightfall, the exhausted Nikolka falls into an uneasy sleep. But the noise wakes him up. Sitting up on the bed, he vaguely sees in front of him a strange, unfamiliar man in a jacket, riding breeches and boots with jockey cuffs. In his hand is a cage with a canary. The stranger says in a tragic voice: “She was with her lover on the very sofa on which I read poetry to her. And after the bills for seventy-five thousand, I signed without hesitation, like a gentleman... And, imagine, a coincidence: I arrived here at the same time as your brother.”
Hearing about his brother, Nikolka flies like lightning into the dining room. There, in someone else’s coat and someone else’s trousers, a bluish-pale Alexey is lying on the sofa, with Elena rushing about next to him.
Alexei is wounded in the arm by a bullet. Nikolka rushes after the doctor. He treats the wound and explains: the bullet did not affect either the bone or large vessels, but shreds of wool from the overcoat got into the wound, so inflammation begins. But you can’t take Alexei to the hospital - the Petliurists will find him there...
Part 3
Chapter 12
The stranger who appeared at the Turbins’ place is Sergei Talberg’s nephew Larion Surzhansky (Lariosik), a strange and careless man, but kind and sympathetic. His wife cheated on him in his native Zhitomir, and, suffering mentally in his city, he decided to go and visit the Turbins, whom he had never seen before. Lariosik's mother, warning of his arrival, sent a 63-word telegram to Kyiv, but due to war time it did not arrive.
That same day, turning awkwardly in the kitchen, Lariosik breaks the Turbins’ expensive set. He comically but sincerely apologizes, and then takes out the eight thousand hidden there from behind the lining of his jacket and gives it to Elena for his maintenance.
It took Lariosik 11 days to travel from Zhitomir to Kyiv. The train was stopped by the Petliurites, and Lariosik, who they mistook for an officer, only miraculously escaped execution. In his eccentricity, he tells Turbin about this as an ordinary minor incident. Despite Lariosik's oddities, everyone in the family likes him.
The maid Anyuta tells how she saw the corpses of two officers killed by Petliurists right on the street. Nikolka wonders if Karas and Myshlaevsky are alive. And why did Nai-Tours mention Malo-Provalnaya Street before his death? With the help of Lariosik, Nikolka hides Nai-Tours' Colt and her own Browning, hanging them in a box outside the window that looks out into a narrow clearing covered with snowdrifts on the blank wall of a neighboring house.
The next day, Alexey’s temperature rises above forty. He begins to delirium and at times repeats a woman’s name - Julia. In his dreams, he sees Colonel Malyshev in front of him, burning documents, and remembers how he himself ran out the back door from Madame Anjou’s store...
Chapter 13
Having then run out of the store, Alexey hears shooting very close. Through the courtyards he gets out into the street, and, having turned one corner, he sees Petliurists on foot with rifles right in front of him.
“Stop! - they shout. - Yes, he’s an officer! Call the officer!" Turbin rushes to run, feeling for the revolver in his pocket. He turns into Malo-Provalnaya Street. Shots are heard from behind, and Alexey feels as if someone was pulling his left armpit with wooden pincers.
He takes a revolver out of his pocket, shoots six times at the Petliurists - “the seventh bullet for himself, otherwise they will torture you, they will cut the shoulder straps off your shoulders.” Ahead is a remote alley. Turbin awaits certain death, but a young female figure emerges from the wall of the fence, shouting with outstretched arms: “Officer! Here! Here…"
She is at the gate. He rushes towards her. The stranger closes the gate behind him with a latch and runs, leading him along, through a whole labyrinth of narrow passages, where there are several more gates. They run into the entrance, and there into the apartment opened by the lady.
Exhausted from loss of blood, Alexey falls unconscious to the floor in the hallway. The woman revives him by splashing water and then bandages him.
He kisses her hand. “Well, you are brave! – she says admiringly. “One Petliurist fell from your shots.” Alexey introduces himself to the lady, and she says her name: Yulia Alexandrovna Reiss.
Turbin sees a piano and ficus trees in the apartment. There is a photo of a man with epaulettes on the wall, but Yulia is alone at home. She helps Alexey get to the sofa.
He lies down. At night he starts to feel feverish. Julia is sitting nearby. Alexey suddenly throws his hand behind her neck, pulls her towards him and kisses her on the lips. Julia lies down next to him and strokes his head until he falls asleep.
