The clock strikes three and a minuet is played.

A curtain

“Whoever goes hunting loses his place” (French). Translations of foreign texts are given according to the first edition of the play: Bulgakov M. Days of the Turbins. Last days. M., 1955.

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“DAYS OF THE TURBINES”, play. The premiere took place at the Moscow Art Theater on October 5, 1926. In April 1929, D.T. were removed from the repertoire, and on February 16, 1932 they were resumed and remained on the stage of the Art Theater until June 1941. In total, in 1926-1941. the play has been played 987 times. During Bulgakov's lifetime it was not published. For the first time: Bulgakov M. Days of the Turbins. Last days (A.S. Pushkin). M.: Art, 1955. In 1934, two translations of D. T. into English, made by Y. Lyons and F. Bloch, were published in Boston and New York. In 1927, K. Rosenberg’s translation into German of the second edition of D.T., which in the Russian original bore the title “The White Guard” (the publication had a double title: “Days of the Turbins. The White Guard”), appeared in Berlin. D.T. were written based on the novel “The White Guard,” and the first two editions of the play bore the same name. Bulgakov began work on the first edition of the play “The White Guard” in July 1925. On April 3, 1925, he received an invitation from the Moscow Art Theater director B.I. Vershilov to come to the theater, where he was offered to write a play based on the novel “The White Guard.” Bulgakov’s idea for such a play originated in January 1925. To some extent, this idea continued the idea realized in Vladikavkaz in his early play “The Turbine Brothers” in 1920. Then the autobiographical heroes (Turbina is the maiden name of Bulgakov’s grandmother on his mother’s side , Anfisa Ivanovna, married to Pokrovskaya) were transported to the time of the revolution of 1905. In the play “The White Guard,” as in the novel, Bulgakov used his own memories of life in Kiev at the turn of 1918-1919. At the beginning of September 1925, he read the first edition of the play in the theater in the presence of Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky (Alekseev) (1863-1938). Almost all the plot lines of the novel were repeated here and its main characters were preserved. Alexey Turbin was still a military doctor, and Colonels Malyshev and Nai-Tours were present among the characters. This edition did not satisfy the Moscow Art Theater because of its length and the presence of overlapping characters and episodes. In the next edition, which Bulgakov read to the Moscow Art Theater troupe at the end of October 1925, Nai-Tours had already been eliminated and his remarks were transferred to Colonel Malyshev. And by the end of January 1926, when the final distribution of roles in the future performance was made, Bulgakov also removed Malyshev, turning Alexei Turbin into a career artillery colonel, a real exponent of the ideology of the white movement. Let us note that in 1917 he became an artillery officer. The husband of Bulgakov's sister Nadezhda, Andrei Mikhailovich Zemsky (1892-1946), served. Perhaps acquaintance with his son-in-law prompted the playwright to make the main characters of D.T. artillerymen. Now the hero closest to the author, Colonel Turbin, gave the white idea catharsis with his death. By this point the play was mostly set. Subsequently, under the influence of censorship, the scene at the Petliura headquarters was filmed, because the Petliura freemen in their cruel element were very reminiscent of the Red Army. Let us note that in the early editions, as in the novel, the “turnaround” of the Petliurists in red was emphasized by the “red tails” (shlykas) on their hats. The name “White Guard” raised objections. K. S. Stanislavsky, under pressure from the General Repertoire Committee, proposed replacing it with “Before the End,” which Bulgakov categorically rejected. In August 1926, the parties agreed on the name “Days of the Turbins” (the “Turbin Family” appeared as an intermediate option). On September 25, 1926, D.T. were permitted by the Main Repertoire Committee only in the Moscow Art Theater. In the last days before the premiere, a number of changes had to be made, especially in the finale, where the ever-increasing sounds of the “Internationale” appeared, and Myshlaevsky was forced to say a toast to the Red Army and express his readiness to serve in it: “At least I know that I will serve in the Russian army."

People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs K.E. Voroshilov played a major role in the resolution of the play. On October 20, 1927, Stanislavsky sent him a letter of gratitude: “Dear Klementy Efremovich, allow me to bring you heartfelt gratitude from the Moscow Art Theater for your help in resolving the play “Days of the Turbins” - with which you provided great support at a difficult moment for us.”

