From the Bookshelf of War Nerd Reading List…

The White Guard

Mikhail Bulgakov

Why we're reading this: Mentioned in Episode 320: Ukraine-Russia War
The War Nerd says this book 'gives a good sense of what's goi…more
[close] Mentioned in Episode 320: Ukraine-Russia War
The War Nerd says this book 'gives a good sense of what's going on and why it well end badly'

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Apr 22, 2022 Rashid Yasin rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, history

Ukrainian politics has always been complicated. I suppose that's no surprise because *everyone* has complicated politics. But here we have a literary example from the early 20th century that has too much relevance for where we sit during a Ukrainian war in the early 21st century.

It's always fascinating to read books from an earlier era, so there's a lot that's interesting just to read and see how books were structured, characters were developed, feel the groove of a different literary tradition. Ukrainian politics has always been complicated. I suppose that's no surprise because *everyone* has complicated politics. But here we have a literary example from the early 20th century that has too much relevance for where we sit during a Ukrainian war in the early 21st century.

It's always fascinating to read books from an earlier era, so there's a lot that's interesting just to read and see how books were structured, characters were developed, feel the groove of a different literary tradition. Some of that is probably just due to it being a different cultural context than I'm used to in addition to the historical difference, but that's doubly good in any case.

Everybody is *mad* in this book, and it's kind of funny that, out of all the other war books (or books set during wars) I've read that this is an outlier in that respect. You'd think there'd be a lot of reason for anger, but it's usually behind the scenes. Here, it's pointed: the protagonists are bitter at their enemies: the Ukrainian nationalists, the bolsheviks, their terrible leader (who leaves the city under cover of darkness to go hide in Germany and leaves his soldiers to die). There's a lot more personal emotion than in many other portrayals of war or occupation.

There's a lot of sarcasm and dry wit, but it's all pretty dark given the setting of a Kiev that's in the midst of losing to an invading nationalist army which will, after the end of most of the book, lose Kiev again to the Bolsheviks. And losing a city is painful, bloody, confusing business, as Bulgakov makes clear. That's another thing that stands out: the confusion of it all. Life has to continue for people to make their daily wage, so until invading soldiers were actually in the city, people were just living their lives. And in a pre-radio, pre-cell phone era, it was possible for people to completely miss that the war had entered a different part of the city. Or that the defense had collapsed. Or that military leadership had fled and all hope was lost so the remaining members of the military should shed all distinguishing elements of their outfits and try to hide.

There's a nice literary device he uses where he just quotes members of a crowd, so you get a series of conversations/pronouncements, often completely contradictory or irrelevant to the last statement. It gives a good sense of the chaos of war and of public sentiment or crowds in any context and adds a lot of flavor to the action. These scenes are part of some chapters where the story takes a little digression away from the protagonists to show what's happening elsewhere in the city, which is in itself another nice device that allows the reader to pull back a bit from the individual tribulations of the characters to the problems of the city as a larger unit.

It's a bit of an odd duck as a "war novel" because, while almost all the characters are military officers, they basically never fight anyone. There are 2 scenes of "battle" both of which end in a retreat and which is fewer than the number of scenes spent playing the guitar. But there is so much else that happens, and I think that's a lot of the point. Bulgakov paints a really amazing picture via a series of vignettes, and so there's no one simple takeaway but rather a series of little glimpses into what it must have been like to live through Kiev (in particular as part of the Tsarist officer class) as different forces fought for control. It's beautifully written and shows great love for The City. A great piece of history and a compelling bit of fiction that very much humanizes the pain of being in a country at war. ...more

Like · see review