Customer Reviews

White Guard

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4 star:		(9)
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While we are, as Americans, familiar with the story of the Stalinist purges and know something of post-Revolutionary Russian history, the Russian Civil War between the White and the Red is not as well-known.

But this is the crux of the struggle that subsequently determined Russian history. Many authors tried to give a view of that turbulent period; Pasternak in "Doctor Zhivago", Solzhenitzen marginally in "Ivan Denisovitch" (Denisovitch was in a gulag because he was a returnee from the German front and thus viewed as a political traitor) and Ayn Rand "We the Living." Bulgakov's novel is one of the richest, most touching and well-written I have read on this historical time.

He takes the story from the personal standpoint of a single family affected by the German betrayal of Russia to the incomprehensible brutality of the Civil War. The use of "white" and "red" as symbols in describing everyday objects and landscape is novelistic, the action is pure stage drama as you'd find in a play or film.

This is a far better novel than "Doctor Zhivago", which dealt with essentially the same subject (families torn apart by the Civil War and their way of life forever altered.) If you are at all interested in Russian history, I can't recommend "The White Guard" enough to you. I just loved it.

Jacques Barzun in "From Dawn to Decadence" says that those who live in the midst of a Revolution often do not perceive the tidal wave of historical forces sweeping by them. Nonetheless, they are acutely conscious of being caught up in a whirlwind. In "The White Guard", the characters do not expound in depth about the loss of the old order or imminent rise of the new one. But they are terribly aware of the pain and upheaval that marks their daily lives. Nikolka, Alexi, and Elena Turbin are members of a middle-class family in Kiev. The time is 1918 and the Socialist Petlyura's army is outside the city. Nikolka, Alexi, and their friends go out from the warmth of their apartment to do their part to thwart his advance. However, the Germans, who were their erstwhile protectors, leave the city and are accompanied by the military and political leaders of Kiev. The Turbins and their friends feel betrayed. After a brave but futile defense the `officers' (synonymous with upper middle class) rip off their identifying markings and attempt to blend in with the populous at large. Looming in the background are the dreaded Bolsheviks and one gets the strong sense that the present troubles are but a hint of what is to come. However, this imminence is not apparent to the Turbins. They can neither glean nor control the inexorable flow of history. However, they can "Go on living...and be kind to one another...". The White Guard is a challenging but rewarding novel that, like much of great literature, exhorts the human spirit to persevere through trials and suffering. It's exposition is simple but every incident is dense with meaning. A superior novel.

This was an excellent Russian novel set in 1918 Kiev. It follows the Turbins, a Tsarist middle class family in hiding. It is the end of WWI, and the Bolshevik Revolution is taking hold in Moscow. As loyalists to the Russian crown, the Turbins and friends are on the run from not only the Bolsheviks, but also the fierce Ukranian nationalist movement which is equally threatening. In fact, the Bolsheviks are still far away at Moscow, while the nationalists are much closer to home, and thus more of a direct threat. It is the story of a proud and pious people whose era is coming to an end. There is treachery around every corner, as the Turbins despairingly watch their beloved city of Kiev fall to the enemy. The prose is excellent, and the story is at once sad, humorous, and tragic. It is a pleasure to read and although fictional, I would consider it a good snapshot of the Russian Revolution, told from the perspective of the losing side.

The drama adaptation of this novel was a great success at the Moscow Arts Theatre in 1926, helping to launch the career of the great Stanivslasky. Why? Because Bulgakov dares to tell the story of the revolution from the point of view of the defeated White Guard - Bulgakov's side--, only within years of the victory of the Red Army.. Amazingly, it was played uncensored for a number of years and also a favorite play of Stalin's.

Yet even if Stalin allowed the performance, the press was unforgiving, allowing only three good reviews out of a total of 301 in six years, some of them bluntly calling the bourgeois hero Aleksei a "son of a b..." or the author a "senile dog"!!
-Yet Bulgakov continued to do exactly as he pleased, and he continued writing his "blasphemous" satires on Stalinism -in THE MASTER AND MARGARITA we see the Devil himself arrive in Stalinist Russia to try to "sort it out"-, while at the same time he kept sending agonic letters to Stalin in which he complained about not receiving the royalties due for his work... Indeed, when he eventually asked permission to migrate, Stalin offered him a job!
Hopefully.. knowing about the courageous spirit of the author and the peculiar friendship this story kindled between Stalin and his least disciplined subject will make people more interested to read it. ...

