Verhalen over de Burgeroorlog

by Mikhail Bulgakov, Michail Boelgakov

Deel 1 van de Verzamelde werken van Boelgakov opent met Aantekeningen van een jonge arts, waarin een plattelandsdokter zich door het verschil tussen wat in de medische handboeken staat beschreven en wat de achterlijke bevolking van hem verwacht allengs bewuster wordt van zijn rol. Wanneer hij bij het trekken van een kies het complete kaakbot verwoest ('ik zag met ontzetting dat er met gemak een flinke reine-claude in het gat paste'), is hij bang dat hij voor de rechtbank moet verschijnen en zijn artsendiploma zal kwijtraken: 'En waar is de kaak van de soldaat? Geef antwoord, schurk, met je universitaire opleiding!'
Voorts werden opgenomen de novelle Morfine en de bundel Verhalen over de burgeroorlog. De meeste plaats in dit deel wordt ingenomen door Boelgakovs eerste boek van langere adem, de roman De Witte Garde. Hij speelt zich af in de winter van 1918-'19 in Kiev en verhaalt de belevenissen van de familie Toerbin. Het naderbij komen van De burgeroorlog tussen de bolsjewiki (de 'roden') en mensjewiki ('de witten') veroorzaakt een toenemend gevoel van onheil in de stad en bij de familie. Als plotseling een munitiedepot in de lucht vliegt, neemt men dat nog als een geïsoleerde gebeurtenis waar. Maar in een stad die gaandeweg bevolkt en belegerd wordt door her en der opererende legereenheden, door Oekraïense nationalisten en Duitsers, door handlangers en verraders, raakt iedereen het overzicht kwijt. Alles lijkt samen te hangen met alles en niets met niets, en de dingen gebeuren omdat ze gebeuren. Er bestaat geen grotere beklemming dan wanneer er voor wat er gebeurt geen oorzaak kan worden gevonden. En de Toerbins zitten daar midden in.

55 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Russian: Михаил Булгаков) was a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright. His novel The Master and Margarita , published posthumously, has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.

He also wrote the novel The White Guard and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight (also called The Run ), and The Days of the Turbins . He wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.

Some of his works ( Flight , all his works between the years 1922 and 1926, and others) were banned by the Soviet government, and personally by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins (also called The Turbin Brothers ) very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is volume 1 of the collected works by Boelgakov/ Bulgakov in the Dutch edition published by Van Oorschot in their Russian library series. The translation and the explanatory notes are by Aai Prins. It contains:
1 A country doctor’s notebook;
2 Morphine;
3 The White Guard;
4 Stories about the civil war.
In the following review(s) I concentrate on 1, 2 and 3.

1 Aantekeningen van een jonge arts; Morfine/ A country doctor’s notebook; Morphine
The young doctor Bomgard, fresh from university, starts his career in a small hospital in rural Russia, about a century ago (I write this in 2023). Immediately a discrepancy shows between his book-knowledge and the information that comes from anamneses of his patients. How to deal with that? At first he considers himself just a student. He doesn’t have the opportunity to consult or redirect to a colleague, the fastest way of travelling was by horse and carriage, winter weather conditions were bad. Well, he pulled through, with some subtle help of experienced nurses. Frequently the doctor was asking himself how to translate symptoms into healing methodes, what have I overlooked, how to convince his patients, not all of them having so much trust in this greenhorn in the beginning, what didn’t I see, am I doing the right thing, sometimes freaking out being aware of his responsability.
A reviewer on another website, who is a doctor, says: “If the reader is a doctor, he will recognise the fears and uncertainties of his first years as a co-assistant and doctor. … Which doctor does not know from his early days the feeling of quickly checking something under the pretext of washing his hands? The satisfied feeling mixed with amazement when a patient appears to be cured.” Doctor Bomgard finds himself in an unfair isolation. I guess then, too, the sending of such a youngster to a remote provincial area was caused by lack of personel. But what a compassion for his patients, going another werst, another hardship.
Bulgakov had written this series of stories – in my opinion it has mostly novel features – right from his own experiences; he has been a doctor for four years himself – the stories are as autbiographical as ever can be. The tone is fresh, the approach is direct, impulsive, with a scala of emotions inherent to all kinds of situations in a hospital doctor’s practice. The writing is up-tempo and parallels the urgency of letting the patients get their treatment. And the self-mockery of Bomgard is delightful. (4 stars) JM

2 Morfine/ Morphine
In my Dutch edition the story – or novella – ‘Morphine’ is a stand-alone.
Morphine is darker than A young doctor’s notebook. Getting addicted is horrible, that’s a clear message. Bulgakov knew from experience what he was writing about. Poignant! (4 stars) JM

De witte garde/ The white guard
In his novel The White Guard Mikhail Bulgakov describes the fate of the Turbin family, who lived in Kiev/ Kyiv when the various civil war armies were fighting each other in the city in the winter of 1918-'19. The closing in of the civil war between the bolsjewiki (the Reds), mensjewiki (the Whites), the German Imperial Army and Ukrainian nationalists causes a growing sense of doom in the city and among the family. In a city that gradually gets occupied by those mentioned, accomplices and traitors, everyone loses track and sense of continuity. There is no greater constriction than when no cause can be found for what is happening. And the Turbins are in the middle of all that.
The Turbin family is situated in the mansion where the author was born and raised; nowadays it houses two museums. It’s in the heart of downtown Kiev. It’s noticeable that Bulgakov knows the city inside out. The house functions as a resting point, as relative as it is, in the midst of all the turmoil. The clear position the family takes as monarchists does not make the members careless, on the contrary; this outspokeness has a counter weight in frequent remarks to be careful because one never knows which regime/ army unit is on the winning streak. Developments have a high level of unpredictability. Other than Tolstoj, Bulgakov gives us snippets of war scenes in stead of battle reports; by this narrative method the messages are hitting the reader directly, in small portions and it makes you feel the chaos nearby. It scares the hell out of a number of protagonists, whether it’s the men in the streets or the women risking their lives, too, in helping men to a little more safety.
If anything can be learnt from this docu-fiction, it’s that Ukraïne has a complex history. (I will be reading some non-fiction about the subject: Marc Jansen’s ‘Grensland’ – not translated to my knowledge.) Politicians in this twentyfirst century can and do twist it (in)to their liking, even for unjustified objectives, sigh … curse!
Bulgakov is good in creating atmosphere. One could say he has a great feeling for the blues. The core values he wanted to emphasise, I suspect, are love and stand as one collective, whether that is family or an ethnic bond, like feeling more Ukrainian than general-Russian.
In my Dutch edition, translator Aai Prins, has added about fifty pages containing Bulgakov’s early text for the last two chapters (XIX and XX), which offer quite another sort of ending; without elaborating on that I think the later ending is stronger and that therefor Bulgakov made a wise choise to canonise the latter. Excellent novel! (5 stars) JM

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

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