Dream one
It takes place in Northern Tavria in October 1920.
There is a conversation going on in the monastery cell. The Budenovites recently came here and checked everyone's documents. The young St. Petersburg intellectual Sergei Pavlovich Golubkov cannot understand where the Reds came from, if the area is under the rule of the Whites. Pregnant Barabanchikova says that the general, who received a dispatch about the Reds in the rear, postponed the decryption. Barabanchikova is asked where the headquarters of General Charnota is located, but she avoids answering. A young St. Petersburg woman, Serafima Vladimirovna Korzukhina, who, in the company of the intellectual Golubkov, fled to the Crimea to meet her husband, offers to call a midwife for the pregnant madam, but she refuses.
The clatter of horse hooves and the voice of the white commander de Brizard are heard. Barabanchikova recognizes him and, throwing off her rags, turns into General Grigory Charnot. He explains to de Brizar and his traveling wife Lyuska that his comrade Barabanchikov was in a hurry, so instead of his documents he gave him the documents of his pregnant wife. General Charnota proposes an escape plan. But then Korzukhina's temperature rises - she is sick with typhus. Golubkov leads Serafima into a gig. Everyone is leaving.
Second dream
From the hall of the station, the White Guards made headquarters. In the place where there used to be a buffet, now the commander of the front, Roman Valeryanovich Khludov, is sitting. He winces and twitches all the time. Paramon Ilyich Korzukhin, a friend of the Minister of Trade and the husband of the sick Serafima, asks to bring wagons with valuable goods to Sevastopol. But Khludov gives the order to burn these cars. When asked by Korzukhin about the state of affairs at the front, Khludov becomes even more angry and says that the Reds will be here tomorrow. Korzukhin promises to report everything to the commander-in-chief, who soon arrives with Archbishop Afrikan. Khludov reports to the chief that the Bolsheviks are in the Crimea.
The archbishop prays, but Khludov believes that in vain. God, in his opinion, is not on the side of the whites. Commander-in-Chief leaves. Korzukhina appears, followed by Golubkov and the messenger of General Charnota Krapilin. Serafima accuses Khludov of inaction. Staff members are whispering, they consider Korzukhina a communist. Golubkov is sure that the woman is delirious because of typhus. Khludov calls Seraphim's husband, but he senses a trap and renounces his wife. Golubkov and Korzukhina are taken away.
Krapilin, being in oblivion, says that Khludov is a world animal, accuses him of cowardice and the ability only to hang. Krapilin comes to his senses and begins to beg for mercy, but Khludov gives the order to take the orderly to the gallows. He, according to the general, started well, but ended badly.
Action two
Dream three
It takes place in early November 1920 in the Crimea.
The head of counterintelligence, nicknamed Quiet, forces Golubkov to testify against Serafima. Quiet threatens a St. Petersburg intellectual with a deadly needle. Golubkov says with fear that Serafima is a communist and came here for the sake of propaganda. After giving evidence, Golubkov is released.
Counterintelligence worker Skunsky informs Tikhoy that Korzukhin will pay $10,000 for ransom. Of this amount, the boss is ready to “unfasten” Skunsky 2,000 greens.
They start Korzukhina, who is all on fire from the temperature. Quiet lets her read Golubkov's testimony. Outside the window at this time, the cavalry of General Charnota passes. Serafima, having read the testimony, breaks the window and calls Charnota for help. He breaks into the room with a revolver and saves Korzukhina.
Dream four
It takes place in early November 1920 in the Crimea.
The commander-in-chief says that Khludov has been masking his hatred for him for a year. Roman Valeryanovich does not deny this, he really hates the commander in chief. Because of him, Khludov is involved in this disgusting and useless work.
Commander-in-Chief leaves. Khludov is talking to a ghost. The intellectual Golubkov enters. He does not recognize Khludov, who is standing with his back to him, and talks about the crimes that he committed. Golubkov thinks he is reporting to the commander-in-chief. Khludov turns around. The intellectual falls into a panic, but still dares to tell about the arrest of Korzukhina and wants to know about her fate.
Khludov orders Seraphim to be brought to the palace, if she has not yet been shot. From such words Golubkov is horrified. Khludov, looking down, begins to babble excuses to the messenger ghost and begs not to take his soul from him. Khludov asks Golubkov who Korzukhina is to him. Sergei Pavlovich admits that she is a casual acquaintance whom he fell in love with with all his heart. Khludov reports that Seraphim is dead. She was shot. Golubkov is furious at this news.
Khludov gives Golubkov a revolver and tells someone that his soul is split. The captain comes in and reports that Serafima Korzukhina is alive. Today, General Charnota took her to Constantinople. Khludov is waiting on the ship. Golubkov begs to go with him to Constantinople. Khludov is seriously ill, he speaks to the orderly, and they leave. Dark.