D.T. enjoyed unique success with the public. This was the only play in the Soviet theater where the white camp was shown not as a caricature, but with undisguised sympathy, and its main representative, Colonel Alexei Turbin, was endowed with obvious autobiographical features. The personal integrity and honesty of the Bolshevik opponents were not questioned, and the blame for the defeat was placed on the headquarters and generals who failed to propose a political program acceptable to the majority of the population and properly organize the White army. For the first season 1926/27. D.T. was performed 108 times, more than any other performance in Moscow theaters. The play was loved by the intelligent non-party public, while the party public sometimes tried to create obstruction. The second wife of the playwright L. E. Belozerskaya in her memoirs reproduces a friend’s story about the Moscow Art Theater performance: “The 3rd act of “Days of the Turbins” was underway... The battalion (more correctly, the division. - B. S.) was destroyed. The city was taken by the Haidamaks. The moment is tense. There is a glow in the window of the Turbino house. Elena and Lariosik are waiting. And suddenly a faint knock... Both listen... Suddenly, an excited female voice comes from the audience: “Open up!” These are ours!” This is the merging of theater with life that a playwright, actor and director can only dream of.”

But here’s how D.T. was remembered by a person from another camp - the critic and censor Osaf Semenovich Litovsky, who did a lot to expel Bulgakov’s plays from the theatrical stage: “The premiere of the Art Theater was remarkable in many respects, and primarily because the main participant in it was way youth. In “Days of the Turbins,” Moscow for the first time met with such actors as Khmelev, Yanshin, Dobronravov, Sokolova, Stanitsyn - artists whose creative biography took shape in Soviet times.

The utmost sincerity with which the young actors portrayed the experiences of the “knights” of the white idea, the evil punishers, the executioners of the working class, aroused the sympathy of one, the most insignificant part of the audience, and the indignation of another.

Whether the theater wanted it or not, it turned out that the performance called on us to have pity, to treat the lost Russian intellectuals in and out of uniform as human beings.

Nevertheless, we could not help but see that a new, young generation of artists from the Art Theater was entering the stage, who had every reason to stand on a par with the glorious old men.

And indeed, soon we had the opportunity to enjoy the wonderful creativity of Khmelev and Dobronravov.

On the evening of the premiere, all the participants in the performance literally seemed like a miracle: Yanshin, Prudkin, Stanitsyn, Khmelev, and especially Sokolova and Dobronravov.

It is impossible to convey how impressed Dobronravov in the role of Captain Myshlaevsky was with his exceptional, even for Stanislavsky’s students, simplicity.

Years have passed. Toporkov began to play the role of Myshlaevsky. And we, the audience, really want to say to the participants of the premiere: never forget Myshlaevsky - Dobronravov, this simple, slightly clumsy Russian man, who truly deeply understood everything, very simply and sincerely, without any solemnity and pathos, admitted his bankruptcy.

Here he is, an ordinary infantry officer (in reality, an artillery officer - B.S.), of which we have seen many on the Russian stage, doing the most ordinary thing: sitting on his bunk and pulling off his boots, at the same time dropping individual words of recognition of surrender. And behind the scenes - “Internationale”. Life goes on. Every day you will need to pull the official, and maybe even military, burden...

Looking at Dobronravov, I thought: “Well, this one will probably be the commander of the Red Army, he will definitely be!”

Myshlaevsky - Dobronravov was much smarter and more significant, deeper than his Bulgakov prototype (and Bulgakov himself was smarter and more significant than his critic Litovsky - B.S.).

The director of the play was Ilya Yakovlevich Sudakov (1890-1969), and the main director was K. S. Stanislavsky.

Almost all the criticism unanimously scolded D.T. Thus, the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky (1875-1933) argued (in Izvestia on October 8, 1926) that the play reigns in “the atmosphere of a dog’s wedding around some red-haired wife friend,” considered it “a semi-apology for the White Guard,” and later, in 1933, called D.T. “a drama of restrained, even if you want, crafty capitulation.” In an article in the magazine “New Spectator” dated February 2, 1927, Bulgakov emphasized the following: “We are ready to agree with some of our friends that “Days of the Turbins” is a cynical attempt to idealize the White Guard, but we have no doubt that it is “Days of the Turbins” - an aspen stake in her coffin. Why? Because for a healthy Soviet viewer, the most ideal slush cannot present a temptation, and for dying active enemies and for passive, flabby, indifferent ordinary people, the same slush cannot provide either emphasis or charge against us. Just as a funeral hymn cannot serve as a military march.” The playwright, in a letter to the government on March 28, 1930, noted that his scrapbook had accumulated 298 “hostile and abusive” reviews and 3 positive ones, and the vast majority of them were dedicated to D.T. Almost the only positive response to the play was N. Rukavishnikov’s review in “Komsomolskaya Pravda” dated December 29, 1926. This was a response to an abusive letter from the poet Alexander Bezymensky (1898-1973), who called Bulgakov “a new bourgeois brat.” Rukavishnikov tried to convince Bulgakov’s opponents that “on the threshold of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution... it is completely safe to show the viewer living people, that the viewer is quite tired of both the shaggy priests from the propaganda and the pot-bellied capitalists in top hats,” but none of the critics were so and didn't convince.

