Vadim Matveev
« White Guard» Bulgakov. Essay.
Bulgakov's novel is filled with historical events from beginning to end. 1918 Ukraine declared independence by proclaiming a hetman, in connection with which nationalist sentiments intensified, and ordinary Ukrainians immediately “forgot how to speak Russian, and the hetman forbade the formation of a voluntary army from Russian officers.” Petlyura played on the peasant instincts of property and independence and went to war against Kyiv.
The Russian officers turned out to be betrayed by the Russian High Command, who swore allegiance to the emperor. Absolutely flocks to the City different people, who fled from the Bolsheviks, and brings chaos into it. And in this city a drama unfolds. The bloody tragedy changed people's ideas about morality, honor, dignity, and justice. Each of the warring parties proved its understanding of the truth. For many people, choosing a goal has become a vital necessity. The leading theme of this work was the fate of the intelligentsia in the situation civil war and surrounding chaos.
The Turbin family is a representative of the Russian intelligentsia, which is connected by many threads with monarchical Russia. The Turbin family is a military family, where the elder brother Alexey is a colonel, the younger Nikolai is a cadet, and his sister Elena is married to Colonel Talberg. Turbines are men of honor. They despise lies and self-interest. For them it is true that “not a single person should break his word of honor, because otherwise it will be impossible to live in the world.” So said sixteen-year-old cadet Nikolai Turbin. And it was most difficult for people with such convictions to enter times of deception and dishonor. Turbines are forced to decide: how to live, who to go with, who and what to protect. The turbines and part of the intelligentsia take the most brutal blows of the revolution; it is they who “will have to suffer and die.”
Much attention in the novel is paid to the ethical component of all actions. Why did Alexey and Nikolka Turbins, Nai-Tours, Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky and other White Guards, cadets, officers, knowing that all their actions would lead to nothing, went to defend Kyiv from Petlyura’s troops, which were several times larger in number? They were forced to do this by officers' honor. And honor, according to Bulgakov, is something without which it would be impossible to live on earth. Myshlaevsky, with forty officers and cadets, in light overcoats and boots, protected the city in the cold. The question of honor and duty is connected with the problem of betrayal and cowardice. At the most critical moments of the Whites' situation in Kyiv, these terrible vices manifested itself in many military men who were at the head of the White Army. Bulgakov calls them “staff bastards.” This is the hetman of Ukraine, and those numerous military men who, at the first danger, left the city, among whom was Talberg. This is the antipode of the Turbins. He is a careerist and an opportunist, a coward, a person devoid of moral foundations and moral principles. It costs him nothing to change his beliefs, as long as it is beneficial for his career. In the February Revolution, he was the first to put on a red bow and took part in the arrest of General Petrov. But events quickly flashed; authorities in the city often changed. And Talberg did not have time to understand them. No matter how strong the position of the hetman, supported by German bayonets, seemed to him, but even this, so unshakable yesterday, today fell apart like dust.
All the heroes of the White Guard stood the test of time and suffering. Only Talberg, in pursuit of success and fame, lost the most valuable thing in the life of his friends, love, and his homeland. The turbines were able to save their home, save life values, and most importantly, honor, managed to resist the whirlpool of events that engulfed Russia. This family, following Bulgakov’s thought, is the embodiment of the color of the Russian intelligentsia, that generation of young people who are trying to honestly understand what is happening. This is the guard that made its choice and remained with its people, finding its place in the new Russia. Roman M. Bulgakova"White Guard" - a book of path and choice, a book of insight. And the entire novel is the author’s call for peace, justice, truth on earth.
The key problem of the novel will be the attitude of the heroes towards Russia. Bulgakov justifies those who were part of a single nation and fought for the ideals of officer honor and opposed the destruction of the Fatherland. He makes it clear to the reader that in a fratricidal war there is no right or wrong, everyone is responsible for the blood of their brother. The writer united with the concept of “White Guard” those who defended the honor of the Russian officer and man, and changed our ideas about those who, until recently, were evilly and pejoratively called “White Guards”, “contra”.