Act Three
Dream fifth
On one of the streets of Constantinople hangs a poster advertising cockroach races. The gloomy General Charnota approaches the cash register where they take bets. Charnota wants to bet on credit, but the "cockroach king" Arthur refuses the request. The general falls into longing and nostalgia for Russia. He makes up his mind and sells silver gazyrs and a whole box of his toys. Then he returns to the box office of cockroach races, where he puts all the money on the Janissary's favorite.
The people are going to the spectacle. The cockroaches that live in the box under the supervision of the professor go on the run with paper riders. A cry is heard: "The Janissaries are failing!" As it turned out, the "cockroach king" Arthur drugged the favorite. Everyone who put on the Janissary rushes at Arthur, and he is forced to call the police. A beautiful prostitute cheers up the Italians, who did not bet on the Janissary. Dark.
Dream six
It takes place in the summer of 1921 in Constantinople.
General Charnota quarreled with Lucy. She guesses that the general lost money and opens her cards, says that she is a prostitute. And Lucy reproaches Charnota that he destroyed counterintelligence and was forced to flee the army, and now leads the life of a beggar. Blackness objects, he saved Korzukhina from death. Lucy accuses Seraphim of inaction, and then leaves for the house.
Golubkov enters the yard. General Charnota convinces the intellectual that Korzukhina is alive and has gone to the panel. Seraphim comes along with some Greek who has a lot of purchases in his hands. Charnota and Golubkov rush at the foreigner, and he has to run.
Sergei Pavlovich begins to tell Korzukhina about his feelings, but she turns around and leaves. At parting, she throws a phrase that she prefers to die herself.
Lucy wants to unwrap the bundle that the Greek left, but the general doesn't let her do it. Beauty takes the hat and says she will go to Paris. Khludov enters in civilian clothes. He was demoted from the army. Golubkov claims that he will go to Paris to Serafima's husband to help the woman. He is sure that he will definitely be helped to cross the border. Golubkov begs Khludov to take care of Seraphim and not let her go to the panel. Khludov promises the intellectual to look after Seraphim and gives him two lyres and a medallion. Charnota goes with Golubkov to Paris. Darkness.
act four
Dream seven
Occurs in the autumn of 1921 in Paris.
Golubkov arrives in Paris, finds Korzukhina's husband and asks him for a thousand dollars for Serafima. He refuses, motivating his act by the fact that he was not married to Seraphim, and soon he is going to offer his hand and heart to his Russian secretary. Golubkov tells Korzukhin that he is a soulless person. Sergei Pavlovich is about to leave, but at that moment General Charnota comes in. He informs Korzukhin that he would gladly sign up with the Bolsheviks to shoot him.
Charnota sees the cards and invites Korzukhin to play. He sells Khludov's medallion to his opponent for ten dollars. After the game, the general becomes the owner of $20,000. For 300 he buys the locket back. Korzukhin wants to return all the lost money. He screams in annoyance, and Lucy runs out to his roar. The general is shocked, but does not reveal that he is familiar with the prostitute. Lucy despises Seraphim's husband. She believes that Korzukhin himself is to blame for the loss.
Everyone disperses. Lyusya leans out the window and quietly tells Golubkov to take care of Korzukhin, and the general finally buys himself new pants. Darkness.
Dream eighth and last
It takes place in the autumn of 1921 in Constantinople.
Khludov is talking with the ghost of the orderly. Serafima Korzukhina comes in and proves to Khludov that he is very ill. She also repents that she let Golubkov go. Korzukhina is going to return to Petersburg. Khludov announces that he also wants to return there under his own name. Seraphim is horrified that if Khludov acts so imprudently, he will be immediately killed. But the general is happy with this result.
The conversation is interrupted by a knock on the door. Golubkov and Charnota came. Korzukhina and Sergei Pavlovich confess their love to each other. Charnota wants to stay here, but Khludov intends to return. He persuades Charnot to go together, but he does not want to: the general treats the Bolsheviks normally and does not hate them. Golubkov wants to give Khludov the locket, but he returns it to the couple, after which Korzukhina and Golubkov leave.
Read in 8 minutes, original in 2 hours.
