- The White Guard
infobox Book |
name = The White Guard
title_orig = Белая гвардия
translator =
image_caption = Recent English paperback edition cover
author =Mikhail Bulgakov
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country =Russia
language = Russian
series =
genre =Novel
publisher = Художественная литература
release_date = 1966
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback &Paperback )
pages = 811 pp
isbn =
preceded_by =
followed_by ="The White Guard" ( _ru. Белая гвардия) is a novel by 20th century Russian writer
Mikhail Bulgakov , famed for his critically-acclaimed later work "The Master and Margarita ".History
"The White Guard" first appeared in serial form in the Soviet-era literary journal "Rossiya" in 1926, but was never fully released as the
magazine was closed by theUSSR government. Never reaching proper publication until after the death ofStalin , "The White Guard" was instead turned into the play "The Days of the Turbins", shown at theMoscow Arts Theatre until eventually being banned itself. Bulgakov then pleaded to Stalin himself to be permitted to leave the country, but instead Stalin personally gave him a job at the Moscow Arts Theatre, where he would still be working when he completed "The Master and Margarita", before he died in 1940. His widow managed to have "The White Guard" partially published in the literary journal "Moskva" in 1966, and the entire novel was finally published as a whole in 1973.The novel: settings, themes and narrative style
Set in Ukraine, beginning in late 1918, the novel concerns the fate of the Turbin family as the various armies of the
Russian Civil War - the Whites, the Reds, the German Army left over afterRussia left theFirst World War , and thepeasants ofUkraine fight over the city ofKiev . Real historical figures such as Petlyura and Skoropadsky feature as the various Turbins are caught up in the turbulent effects of the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War on their lives.Autobiographical elements
The novel contains many autobiographical elements. The younger Turbin brother is modeled after Bulgakov's own younger brother. The house of the Turbins is an exact description of the house of the Bulgakov family in Kiev (which currently is the
Mikhail Bulgakov Museum ).External links
*http://www.sovlit.com/whiteguard/ - an overview of the novel, also with information on the author.
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