Bulgakov did not write historical novel, and the socio-psychological canvas with access to philosophical issues: what is the Fatherland, God, man, life, feat, goodness, truth. Everyone - white and red - are brothers, and in the war everyone turned out to be guilty of each other.
I think that it is not external events that convey the course of the revolution and the Civil War, not a change of power, but moral conflicts and contradictions that drive the plot"White Guard" . Historical events This is the background against which human destinies are revealed. Bulgakov is interested inner world a person caught in such a cycle of events when it is difficult to maintain his face, when it is difficult to remain himself. If at the beginning of the novel the heroes try to brush aside politics, then later, in the course of events, they are drawn into the very thick of revolutionary clashes. Alexey Turbin, like his friends, is for the monarchy. Everything new that comes into their life brings, it seems to him, only bad things. Completely politically undeveloped, he wanted only one peace, the opportunity to live joyfully near his mother and beloved brother and sister. And only at the end of the novel do the Turbins become disillusioned with the old and realize that there is no return to it.
The terrible elements of the revolution do not spare either the convinced Bolshevik leader or the doubting intellectual. She brings blood, grief and death. Violence begets even more violence and bitterness among people.
It is worth saying that Bulgakov viewed the events taking place from a universal human point of view, although his heroes are not at all averse to politics. Here are defenders of the monarchy, participants in the white movement, Petliurists, anarchists, and communists. But, despite what ideas they profess, who seized power in the city, blood is still being shed, people are dying, the value of human life. The time had come when it was necessary to determine one’s life and civic position.
Thus, we can safely outline the political positions of the novel's heroes. The political expediency of actions is explained, first of all, by their ethical ideals. Turbines love their home, monarchy and Tsarist Russia. They can't imagine how to live without it. This motivates them to take actions that can somehow influence the political situation. Life in a series of constant political upheavals forces family and their friends to look differently at their internal moral and ethical values.
A telling moment occurs when Alexei and Nikolka Turbine argue with Elena about “debt.” “I must” is constantly heard from the lips of men. But what should? To whom do I owe it? Few people understand this anymore. Elena tries to convince them that in times like these no one is obliged to do anything. Except perhaps to yourself. It is duty to oneself that drives the “white guard” in these times.
The White Guard describes the main sociocultural features of the era. The themes of romanticization of the white movement, general anger and hatred, a tormenting state of uncertainty and the question of an unknown future are clearly visible. The political process begins to be influenced by the masses, led by an ideology or popular idea. Someone sincerely believes in a bright future and decisively acts for the sake of home country, someone manages to find their own personal benefit in this chaos. There are so many political actors that power becomes like a toy that everyone wants to play with. There are Germans here, and Petlyura, and whites, and reds. Everyone is ready to take the most terrible measures to seize or maintain power. Issues of morality in such a situation fade into the background. But still, the Turbin family is trying to preserve their spiritual values, but I don’t understand how to live correctly. After all, moral standards change every day. Every day someone imposes their own values that are alien to others. Imposes by force. It is in times of national upheaval that the most important and most painful question arises for ordinary person prefer the personal-moral or give in to the public-political?!