In D. T. Bulgakov, as in the novel “The White Guard,” his goal was, in his own words from a letter to the government on March 28, 1930, “a persistent portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in our country. In particular, the depiction of an intellectual-noble family, by the will of an immutable historical fate, thrown into the camp of the White Guard during the Civil War, in the traditions of “War and Peace”. Such an image is quite natural for a writer who is closely connected with the intelligentsia.” However, the play depicts not only the best, but also the worst representatives of the Russian intelligentsia. Among the latter is Colonel Talberg, who is concerned only with his career. In the second edition of the play “The White Guard,” he quite selfishly explained his return to Kyiv, which the Bolsheviks were about to occupy: “I am perfectly aware of the matter. The Hetmanate turned out to be a stupid operetta. I decided to return and work in contact with the Soviet authorities. We need to change political milestones. That's all". Talberg's prototype was Bulgakov's son-in-law, the husband of Varya's sister, Leonid Sergeevich Karum (1888-1968), a career officer who, despite his previous service with Hetman Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945) and General Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872-1947) ), a teacher at the Red Army rifle school (because of Talberg, Bulgakov quarreled with the Karum family). However, for censorship, such an early “change of leadership” of such an unsympathetic character as Talberg turned out to be unacceptable. In the final text of D.T., he had to explain his return to Kiev with a business trip to the Don to General P.N. Krasnov (1869-1947), although it remained unclear why Talberg, who was not distinguished by courage, chose such a risky route, with a stop in the city, which while the Petliurists, hostile to the whites, were still occupying it and were about to be occupied by the Bolsheviks. The sudden outbreak of love for his wife Elena as an explanation for this act looked rather false, since before, while hastily leaving for Berlin, Thalberg did not show concern for the wife he left behind. Bulgakov needed the return of the deceived husband right before Elena’s wedding with Shervinsky to create a comic effect and the final shame of Vladimir Robertovich.

The image of Talberg, promoted to colonel in D.T., came out even more repulsive than in the novel “The White Guard”. L.S. Karum wrote about this in his memoirs “My Life. A novel without lies”: “Bulgakov remade the first part of his novel into a play called “Days of the Turbins.” This play was very sensational, because for the first time on the Soviet stage, although not direct opponents of the Soviet regime, but still indirect ones, were brought out. But the “officers-drinking buddies” are somewhat artificially colored, arousing unnecessary sympathy for themselves, and this caused objections to staging the play on stage.

The case in the novel and play is played out in a family whose members serve in the ranks of the Hetman’s troops against the Petliurists, so that there is practically no white anti-Bolshevik army.

The play nevertheless suffered a lot of pain before it got to the stage. Bulgakov and the Moscow Art Theater, which staged this play, had to deepen it many times. So, for example, at one party in the Turbins’ house, officers - all monarchists - sing the anthem. Censorship demanded that the officers be drunk and sing the anthem out of tune, in drunken voices.

I read the novel a long time ago, I saw the play several years ago (Karum wrote his memoirs in the 60s - B.S.), and therefore for me the novel and the play merged into one.

I just have to say that my similarity was made less similar in the play, but Bulgakov could not deny himself the pleasure so that someone would not hit me in the play, and my wife would marry someone else. Only Talberg (a negative type) goes to Denikin’s army, the rest disperse, after the capture of Kyiv by the Petliurists, in all directions.

I was very excited, because my acquaintances recognized the Bulgakov family in the novel and play, and should have recognized or suspected that Talberg was me. This trick of Bulgakov also had an empirical and practical meaning. He strengthened the conviction about me that I was a hetman’s officer, and among the local Kiev OGPU (if the OGPU for some reason did not know that Talberg served Hetman Skoropalsky, then there could be no doubts about his presence in Denikin’s and Wrangel’s armies, and from the point of view of the Soviet government, service in the White Army was a much greater sin than a short stay in the troops of the ephemeral Ukrainian state. - B.S.). After all, “white” officers could not serve in the “red” army. Of course, the writer is free in his work, and Bulgakov could say that he did not have me in mind: I am free to recognize myself, but there are also caricatures where one cannot help but see the similarities. I wrote an excited letter to Nadya in Moscow, where I called Mikhail “a scoundrel and a scoundrel” and asked to give the letter to Mikhail. I once complained about this behavior of Mikhail Kostya.

