The White Guard

12 hrs. 9 min.

Classics

Language Russian

Author Mikhail Bulgakov

Narrator Semyon Yarmolinets

Description

This novel by Mikhail Bulgakov is written about the troubled time when everything external was collapsing before everyone’s eyes, when power changed overnight, and there was no certainty about tomorrow. The heroes of the novel are representatives of a disappearing Russia: the nobility and the officer class. In those difficult days, they found something to lean on. Eternal values, mutual love, family, and mutual assistance became their support on which they hoped to stand firm amid the complicated revolutionary confusion.
The novel tells about the Turbin family, about war, about heroes and traitors—about a time when a caretaker’s shout could kill, and an unknown woman could save; when life depended on chance and blood was spilled right in the streets.
It seems the novel’s heroes had neither hope nor meaning left. But they continue to live, and not just somehow. They continue to believe and pray, remaining people in the truest sense.
There are places in the novel that make you smile. Bulgakov’s humor, like a ray of sunshine, breaks through the narrative about the harsh events of those days.
War turns everything upside down. And although the end of the novel seems optimistic, the Bolsheviks quietly enter the city, and the reader understands that the heroes’ former life—life before—will no longer exist…