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Www.a4format.ru All works school curriculum V summary: 11th grade. - M.: AST, 2004. I.O. Rodin, T.M. Pimenov Honor and Dishonor: the novel “The White Guard”, the play “Days of the Turbins” The main thing that Bulgakov entered into the literature of the 1920s was the novel “The White Guard” and the play “Days of the Turbins” that arose on its basis. The task that Bulgakov sets for himself is to show a picture of the civil war, which, according to his plan, should not only be written in the tradition of “War and Peace”, but also be guided in scope by Tolstoy’s epic. However, the assessments that Bulgakov himself gave to his work in different time, were also different. While Bulgakov “did not cool down” from this book, he considered it the most important in his destiny, said that from this novel “the sky will become hot” - and years later he recognized the novel as a “failed”. Perhaps this was because the epic the author dreamed of did not work out. Instead of a grandiose panorama, one, albeit bright, fragment appeared - 1918 in Kyiv. The Rossiya magazine, which published the novel in 1925, closed without completing the printing of even that part that could have become the first book of the epic. Further, perhaps, it was intended to capture the events of the Civil War in the South and prolong the fate of the heroes. One of distinctive features The novel is that personal tone that runs through the entire narrative. The book is like a slightly romanticized dream, a memoir of a war-weary man, exhausted by homelessness. Maximilian Voloshin, one of the first to recognize Bulgakov’s gift, noted that his literary debut can only be compared with the debuts of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Voloshin gave “The White Guard” a succinct definition, saying that its author embodied “the soul of Russian strife” in his novel. In the 1920s, there were enough writers who depicted the civil war from the perspective of the Reds (for example, “Chapaev” by Furmanov, “The Defeat” by Fadeev or “Cavalry” by Babel). There were also those who described it from the White Guard camp (for example, the works of General Krasnov). However, Bulgakov, while depicting the war, is in no hurry to take anyone’s side. He's trying to be objective. The author avoids in his book (at least in the part that was completed) a direct confrontation between the Reds and Whites. On the pages of the novel, the Whites are fighting the Petliurists. But the writer is occupied with a broader humanistic thought. This thought lies in the horror that fratricidal war, its all-destroying element, brings with it. In 1930, Bulgakov, in his letter to the government, spoke directly about his “great efforts to become dispassionately above the Reds and Whites.” Bulgakov defended eternal values in the novel: home, homeland, family. And he remained a realist in his narration: he spared neither the Petliurists, nor the Germans, nor the whites, and he did not say a word of untruth about the Reds, placing them as if behind the scenes (since his personal experience concerned mainly the white movement). The internal center from which any action in the novel begins is the dream of peace, a peaceful life for people. With undisguised sarcasm, Bulgakov depicts impostor rulers: Petlyura or the puppet of the Germans - the hetman. Against the peaceful backdrop of snow-white Kyiv, he also captures the raw reality of war: pain, blood, corpses, the cold horror of the dead. But the author also tries to explain the historical meaning of the apocalyptic disaster. A peaceful way of life that has collapsed into rubble, a bloody whirlwind sweeping over the city, is a kind of fate, inevitable retribution for the long indifference of the well-fed to peasant pain and misfortune. The novelty of Bulgakov’s novel lay primarily in the fact that five years after the end of the civil war, when mutual hatred had not yet subsided, he dared to show the officers of the White Guard not in the poster guise of an “enemy”, but as ordinary - good www.a4format.ru 2 and bad, tormented and misguided, smart and limited - people, showed them from the inside, and the best in this environment - with obvious sympathy. What attracts Bulgakov to these people? And in Alexey, and in Malyshev, and in Nai-Turs, and in Nikolka, he most of all values courageous straightforwardness and loyalty to honor. This word runs through the novel as a leitmotif. “Oh, damned doll, devoid of the slightest concept of honor!” - Alexey Turbin is indignant at Talberg, who escaped with the German headquarters train. And the author throws Dostoevsky’s book to him, opened with the phrase: “For a Russian man, honor is just an extra burden.” Officer's honor demanded the protection of the white banner, loyalty to the oath, the Tsar and the Fatherland, and Alexey Turbin painfully experiences the collapse of faith in the sanctity of these ideals. But for Bulgakov’s favorite heroes, honor is also loyalty to other people, comradeship, and duty to the younger