posted on 07 Jan 2020

The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov

When I recently reviewed Mikhail Bulgakov’s short satire, The Fatal Eggs, I didn’t expect to be reviewing another neglected masterpiece by the great Russian satirist so quickly. But over the weekend I found myself reading his 1926 novel The White Guard, and it made me realise that even in a writing life that was cut dreadfully short – he died aged just 48 on the 10th March 1940 – Bulgakov still managed to have four quite distinct periods or styles.

His early satires, such as The Fatal Eggs and The Heart of a Dog, are politically charged, informed by science fiction and the work of writers such as HG Wells, and typically combine scientific, political and social satire. He was also a playwright and for several years wrote almost exclusively for the stage. What many regard as his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, is black, fantastical and allegorical. It is also his longest novel. But he also wrote in the Russian classical tradition of Pushkin, Chekhov, perhaps even Tolstoy and it is into this category that The White Guard falls. It is a novel of the Russian Revolution, or perhaps more accurately, of the chaos and cruelty of the civil war that followed the toppling of the Tsar.

The novel is set in the Ukraine capital of Kiev and begins in late 1918 – in fact, at time of reading, exactly 101 years ago, the events described taking place in mid-December 1918 – and it concerns the fate of the Turbin family as the various armies of the Ukrainian War of Independence – the Whites, the Reds, the Imperial German Army, Ukrainian nationalists, monarchists – fight for control of the city. An array of historical and military figures appear and in this regard the techniques of the novel are somewhat Tolstoyan – life is depicted as the raw stuff of history, great geo-political events, military manoeuvres and the surging forces of social and political change mix with the shifting fortunes and the domestic and intimate circumstances of the key characters.

One of the difficulties I have found with this novel, however, is that without some kind of introduction to the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggles that tore Ukraine apart and resulted in the deaths of thousands, the significance of the various factions and armed formations and the political and military figures involved can at times seem virtually impenetrable. In Bulgakov’s time, of course, no such gloss was necessary: the events described were barely history – indeed they were still unfolding, the battles and massacres described having taken place just six or seven years prior to his writing the novel.

In reading this I have decided not to worry too much about understanding who supports what or whom – who is Bolshevik, which forces are nationalist or monarchist, which support the failed coup by Skoropadsky’s forces (supported by occupying German forces), which support the nationalist autonomous regime of the Hetman of Ukraine (essentially a German puppet regime), or which support the nationalist and socialist forces led by Petlyura. Sometimes the shifting fortunes of war have to be inferred from the minutiae of Bulgakov’s descriptive writing – at one point, for example, the shape of military epaulettes being used to indicate that a formation has switched sides.

If this makes The White Guard sound a daunting read, it shouldn’t. The violence and confusion of war is a central theme and one must assume, as Bulgakov didn’t take more time to explain – he shows rather than explains – that the effect for the reader is therefore intentional.

My very old Fontana copy of the novel – superbly translated, by the way, by Misha Glenny’s father, Michael Glenny, in the late-60s – has no introduction, but later editions, such as that published by Vintage (translated in the early-2000s by Marian Schwartz) do and  for this reason may be preferable.

What must be said about The White Guard is that it is here that you will find some of Bulgakov’s finest descriptive writing and it is this and the novel’s superb evocation of atmosphere that I find gripping. Bulgakov is describing the atmosphere that prevails as KIev prepares for Bolshevik invasion. Here is just a taste:

"All spring…refugees had poured into the city. In apartments people slept on divans and chairs. They dined in vast numbers at rich men’s tables. Countless little restaurants were opened which stayed open for business far into the night, cafés which sold both coffee and women… New magazines sprang up overnight and the best pens in Russia began writing articles in them abusing the Bolsheviks. All day long cab-drivers drove their passengers from restaurant to restaurant, at night the band would strike up in the cabaret and through the tobacco smoke glowed the unearthly beauty of exhausted, white-faced drugged prostitutes…

All that summer the pressure of newcomers mounted – men with gristly-white faces and greyish, clipped toothbrush moustaches, operatic tenors with gleaming polished boots and insolent eyes, ex-members of the State Duma in pince-nez, whores with resounding names. Billiard players took girls to the shops to buy them lipstick, nail-polish, and ladies’ panties in gauzy chiffon, cut out in the most curious places."

Whatever difficulties the book may present in terms of its complex social, military and political context, these pale into insignificance when set beside the virtuosity of Bulgakov’s descriptive writing and creation of atmosphere. You only have to read it to see that he too is relishing the prose he is creating.

I have no recollection whether his longest novel The Master & Margarita is so richly or so evocatively written, but certainly The White Guard is the novel in which Bulgakov brought together his best prose, his grandest historical sweep and his most advanced techniques. It isn’t an easy read but it is a genuine classic of Russian realist literature, all too easily missed. One for the new year, perhaps.

 

Alun Severn

January 2020