The White Guard

The winter of 1918–19 in Kyiv, as the German-backed Hetmanate collapses and Petliura's Ukrainian nationalists close on the City, seen through the Turbin family and their friends, officers of a cause already lost. Bulgakov maps his own Kyiv: the family house on the steep Andriyivskyy Descent, the gymnasium where the volunteers muster, the shops and panic of the centre, the Golden Gate and St Sophia, and the Dnieper down which the beaten forces retreat.

Elena

The Turbin house, Andriyivskyy Descent

Part 1

Behind the cream-coloured curtains, under the tiled stove and the shaded lamp, Elena keeps the warmth of the Turbin home while the world outside comes apart. The house is the still centre of the book, the last refuge of an old life, as officers drift in from the snow with worse and worse news.

Part 1

explicit The Turbins' home stands on the steep Andriyivskyy Descent (called St Alexeyevsky in the book), drawn directly from Bulgakov's own house at No. 13, now a museum on the real Kyiv street.

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Alexei Turbin

The gymnasium (the mustering)

Part 1

At the gymnasium, the army doctor Alexei Turbin and a ragged mortar division of officers and cadets are hastily armed to defend the City against Petliura, then abruptly disbanded by commanders who have already fled. The betrayal of these men, sent to die or told to run, is the book's bitter core.

Part 1

explicit The volunteers muster at the Alexander Gymnasium, drawn from the First Kyiv Gymnasium that Bulgakov himself attended; sited at the real school near the university boulevard.

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