and weaker. Colonel Malyshev dismisses the cadets to their homes, realizing the pointlessness of resistance. Nai-Tours fights to the end, and when he sees that the matter is lost, he rips off the shoulder straps of the cadet, almost a boy, and covers his retreat with a machine gun. Nikolka rushes through the bullet-riddled streets of the city, looking for Nai-Tours’s loved ones to inform them of his death, and then, risking herself, she wants to steal the body of the deceased commander, removing him from the mountain of corpses in the basement of the anatomical theater. The antipodes of these heroes are characters devoid of honor. This is Talberg, a stranger in the Turbino family, running after the Germans. This is the engineer Vasilisa, who lives on the lower floor of a house on Alekseevsky Spusk (the Turbins live on the upper floor). Vasilisa embodies the world of greed and opportunism. He, like Talberg, is a stranger to those living above him without calculations, open people . Robbed by bandits, Vasilisa, previously an ardent opponent of the old regime, now relies only on autocracy: “Yes, sir... The worst dictatorship you can imagine... Autocracy...” (this is a kind of parody of the recent words of Alexei Turbin that “only the monarchy can save Russia”). What for Alexei Turbin is the fruit of painful reflections and attempts to understand the course of history, for Vasilisa, a democrat until the first damage to herself, is only a way to adapt to the new government, to changed circumstances. Bulgakov makes it clear that people tend to make mistakes, doubt, search, and come to a new faith. But a man of honor makes this journey out of inner motivation, painfully parting with what he worshiped. For a person devoid of concepts of honor, such changes are easy: he, like Thalberg, simply changes the bow on the lapel of his coat, adapting to changing circumstances. Honor for Bulgakov is the main core that, in fact, makes a person human. And its presence, or absence, affects all areas in which a person in one way or another tries to realize himself. This also manifests itself in matters of faith in God (what in “The Master and Margarita” is embodied in the line dedicated to Yeshua). In Bulgakov's first novel there is no break with traditional religious consciousness, but there is no sense of thorough fidelity to it either. Elena's prayer for the salvation of her brother, addressed to the Mother of God, performs a miracle: Alexei recovers. Before Elena’s inner gaze appears the one whom Bulgakov would later call Yeshua Ha-Notsri, “completely resurrected, and blessed, and barefoot.” The light, transparent vision anticipates the late novel in its visibility: “the glass light of the heavenly dome, some unprecedented red-yellow sand blocks, olive trees...” - the landscape of ancient Judea. However, there is another character in the novel. Alexei Turbin's patient, the poet Rusakov, easily, like Vasilisa, moves from blasphemy, mockery of faith, to fanatical religiosity. The reason for this is the bad illness that has become attached to him. With undisguised sarcasm, Bulgakov shows how, having recently swept away the idea of God in his poems (“God’s Lair”) and cursed him with “obscene prayer,” Rusakov, before the specter of a shameful death, humbly begs forgiveness from the Almighty, begging not to be left without www.a4format.ru 3 hope. In this image one can clearly hear echoes that will later be embodied in the image of Ivan Bezdomny in The Master and Margarita. The literary environment is depicted with irony in the novel: everything here is superficial, selfish, and unsteady. This is the writer Shpolyansky, who is bored because he “hasn’t thrown bombs for a long time.” His courage is for show, and his deliberate belligerence resembles a game. Alexey Turbin, Colonel Malyshev and Nai-Tours take the war seriously. They are tired of it, tired of theft and betrayal, of blood and dirt, and most of all they dream of a peaceful life, the symbol of which in the novel is the Turbin house. The semantic culmination of the novel is prophetic dream Alexey Turbin. “I have neither profit nor loss from your faith,” God, who “appeared” to Sergeant Zhilin, simply argues in a peasant manner. “One believes, the other doesn’t believe, but your actions... you all have the same: now you’re at each other’s throats...” Both whites and reds, those who fell at Perekop, are equally subject to the highest mercy: “... all you are the same to me - killed in the battlefield.” The author of the novel did not pretend to be a religious person, and hell and heaven for him were most likely “so... a human dream.” But Elena says in her home prayer that “we are all guilty of blood.” The suffering and torment of a fratricidal war, the consciousness of the justice of what is called in the novel “the clumsy peasant’s anger,” and at the same time the pain from the violation of old human values led Bulgakov to the creation of his own unusual ethics - essentially non-religious, but preserving the features of the Christian moral tradition.