I am also astounded that only three people reviewed this book. The novel centers on the Turbin family living in Kiev, Ukraine during the Civil War (1918 - 1921) that followed World War I and the Russian Revolution. After the Russian empire fell apart in 1917, the Ukraine declared an independent state in early 1918 led by a parliamentary leader called a Hetman. The Hetman Skoropadsky in The White Guard is the second such leader. Skoropadsky assumed power with German support and intervention. Having just lost World War I and being not all that interested in the Ukraine anyway, the Germans could not support Skoropadsky enough to quell the inevitable power struggle. In the Ukraine, there arose armies of Tsarists (led by Deniken, mentioned briefly in the book), Bolsheviks (who, of course, ultimately win but are not major players in the book), and Socialist nationalists led by Simon Petlyura. The Turbins enlist in a local guard unit supporting the Hetman against Petlyura's much larger army. It soon becomes clear that their loyalty to the Hetman is misplaced, but the Turbins' loyalty to each other, their city, their friends and neighbors, and their commanding officers is heart-warming. Besides "heart-warming" there are also running gun battles, sabre decapitations, machine gun ambushes, and enough action to please all but the most hard core testosterone addicts. Petlyura is regarded by many Ukrainians as a great general (no opinion from me), but many readers will enjoy despising Petlyura for the pogroms he instituted that killed 100,000 Ukrainian Jews. Petlyura is called a "dirty Yid" at a point in the book that might give insight into Bulgakov's view on these pogroms. This book is both a taut thriller and a beautiful story of loyalty and love. Brian says "Check it out" (Sorry, Joe Bob).

bulgakov may have written master and margarita and black snow, both bizarre quirky novels, but white guard is undoubtedly the most human.
moving and touching it pulls at the heartstrings with its complexities of family relations and social environment.
beautiful

Bulgakov, while not as well known as most of his russian predecessors, is an exceptional writer. this novel, which covers only a short period of time immediately after world war I and before the bolshevik revolt, tells of the turbin family and their life in kiev. this aristocrat family has stong ties to tsarist russia and are caught between the retreating germans and the approaching socialists.

the turbins join the white guard to help defend their homeland. the war is portrayed with all of its horrors. there are heroes and villians. neighbors come closer together as the inevitable end comes nearer. civilization begins to collapse as the socialists enter the city cheered on by the common people.

bulgakov makes the reader feel the fear and the horror as only one could who has lived through the experience.

an excellent example of modern russian literature.

This is a tight and powerful novel. It is more or less unique in Russian literature in that it is the story of a "typical" (i.e. non-socialist) family affected by the Revolution and Civil War. Bulgakov grew up in Kiev and his love for the city comes through very strongly. When I read this book I knew very little about the historical events it describes but this didn't prove much of a problem in the long run.

Bulgakov presented an absorbing and fully realized novel. It not only brings the Turbins, a bourgeois family in Kiev, to life, but shows what it is like for decent, intelligent, idealistic people to live through a civil war on the losing side. (In the stage of the civil war covered in the novel, the Bolsheviks hardly figure at all; Bulgakov left before the Red Army triumphed.)

Not as romantic as _Dr. Zhivago_, _White Guard_ focuses more on the collapse of the old order without the replacement of any new one. It is not as daring and free-wheeling as _The Master and the Margarita_, but shows that M&M was no fluke. This was a very great writer whose work (like Pasternak's) was massively interfered with by the commisars of literature in the USSR--and by Stalin himself (who personally banned Bulgakov's play about another set of those on the losing side of the revolution, "Flight."

I have to agree with the other person who reviewed the White Guard, this book is fantastic. The details of the conflict are indeed confusing, but one does not need in-depth knowledge of the Russian Revolution to appreciate this passionate narrative. I highly recommend it.