Early in the morning she takes him out into the street, gets into a cab with him and brings him home to the Turbins.
Chapter 14
The next evening, Viktor Myshlaevsky and Karas appear. They come to the Turbins in disguise, without an officer's uniform, learning bad news: Alexei, in addition to his wound, also has typhus: his temperature has already reached forty.
Shervinsky also comes. Hot Myshlaevsky curses last words the hetman, his commander-in-chief and the entire “staff crowd”.
Guests stay overnight. Late in the evening everyone sits down to play screw - Myshlaevsky paired with Lariosik. Having learned that Lariosik sometimes writes poetry, Victor laughs at him, saying that out of all the literature he himself recognizes only “War and Peace”: “It was not written by some idiot, but by an artillery officer.”
Lariosik doesn't play cards well. Myshlaevsky yells at him for making wrong moves. In the midst of an argument, the doorbell suddenly rings. Is everyone frozen, assuming Petlyura’s night search? Myshlaevsky goes to open it with caution. However, it turns out that this is the postman who brought the same 63-word telegram that Lariosik’s mother wrote. Elena reads it: “A terrible misfortune befell my son, period Operetta actor Lipsky...”
There is a sudden and wild knock on the door. Everyone turns to stone again. But on the threshold - not those who came with a search, but a disheveled Vasilisa, who, as soon as he entered, fell into the hands of Myshlaevsky.
Chapter 15
This evening, Vasilisa and his wife Wanda hid the money again: they pinned it with buttons to the underside of the table top (many Kiev residents did this then). But it was not without reason that a few days ago some passer-by watched from a tree through the window as Vasilisa used her wall hiding place...
Around midnight today, a call comes to his and Wanda’s apartment. “Open up. Don’t go away, otherwise we’ll shoot through the door...” comes a voice from the other side. Vasilisa opens the door with trembling hands.
Three people enter. One has a face with small, deeply sunken eyes, similar to a wolf. The second is of gigantic stature, young, with bare, stubble-free cheeks and womanish habits. The third has a sunken nose, corroded on the side by a festering scab. They poke Vasilisa with a “mandate”: “It is ordered to conduct a thorough search of resident Vasily Lisovich, on Alekseevsky Spusk, house No. 13. Resistance is punishable by rosstril.” The mandate was allegedly issued by some “kuren” of the Petliura army, but the seal is very illegible.
The wolf and the mutilated man take out the Colt and Browning and point it at Vasilisa. He's dizzy. Those who come immediately begin to tap the walls - and by the sound they find the hiding place. “Oh, you bitch tail. Having sealed the pennies into the wall? We need to kill you!” They take money and valuables from the hiding place.
The giant beams with joy when he sees chevron boots with patent-leather toes under Vasilisa’s bed and begins to change into them, throwing off his own rags. “I’ve accumulated things, eaten my face, pink, like a pig, and you’re wondering what good people do they walk? – the Wolf hisses angrily at Vasilisa. “His feet are frozen, he rotted in the trenches for you, and you played the gramophones.”
The disfigured man takes off his pants and, left in only tattered underpants, puts on Vasilisa’s trousers hanging on the chair. The wolf exchanges his dirty tunic for Vasilisa’s jacket, takes a watch from the table and demands that Vasilisa write a receipt that he gave everything he took from him voluntarily. Lisovich, almost crying, writes on paper from Volk’s dictation: “Things... handed over intact during the search. And I have no complaints.” - “Who did you give it to?” - “Write: we received Nemolyak, Kirpaty and Otaman Uragan from the safety.”
All three leave, with a final warning: “If you attack us, our boys will kill you. Do not leave the apartment until the morning, you will be severely punished for this...”
After they leave, Wanda falls on the chest and sobs. "God. Vasya... But it wasn’t a search. They were bandits!” - “I understood it myself!” After marking time, Vasilisa rushes into the Turbins’ apartment...
From there everyone goes down to him. Myshlaevsky advises not to complain anywhere: no one will be caught anyway. And Nikolka, having learned that the bandits were armed with a Colt and a Browning, rushes to the box that he and Lariosik hung outside his window. It's empty! Both revolvers are stolen!