The civil war began on October 25, 1917, when Russia split into two camps: “white” and “red.” The bloody tragedy changed people's ideas about morality, honor, dignity, and justice. Each of the warring parties proved its understanding of the truth. For many people, choosing a goal has become a vital necessity. “Painful searches” are depicted in M. Bulgakov’s novel “”. The leading theme of this work was the fate of the intelligentsia in the context of civil war and surrounding chaos. The Turbin family is a representative of the Russian intelligentsia, which is connected with monarchical Russia by thousands of threads (family, service, education, oath). The Turbin family is a military family, where the elder brother Alexey is a colonel, the younger Nikolai is a cadet, and his sister Elena is married to Colonel Talberg. Turbines are men of honor. They despise lies and self-interest. For them it is true that “not a single person should break his word of honor, because otherwise it will be impossible to live in the world.” So said sixteen-year-old cadet Nikolai Turbin. And it was most difficult for people with such convictions to enter times of deception and dishonor.
Turbines are forced to decide: how to live, who to go with, who and what to protect. At the Turbins' party they talk about the same thing. In the Turbins' house we can find high culture life, traditions, human relationships. The inhabitants of this house are completely devoid of arrogance and stiffness, hypocrisy and vulgarity. They are hospitable and cordial, condescending to the weaknesses of people, but irreconcilable to everything that is beyond the threshold of decency, honor, and justice. Turbines and part of the intelligentsia, about whom the novel says: army officers, “hundreds of warrant officers and second lieutenants, former students,” were swept out of both capitals by the blizzard of the revolution. But it is they who bear the most severe blows of this blizzard; it is they who “will have to suffer and die.” Over time, they will understand what a thankless role they have taken on. But that will happen over time. In the meantime, we are convinced that there is no other way out, that mortal danger hangs over the entire culture, over that eternal thing that has grown over centuries, over Russia itself. The Turbins were taught a history lesson, and when making their choice, they remained with the people and accepted new Russia, they flock under white banners to fight to the death.
Bulgakov paid great attention to the issue of honor and duty in the novel. Why did Alexey and Nikol-ka Turbins, Nai-Tours, Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky and other White Guards, cadets, officers, knowing that all their actions would lead to nothing, went to defend Kyiv from troops that were several times superior in number Petlyura? They were forced to do this by officers' honor. And honor, according to Bulgakov, is something without which it would be impossible to live on earth. Myshlaevsky, with forty officers and cadets, in light overcoats and boots, protected the city in the cold. The question of honor and duty is connected with the problem of betrayal and cowardice. At the most critical moments of the position of the whites in Kyiv, these terrible vices manifested themselves in many military men who were at the head of the white army. Bulgakov calls them staff bastards. This is the hetman of Ukraine, and those numerous military men who, at the first danger, “rat-run” from the city, including Talberg, and those because of whom the soldiers froze in the snow near Post. Thalberg is a white officer. Graduated from university and military academy. “This is the best thing that should have happened in Russia.” Yes, “it should have been...” But “double-layered eyes”, “rat run”, when he takes his feet away from Petliura, leaving his wife and her brothers. “A damn doll, devoid of the slightest concept of honor!” - that's what this Thalberg is. Bulgakov's white cadets are ordinary youths from a certain class environment who are collapsing with their noble-officer “ideals.”
In The White Guard, events rage around the Turbinsk house, which, in spite of everything, remains an island of beauty, comfort and peace. In the novel "" the Turbins' house is compared to a vase that broke unnoticed and from which all the water slowly flowed out. Home for a writer is Russia, and therefore the process of death old Russia during the civil war and the death of the Turbin house as a consequence of the death of Russia. The young Turbins, although they are drawn into the whirlpool of these events, retain to the end what is especially dear to the writer: an ineradicable love of life and love for the beautiful and eternal.