- Answer him the same! - Kostya answered.

“Stupid,” I replied.

And, by the way, I regret that I didn’t write a short story in Chekhov’s style, where I would talk about marrying for money, and about choosing the profession of a venereal doctor, and about morphinism and drunkenness in Kiev, and about lack of cleanliness in terms of money.” .

By marrying for money here we mean Bulgakov’s first marriage - with T.N. Lappa, the daughter of an actual state councilor. Also, according to Karum, the future writer chose the profession of a venereal doctor solely for material reasons. In connection with the First World War and the revolution, a stream of refugees and then soldiers returning from the front poured into the interior of the country; There was a surge in sexually transmitted diseases, and the profession of venereologist became especially profitable. While still a zemstvo doctor in the Smolensk province, Bulgakov became addicted to morphine. In 1918, in Kyiv, he managed to overcome this illness, but, according to Karum, he became addicted to alcohol for some time. Perhaps alcohol replaced Bulgakov’s drug for some time and helped him escape from the turmoil caused by the collapse of his former life. And by insufficient cleanliness in financial matters, Karum means the case when Bulgakov borrowed money from Varya and did not pay it back for a long time. According to T.N. Lapp, Leonid Sergeevich even told someone about this: “They eat delicacies, but don’t pay money.”

Karum, naturally, did not want to admit that he was a negative character. But in many ways, Colonel Thalberg, who was copied from him, was one of the strongest, although very repulsive, images of the play. In the opinion of the censors, it was absolutely impossible to bring such a person into service in the Red Army. Therefore, instead of returning to Kyiv in the hope of establishing cooperation with the Soviet government, Bulgakov had to send Talberg on a business trip to the Don to Krasnov. On the contrary, under pressure from the Main Repertoire Committee and the Moscow Art Theater, the handsome Myshlaevsky underwent a significant evolution towards change-of-government and willing acceptance of Soviet power. Here, for such development of the image, a literary source was used - the novel by Vladimir Zazubrin (Zubtsov) (1895-1937) “Two Worlds” (1921). There, lieutenant of the Kolchak army Ragimov explained his intention as follows. go to the Bolsheviks: “We fought. They cut it honestly. Ours doesn't take. Let's go to those whose beret... In my opinion, both the homeland and the revolution are just a beautiful lie with which people cover up their selfish interests. This is how people are structured, that no matter what meanness they do, they will always find an excuse.” Myshlaevsky, in the final text, speaks of his intention to serve the Bolsheviks and break with the white movement: “Enough! I have been fighting since nine hundred and fourteen. For what? For the fatherland? And this is the fatherland, when they abandoned me to shame?! And again go to these lordships?! Oh no! Have you seen it? (Shows shish.) Shish!.. What am I, an idiot, really? No, I, Viktor Myshlaevsky, declare that I no longer have anything to do with these scoundrel generals. I’m finished!..” Zazubrinsky Ragimov interrupted the carefree vaudeville song of his comrades with a recitation: “I am a commissar. There’s a fire in my chest!” In D.T. Myshlaevsky inserts a toast into the white anthem - “Prophetic Oleg”: “So for the Council of People's Commissars...” Compared to Ragimov, Myshlaevsky was greatly ennobled in his motives, but the vitality of the image was completely preserved. During the 1926/27 season. Bulgakov received a letter at the Moscow Art Theater signed “Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky.” The fate of the unknown author during the civil war coincided with the fate of Bulgakov’s hero, and in subsequent years was just as bleak as that of the creator D.T. The letter stated: “Dear Mr. author. Remembering your sympathetic attitude towards me and knowing how interested you were at one time in my fate, I hasten to inform you of my further adventures after we parted with you. Having waited for the Reds to arrive in Kyiv, I was mobilized and began to serve the new government not out of fear, but out of conscience, and even fought with the Poles with enthusiasm. It seemed to me then that only the Bolsheviks were that real power, strong with the people’s faith in it, that would bring happiness and prosperity to Russia, that would make strong, honest, straightforward citizens out of ordinary people and rogue God-bearers. Everything about the Bolsheviks seemed so good to me, so smart, so smooth, in a word, I saw everything in a rosy light to the point that I myself blushed and almost became a communist, but my past - the nobility and officer life - saved me. But now the honeymoons of the revolution are passing. NEP, Kronstadt uprising. I, like many others, am going through a frenzy and my rose-colored glasses are starting to turn darker colors...