The Lisovichs beg for one of the officers to spend the rest of the night with them. Karas agrees to this. The stingy Wanda, inevitably becoming generous, treats him to pickled mushrooms, veal and cognac at her home. Satisfied, Karas lies down on the ottoman, and Vasilisa sits down in a chair next to her and mournfully laments: “Everything that was acquired through hard work, one evening went into the pockets of some scoundrels... I do not deny the revolution, I am a former cadet. But here in Russia the revolution has degenerated into Pugachevism. The main thing has disappeared - respect for property. And now I have an ominous confidence that only autocracy can save us! The worst dictatorship!
Chapter 16
In the Kiev Cathedral of Hagia Sophia there are a lot of people, you can’t squeeze through. A prayer service is held here in honor of the occupation of the city by Petliura. The crowd is surprised: “But the Petliurites are socialists. What does this have to do with priests? “Give the priests a blue one, so they can serve the devil mass.”
In the bitter cold, the people's river flows in procession from the temple to the main square. The majority of Petliura's supporters in the crowd gathered only out of curiosity. The women scream: “Oh, I want to spoil Petlyura. It seems like the wine is indescribably handsome.” But he himself is nowhere to be seen.
Petlyura’s troops are parading through the streets to the square under yellow and black banners. The mounted regiments of Bolbotun and Kozyr-Leshko are riding, the Sich Riflemen (who fought in the First World War against Russia for Austria-Hungary) are marching. Shouts of welcome can be heard from the sidewalks. Hearing the cry: “Get them!” Officers! I’ll show them off in uniform!” - several Petliurists grab two people indicated in the crowd and drag them into an alley. A volley is heard from there. The bodies of the dead are thrown right on the sidewalk.
Having climbed into a niche on the wall of one house, Nikolka watches the parade.
A small rally gathers near the frozen fountain. The speaker is lifted onto the fountain. Shouting: “Glory to the people!” and in his first words, rejoicing at the capture of the city, he suddenly calls the listeners “ comrades" and calls them: " Let's take an oath that we will not destroy weapons, docs red the ensign will not flutter over the entire working world. The Soviets of workers, villagers and Cossack deputies live..."
Up close, the eyes and black Onegin sideburns of Ensign Shpolyansky flash in the thick beaver collar. One of the crowd screams heart-rendingly, rushing towards the speaker: “Try yoga! This is a provocation. Bolshevik! Moskal! But a man standing next to Shpolyansky grabs the screamer by the belt, and another yells: “Brothers, the clock has been cut!” The crowd rushes to beat, like a thief, the one who wanted to arrest the Bolshevik.
The speaker disappears at this time. Soon in the alley you can see Shpolyansky treating him to a cigarette from a golden cigarette case.
The crowd drives the beaten “thief” in front of them, who sobs pitifully: “You are wrong! I am a famous Ukrainian poet. My last name is Gorbolaz. I wrote an anthology of Ukrainian poetry!” In response, they hit him on the neck.
Myshlaevsky and Karas are looking at this scene from the sidewalk. “Well done Bolsheviks,” Myshlaevsky says to Karasyu. “Did you see how cleverly the orator was melted down?” Why I love you is for your courage, motherfucker’s leg.”
Chapter 17
After a long search, Nikolka finds out that the Nai-Turs family lives on Malo-Provalnaya, 21. Today, straight from the religious procession, she runs there.
The door is opened by a gloomy lady in pince-nez, looking suspiciously. But upon learning that Nikolka has information about Naya, she lets him into the room.
There are two more women there, an old one and a young one. Both look like Naya. Nikolka understands: mother and sister.
“Well, tell me, well...” - the eldest stubbornly insists. Seeing Nikolka’s silence, she shouts to the young man: “Irina, Felix has been killed!” - and falls backwards. Nikolka also begins to cry.
He tells his mother and sister how heroically Nai died - and volunteers to go look for his body in the death chamber. Naya's sister, Irina, says that she will go with him...
The morgue has a disgusting, terrible smell, so heavy that it seems sticky; it seems that you can even see him. Nikolka and Irina hand the bill to the guard. He reports them to the professor and receives permission to look for the body among many brought in the last days.
Nikolka persuades Irina not to enter the room where naked human bodies, male and female, lie in stacks like firewood. Nikolka notices Naya's corpse from above. Together with the watchman, they take him upstairs.
That same night, Nye’s body is washed in the chapel, dressed in a jacket, a crown is placed on his forehead, and a crown is placed on his chest. St. George's ribbon. The old mother with a shaking head thanks Nikolka, and he cries again and leaves the chapel into the snow...