The novel "" reflects the events of the civil war of the period 1918-1919. in his hometown Kyiv. Bulgakov views these events not from class or political positions, but from purely human ones. No matter who captures the city - the hetman, the Petliurists or the Bolsheviks - blood inevitably flows, hundreds of people die in agony, while others become even more terribly cruel. Violence begets more violence. This is what worries the writer most of all. He observes the monarchical enthusiasm of his favorite heroes with a sympathetic and ironic smile. Not without a smile, albeit a sad one, the author describes in the finale the Bolshevik sentry who, falling into sleep, sees a red sparkling sky, and his soul was “instantly filled with happiness.” And he ridicules the loyal sentiments in the crowd during the parade of Petliura’s army with direct mockery. Any politics, no matter what ideas it is implicated in, remains deeply alien to Bulgakov. He understood the officers of the “finished and collapsed regiments” of the old army, “ensigns and second lieutenants, former students... knocked off the screws of life by war and revolution.” He could not condemn them for their hatred of the Bolsheviks - “direct and ardent.” He understood no less the peasants, with their anger against the Germans who mocked them, against the hetman, under whom the landowners attacked them, and he understood their “tremor of hatred when catching officers.”
Today we all realize that the civil war was one of the most tragic pages in the history of the country, that the enormous losses that both the Reds and the Whites suffered in it are our common losses. Bulgakov viewed the events of this war in precisely this way, striving to “become dispassionately above the reds and whites.” For the sake of those truths and values that are called eternal, and first of all for the sake of human life itself, which in the heat of the civil war almost ceased to be considered a value at all.
“A persistent portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in our country” - this is how Bulgakov himself defines his literary credo. With what sympathy Bulgakov describes the Turbins, Myshla-evsky, Malyshev, Nai-Tours! Each of them is not without sin, but these are people of true decency, honor, and courage. And for the sake of these merits, the writer easily forgives them for minor sins. And most of all he values everything that constitutes beauty and joy. human existence. In the Turbins' house, despite the terrible and bloody deeds of 1918, there is comfort, peace, flowers. With particular tenderness the author describes human spiritual beauty, the one that encourages his heroes to forget about themselves when they need to take care of others, and even quite naturally, as a matter of course, to expose themselves to bullets in order to save others, as Nai-Tours does and Turbines are ready to do at any moment, and Myshlaevsky, and Karas.
And another one eternal value, perhaps the biggest thing that is constantly looked after in the novel is love. “They will have to suffer and die, but in spite of everything, love overtakes almost every one of them: Alexei, Nikolka, Elena, Myshlaevsky and Lariosik - Shervinsky’s unlucky rivals. And this is wonderful, because without love life itself is impossible,” the writer seems to claim. The author invites the reader, as if from eternity, from the depths, to look at events, at people, at their entire lives in this terrible 1918.
Composition
The civil war began on October 25, 1917, when Russia split into two camps: “white” and “red.” The bloody tragedy changed people's ideas about morality, honor, dignity, and justice. Each of the warring parties proved its understanding of the truth. For many people, choosing a goal has become a vital necessity. The “painful search” is depicted in M. Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard”. The leading theme of this work was the fate of the intelligentsia in the context of civil war and surrounding chaos. The Turbin family is a representative of the Russian intelligentsia, which is connected with monarchical Russia by thousands of threads (family, service, education, oath). The Turbin family is a military family, where the elder brother Alexey is a colonel, the younger Nikolai is a cadet, and his sister Elena is married to Colonel Talberg. Turbines are men of honor. They despise lies and self-interest. For them it is true that “not a single person should break his word of honor, because otherwise it will be impossible to live in the world.” So said sixteen-year-old cadet Nikolai Turbin. And it was most difficult for people with such convictions to enter times of deception and dishonor.