General meetings under the watchful inquisitorial gaze of the local committee. Resolutions and demonstrations under pressure. Illiterate bosses who have the appearance of a Votyak god and lust after every typist (one gets the impression that the author of the letter was familiar with the relevant episodes of Bulgakov’s story “The Heart of a Dog,” unpublished, but circulated in the lists. - B.S.). No understanding of the matter, but a look at everything from the inside out. Komsomol spying casually with enthusiasm. The working delegations are distinguished foreigners, reminiscent of Chekhov's generals at a wedding. And lies, lies endlessly... Leaders? These are either little men clinging to power and comfort that they have never seen, or rabid fanatics thinking of breaking through the wall with their foreheads (the latter, obviously, meant, first of all, L. D. Trotsky, who had already fallen into disgrace. - B. S. ). And the very idea! Yes, the idea is wow, quite complex, but absolutely not put into practice, like the teachings of Christ, but Christianity is both clearer and more beautiful (it seems that “Myshlaevsky” was also familiar with the works of Russian philosophers N.A. Berdyaev and S.N. Bulgakov, who argued that Marxism took the Christian idea and simply transferred it from heaven to earth. - B.S.).So, sir. Now I'm left with nothing. Not materially. No. I serve even nowadays - wow, I’m getting by. But it’s lousy to live without believing in anything. After all, not believing in anything and not loving anything is the privilege of the next generation after us, our homeless replacement.

Lately, either under the influence of a passionate desire to fill the spiritual emptiness, or, indeed, it is so, but sometimes I hear subtle notes of some new life, real, truly beautiful, having nothing in common with either the royal or the Soviet Russia. I am making a great request to you on my own behalf and on behalf, I think, of many others like me, empty-hearted at heart. Tell me from the stage, from the pages of a magazine, directly or in Aesopian language, as you wish, but just let me know if you hear these subtle notes and what they sound about?

Or is all this self-deception and the current Soviet emptiness (material, moral and mental) is a permanent phenomenon. Caesar, morituri te salutant (Caesar, those doomed to death salute you (lat. - B.S.)."

The words about Aesopian language indicate that the author of the letter is familiar with the feuilleton “The Crimson Island” (1924). As an actual response to “Myshlaevsky,” one can consider the play “Crimson Island,” where Bulgakov, turning a parody of Smenovekhovism into an “ideological” play within a play, showed that everything in modern Soviet life is determined by the omnipotence of officials strangling creative freedom, like Savva Lukich, and no There can be no new sprouts here. In D.T., he still had hopes for some better future, which is why he introduced the Epiphany tree into the last act as a symbol of hope for spiritual rebirth. For this purpose, the chronology of the play’s action was even shifted from the real one. Later, Bulgakov explained this to his friend P. S. Popov: “I relate the events of the last action to the feast of baptism... I extended the dates. It was important to use the tree in the last act.” In fact, the abandonment of Kyiv by the Petliurists and the occupation of the city by the Bolsheviks took place on February 3-5, 1919, but Bulgakov moved these events forward two weeks in order to combine them with the Epiphany holiday.

Criticism fell on Bulgakov because in D.T. the White Guards appeared as tragic Chekhovian heroes. O. S. Litovsky dubbed Bulgakov’s play “The Cherry Orchard of the White Movement,” asking rhetorically: “What does the Soviet audience care about the suffering of the landowner Ranevskaya, whose cherry orchard is being mercilessly cut down? What does the Soviet audience care about the suffering of external and internal emigrants about the untimely death of the white movement?” A. Orlinsky accused the playwright that “all commanders and officers live, fight, die and marry without a single orderly, without servants, without the slightest contact with people from any other classes and social strata.” On February 7, 1927, at a debate in the Vs. Theater. Meyerhold, dedicated to D. T. and “Love Yarovaya” (1926) by Konstantin Andreevich Trenev (1876-1945), Bulgakov responded to the critics: “I, the author of this play “Days of the Turbins,” was in Kiev during the Hetmanate and Petliurism, and saw the White Guards in Kiev from the inside behind the cream curtains, I affirm that orderlies in Kiev at that time, that is, when the events in my play took place, could not be obtained worth their weight in gold.” D.T. was to a much greater extent a realistic work than his critics admitted, who presented reality, unlike Bulgakov, in the form of given ideological schemes.