Chapter 18
On the morning of December 22, Alexey Turbin lies dying. The gray-haired professor-doctor tells Elena that there is almost no hope and leaves, leaving his assistant, Brodovich, with the patient just in case.
Elena, with a distorted face, goes into her room, kneels before the icon of the Mother of God and begins to pray passionately. “Most Pure Virgin. Ask your son to send a miracle. Why are you ending our family in one year? My mother took it from us, I don’t have a husband and never will, I already understand that clearly. And now you’re taking Alexei away too. How will Nikol and I be alone at a time like this?”
She's talking continuous flow, the eyes become crazy. And it seems to her that next to the torn tomb Christ appeared, risen, gracious and barefoot. And Nikolka opens the door to the room: “Elena, go to Alexei quickly!”
Alexey's consciousness returns. He understands: he has just passed - and did not destroy him - the most dangerous crisis of the disease. Brodovich, agitated and shocked, injects him with medicine from a syringe with a trembling hand.
Chapter 19
A month and a half passes. On February 2, 1919, a thinner Alexey Turbin stands at the window and again listens to the sounds of guns in the outskirts of the city. But now it is not Petliura who is coming to expel the hetman, but the Bolsheviks to Petliura. “The horror will come in the city with the Bolsheviks!” - Alexey thinks.
He has already resumed his medical practice at home, and now a patient is calling him. This is a thin young poet Rusakov, sick with syphilis.
Rusakov tells Turbin that he used to be a fighter against God and a sinner, but now he prays to the Almighty day and night. Alexey tells the poet that he can’t have cocaine, alcohol, or women. - “I have already moved away from temptations and bad people, - answers Rusakov. - The evil genius of my life, the vile Mikhail Shpolyansky, who persuades wives to debauchery and young men to vice, left for the city of the devil - Bolshevik Moscow, to lead hordes of angels to Kyiv, as they once went to Sodom and Gomorrah. Satan will come for him - Trotsky." The poet predicts that the people of Kiev will soon face even more terrible trials.
When Rusakov leaves, Alexey, despite the danger from the Bolsheviks, whose carts are already thundering through the city streets, goes to Julia Reiss to thank her for saving her and give her his late mother’s bracelet.
At Julia’s house, he, unable to bear it, hugs and kisses her. Having again noticed a photo of a man with black sideburns in the apartment, Alexey asks Yulia who it is. “This is my cousin, Shpolyansky. He has now left for Moscow,” Yulia answers, looking down. She is ashamed to admit that in fact Shpolyansky was her lover.
Turbin asks Yulia for permission to come again. She allows it. Coming out of Yulia on Malo-Provalnaya, Alexey unexpectedly meets Nikolka: he was on the same street, but in a different house - with Nai-Tours’ sister, Irina...
Elena Turbina receives a letter from Warsaw in the evening. A friend, Olya, who has gone there, informs: “your ex-husband Talberg is going from here not to Denikin, but to Paris, with Lidochka Hertz, whom he plans to marry.” Alexey enters. Elena hands him a letter and cries on his chest...
Chapter 20
The year 1918 was great and terrible, but 1919 was worse.
In the first days of February, the Haidamaks of Petliura flee Kyiv from the advancing Bolsheviks. Petlyura is no more. But will anyone pay for the blood he shed? No. Nobody. The snow will simply melt, the green Ukrainian grass will sprout and hide everything underneath...
At night in a Kyiv apartment, the syphilitic poet Rusakov reads Apocalypse, reverently frozen over the words: “...and there will be no more death; There will be no more crying, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away...”
And the Turbins' house is sleeping. On the first floor, Vasilisa dreams that there was no revolution and that he grew a rich harvest of vegetables in the garden, but round piglets came running, tore up all the beds with their snouts, and then began to jump at him, baring their sharp fangs.
Elena dreams that the frivolous Shervinsky, who is increasingly courting her, joyfully sings in an operatic voice: “We will live, we will live!!” “And death will come, we will die...” Nikolka, who comes in with a guitar, answers him, his neck is covered in blood, and on his forehead there is a yellow aureole with icons. Realizing that Nikolka will die, Elena wakes up screaming and sobs for a long time...
And in the outbuilding, smiling joyfully, the little stupid boy Petka sees a happy dream about a big diamond ball on a green meadow...