Turbines are forced to decide: how to live, who to go with, who and what to protect. At the Turbins' party they talk about the same thing. In the Turbins' house we can find a high culture of life, traditions, and human relations. The inhabitants of this house are completely devoid of arrogance and stiffness, hypocrisy and vulgarity. They are hospitable and cordial, condescending to the weaknesses of people, but irreconcilable to everything that is beyond the threshold of decency, honor, and justice. Turbines and part of the intelligentsia, about whom the novel says: army officers, “hundreds of warrant officers and second lieutenants, former students,” were swept out of both capitals by the blizzard of the revolution. But it is they who bear the most severe blows of this blizzard; it is they who “will have to suffer and die.” Over time, they will understand what a thankless role they have taken on. But that will happen over time. In the meantime, we are convinced that there is no other way out, that mortal danger hangs over the entire culture, over that eternal thing that has grown over centuries, over Russia itself. The Turbins are taught a history lesson, and, making their choice, they remain with the people and accept the new Russia, they flock to the white banners to fight to the death.
Bulgakov paid great attention to the issue of honor and duty in the novel. Why did Alexey and Nikol-ka Turbins, Nai-Tours, Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky and other White Guards, cadets, officers, knowing that all their actions would lead to nothing, went to defend Kyiv from troops that were several times superior in number Petlyura? They were forced to do this by officers' honor. And honor, according to Bulgakov, is something without which it would be impossible to live on earth. Myshlaevsky, with forty officers and cadets, in light overcoats and boots, protected the city in the cold. The question of honor and duty is connected with the problem of betrayal and cowardice. At the most critical moments of the position of the whites in Kyiv, these terrible vices manifested themselves in many military men who were at the head of the white army. Bulgakov calls them staff bastards. This is the hetman of Ukraine, and those numerous military men who, at the first danger, “rat-run” from the city, including Talberg, and those because of whom the soldiers froze in the snow near Post. Thalberg is a white officer. Graduated from the university and military academy. “This is the best thing that should have happened in Russia.” Yes, “it should have been...” But “double-layered eyes”, “rat run”, when he takes his feet away from Petliura, leaving his wife and her brothers. “A damn doll, devoid of the slightest concept of honor!” - that's what this Thalberg is. Bulgakov's white cadets are ordinary youths from a certain class environment who are collapsing with their noble-officer “ideals.”
In The White Guard, events rage around the Turbinsk house, which, in spite of everything, remains an island of beauty, comfort and peace. In the novel “The White Guard,” the Turbins’ house is compared to a vase that broke unnoticed and from which all the water slowly flowed out. Home for the writer is Russia, and therefore the process of the death of old Russia during the civil war and the death of the Turbin house as a consequence of the death of Russia. The young Turbins, although they are drawn into the whirlpool of these events, retain to the end what is especially dear to the writer: an ineradicable love of life and love for the beautiful and eternal.
The novel “The White Guard” reflects the events of the civil war of 1918-1919. in his hometown of Kyiv. Bulgakov views these events not from class or political positions, but from purely human ones. No matter who captures the city - the hetman, the Petliurists or the Bolsheviks - blood inevitably flows, hundreds of people die in agony, while others become even more terribly cruel. Violence begets more violence. This is what worries the writer most of all. He observes the monarchical enthusiasm of his favorite heroes with a sympathetic and ironic smile. Not without a smile, albeit a sad one, the author describes in the finale the Bolshevik sentry who, falling into sleep, sees a red sparkling sky, and his soul was “instantly filled with happiness.” And he ridicules the loyal sentiments in the crowd during the parade of Petliura’s army with direct mockery. Any politics, no matter what ideas it is implicated in, remains deeply alien to Bulgakov. He understood the officers of the “finished and collapsed regiments” of the old army, “ensigns and second lieutenants, former students... knocked off the screws of life by war and revolution.” He could not condemn them for their hatred of the Bolsheviks - “direct and ardent.” He understood no less the peasants, with their anger against the Germans who mocked them, against the hetman, under whom the landowners attacked them, and he understood their “tremor of hatred when catching officers.”
Today we all realize that the civil war was one of the most tragic pages in the history of the country, that the enormous losses that both the Reds and the Whites suffered in it are our common losses. Bulgakov viewed the events of this war in precisely this way, striving to “become dispassionately above the reds and whites.” For the sake of those truths and values that are called eternal, and first of all for the sake of human life itself, which in the heat of the civil war almost ceased to be considered a value at all.
