The Days of the Turbins (Drama)

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The days of the Turbins - scene from the Moscow performance in 1926

The days of the Turbins ( Russian Дни Турбиных Dni Turbinych ) is a play in four acts by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , which premiered on October 5, 1926 in the Moscow Art Theater under Konstantin Stanislavski with Nikolai Kmelev as Colonel Turbin. By 1941 the play had 987 performances in this house. The "petty bourgeois" work was banned twice; the first time in April 1929. Fortunately for Bulgakov, however, the piece found an admirer. Stalin allegedly looked at it fifteen times. The text was published in Boston and New York in 1934 . The first Soviet book edition came out in 1955. More recently, in 2013, Grigori Mikhailovich Koslow brought the Turbins to the stage of the Masterskaya Studio Theater in St. Petersburg .

Bulgakov wrote the play based on his novel The White Guard .

Kiev in the winter of 1919 during the troubled times of the Russian Civil War : Petlyura drives the hetman Skoropadskyj out of the city and is then chased out by the Bolsheviks .

overview

Petljura wants the Ukrainian nation-state and is advancing against the Ukrainian metropolis held by the whites . The hetman of the whole of Ukraine can muster only one division against the 200,000-strong army of Petlyura, commanded by the 30-year-old Colonel of the artillery Alexei Turbin. With the help of the Germans , the hetman, dressed as a wounded German officer, flees to Berlin by train . His army commander-in-chief Prince Belorukov has also turned his back on the Ukrainian homeland.

In the face of such discouragement, Colonel Turbin orders his stunned group - called a division - to throw away rifles, tear off armpits and hide in Kiev apartments.

Colonel Turbin falls. His 18-year-old brother Nikolai Turbin is shot to a cripple. Some officers want to see Denikin on the Don .

Two months after Colonel Turbin's death, the Bolsheviks advance from Moscow and beat Petlyura in front of Kiev. When the Reds march into Kiev, Colonel Turbin's officers remaining in Kiev have to make a decision. Some want to go to General Krasnov on the Don . The other White Guards persist and either want to sympathize with the Reds or even become Bolsheviks.

Jelena

Alexei Turbin's 24-year-old sister Jelena is married to 38-year-old Vladimir Talberg, a colonel in the general staff of Prince Belorukov's army. The coward Talberg flees - like his two superiors named above - from Petljura to Berlin, returns to Jelena and immediately flees from the Reds to General Krasnov on the Don. Jelena stays in Kiev every time, separates from her husband and turns to Lieutenant Leonid Scherwinski, the hetman's personal adjutant.

Three heroes

Bulgakov idealized the three eponymous characters with different attributes.

Emancipation : Jelena, under the impression of the revolution , corrects her wrong choice of partner - turns to Scherwinski, whom she - unlike Talberg - truly loves.

In the closing remarks to his confused White Guards, Colonel Alexej Turbin proves his visionary ability. He predicts the fall of the White Movement in Ukraine. And the Colonel believes that the Bolsheviks will come to Petlyura. That is why he goes to war against all reason. Alexej stands for the old Russia that was doomed in November 1918 .

Alexei's brother, the crippled Nikolai, sums up at the end of the play: The capture of Kiev by the Bolsheviks was "for one a prologue" and "for another an epilogue". By this he means the behavior of the officers who remained alive in the vicinity of the fallen brother, as outlined above. For their majority, the entry of the communists into Kiev is an epilogue - in other words, the end. It looks as if Nikolai Turbin is taking the advance of the communists as a prologue.

background

The Hetman of the Whole Ukraine appearing in the play is only given a title, but never named. As mentioned above, it was Pavlo Skoropadskyi.

The work is rather strongly autobiographical in color. Bulgakov's maternal grandmother was born Turbin. Some viewers would see an image of the author in Colonel Alexej Turbin. In this context, the author has modeled the Nikolai Turbin his brother Iwan (1900-1969) and the Jelena his sister Varwara (1895-1956). The role model for Jelena's husband, Colonel Talberg, was Warwara's husband Leonid Sergejewitsch Karum (1888–1968). After the turmoil of the revolution, the latter managed to become a lecturer in a military school of the Red Army.

filming

  • 1976, Mosfilm : The Days of the Turbins - TV feature film by Vladimir Basov with Andrei Mjagkow as Colonel Turbin.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • The days of the turbines. Piece in four acts. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Pp. 5-77 in: Michail Bulgakow. Pieces. Publishing house culture and progress, Berlin 1970 (1st edition, 432 pages)

Web links

Commons : The Days of the Turbins  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 416, 6th Zvu
  2. ^ Russian. The days of the Turbins - reviews
  3. ↑ Russian Мастерская
  4. ↑ engl. The days of the Turbins - background
  5. ↑ Russian ru: Дни Турбиных (фильм)