“A persistent portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in our country” - this is how Bulgakov himself defines his literary credo. With what sympathy Bulgakov describes the Turbins, Myshla-evsky, Malyshev, Nai-Tours! Each of them is not without sin, but these are people of true decency, honor, and courage. And for the sake of these merits, the writer easily forgives them for minor sins. And most of all he values everything that makes up the beauty and joy of human existence. In the Turbins' house, despite the terrible and bloody deeds of 1918, there is comfort, peace, flowers. With particular tenderness, the author describes human spiritual beauty, the very one that encourages his heroes to forget about themselves when they need to take care of others, and even quite naturally, as a matter of course, to expose themselves to bullets in order to save others, as Nai-Tours does and Turbines, Myshlaevsky, and Karas are ready to make at any moment.
And one more eternal value, perhaps the greatest, constantly nurtured in the novel is love. “They will have to suffer and die, but in spite of everything, love overtakes almost every one of them: Alexei, Nikolka, Elena, Myshlaevsky and Lariosik - Shervinsky’s unlucky rivals. And this is wonderful, because without love life itself is impossible,” the writer seems to claim. The author invites the reader, as if from eternity, from the depths, to look at events, at people, at their entire lives in this terrible 1918.
Honor
- Honor— moral qualities of a person worthy of respect and pride; its corresponding principles. (By " Explanatory dictionary" S.I. Ozhegova)
- “The inner moral dignity of a person, valor, honesty, nobility of soul and clear conscience”, “conditional, secular, everyday nobility” (According to V.I. Dahl).
- Honor is a good, unblemished reputation, an honest name. A man of honor will not allow his good opinion, the name of his family, company, or his own person to be tarnished; he will not humiliate himself with lies, flattery,
- Honor - honor, respect. We salute the people who persevered difficult situations, showed miracles of courage and heroism, defending the people, the country, and specific people in one or another difficult situation.
- Soldiers and officers salute - this is a symbol of their loyalty to the Motherland and the people.
- Honor is decency, honesty, conscientiousness. This is a moral quality that allows you to highly value a person for his actions, attitude towards people and country.
- A man of honor acts nobly in any situation, with dignity, gracefully, without humiliating himself with slander, foul language, or insult. He always resists evil, aggression, and is ready to protect the weak, everyone who needs help.
- A man of honor will not ignore injustice, the humiliation of one person by another.
- It is human nature to have his own principles and ideals. A man of honor is always faithful to them. Of course, in this case we are talking about high moral principles.
- Honor is the one moral basis, the core that keeps a person from betrayal, deceit, and meanness.
- Honor, conscience, nobility, loyalty, decency - they coexist in a person, complementing the moral character of the individual.
Thus, to be a man of honor means to live according to the laws of morality, fulfilling moral, professional and simply human duty.
Dishonor
- Dishonor– desecration of honor and dignity; insult, shame; lack of honor, dishonorable behavior
- Dishonorable - one who has no honor, dignity, nobility - worthy of respect moral qualities, principles.
- A dishonest person is capable of the most disgusting acts - from lies, hypocrisy, meanness to betrayal. Such people put themselves first; they are egoists who think about their well-being, for which they are ready to sacrifice other people, dishonoring them.
- People without honor and conscience have always been despised by the people. One of the most terrible immoral qualities is dishonor.
- It is very difficult to regain your good name, even if you stumble a little. Therefore, it is no coincidence that there is a proverb among the people: “Take care of your honor from a young age.”
Notice how much you can write and say about honor, and how stingy the words are about dishonor. One definition is enough - “dishonor is the absence of honor and conscience” to understand how low the people who are characterized by this quality are.
We must strive to be better, to improve ourselves. Let the word “dishonor” never be uttered against you!
Material prepared by: Melnikova Vera Aleksandrovna