Dream 1. Northern Tavria, October 1920
There is a conversation going on in the cell of the monastery church. The Budennovites have just come and checked the documents. Golubkov, a young Petersburg intellectual, wonders where the Reds came from when the area is in the hands of the Whites. Barabanchikova, pregnant, lying right there, explains that the general, who was sent a dispatch that the Reds were in the rear, postponed the decryption. When asked where the headquarters of General Charnot, Barabanchikov does not give a direct answer. Serafima Korzukhina, a young lady from St. Petersburg who fled with Golubkov to the Crimea to meet her husband, offers to call the midwife, but Madame refuses. The clatter of hooves and the voice of the white commander de Brizard are heard. Upon recognizing him, Barabanchikova throws off her rags and appears in the form of General Charnota. He explains to de Brizar and his wife Lyuska, who ran in, that his friend Barabanchikov in a hurry gave him documents not of his own, but of his pregnant wife. Charnota proposes an escape plan. Here Seraphim begins to have a fever - this is typhus. Golubkov leads Serafima into a gig. Everyone is leaving.
Dream 2. Crimea, early November 1920
The station hall has been turned into the headquarters of the whites. Where there was a buffet, General Khludov is sitting. He is sick, twitching. Korzukhin, Deputy Minister of Trade, Serafima's husband, asks to push wagons with valuable fur goods into Sevastopol. Khludov orders these trains to be burned. Korzukhin asks about the situation at the front. Khludov hisses that the Reds will be here tomorrow. Korzukhin promises to report everything to the commander in chief. A convoy appears, followed by the white commander-in-chief and Archbishop Africanus. Khludov informs the commander-in-chief that the Bolsheviks are in the Crimea. The African prays, but Khludov believes that God has abandoned the whites. Commander-in-Chief leaves. Seraphim runs in, followed by Golubkov and messenger Charnoty Krapilin. Serafima shouts that Khludov does nothing but hangs him. Staff whisper that this is a communist. Golubkov says she is delirious, she has typhus. Khludov calls Korzukhin, but he, smelling a trap, renounces Seraphim. Serafima and Golubkov are taken away, and Krapilin, in oblivion, calls Khludov a world beast and speaks of a war that Khludov does not know. He objects that he went to Chongar and was wounded there twice. Krapilin, waking up, begs for mercy, but Khludov orders him to be hanged for "beginning well, ending badly."
Dream 3. Crimea, early November 1920
The head of counterintelligence, Quiet, threatening with a deadly needle, forces Golubkov to show that Serafima Korzukhina is a member of the Communist Party and has come for the purpose of propaganda. Having forced him to write a statement, Tikhy lets him go. Counterintelligence officer Skunsky estimates that Korzukhin will give $10,000 to pay off. Quiet shows that Skunsky's share is 2000. Serafima is brought in, she is in the heat. Quiet gives her a statement. Outside the window with music is the cavalry of Charnota. Seraphim, having read the paper, knocks out the window glass with his elbow and calls Charnot for help. He runs in and defends Seraphim with a revolver.
Dream 4. Crimea, early November 1920
The Commander-in-Chief says that Khludov has been covering up his hatred for him for a year now. Khludov admits that he hates the commander-in-chief because he was involved in this, that it is impossible to work, knowing that everything is in vain. Commander-in-Chief leaves. Khludov alone speaks with the ghost, wants to crush him ... Golubkov enters, he has come to complain about the crime committed by Khludov. He turns around. Golubkov is in a panic. He came to tell the commander-in-chief about the arrest of Seraphim and wants to know her fate. Khludov asks the captain to deliver her to the palace if she is not shot. Golubkov is horrified by these words. Khludov justifies himself before the messenger ghost and asks him to leave his soul. When asked by Khludov who Serafima is to him, Golubkov replies that she is a random counter, but he loves her. Khludov says that she was shot. Golubkov is furious, Khludov throws a revolver at him and tells someone that his soul is doubled. The captain enters with a report that Seraphim is alive, but today Charnota recaptured her with weapons and took her to Constantinople. Khludov is expected on the ship. Golubkov asks to be taken to Constantinople, Khludov is ill, speaks with the messenger, they leave. Dark.
Dream 5. Constantinople, summer 1921
Street of Constantinople. There is an advertisement for cockroach races. Charnota, drunk and gloomy, approaches the cashier of cockroach races and wants to bet on credit, but Arthur, "the cockroach king", refuses him. Charnota yearns, remembers Russia. He sells for 2 lira 50 piastres silver gazyri and a box of his toys, puts all the money received on Janissary's favorite. The people are gathering. Cockroaches living in a box "under the supervision of a professor" run with paper riders. Shout: "Janissary fails!" It turns out that Arthur got the cockroach drunk. All those who bet on the Janissary rush to Arthur, he calls the police. A beautiful prostitute cheers on the Italians, who are beating the English, who bet on another cockroach. Dark.
Dream 6. Constantinople, summer 1921
Charnota quarrels with Lucy, lies to her that the box and gas were stolen, she understands that Charnota lost money, and admits that she is a prostitute. She reproaches him that he, the general, defeated counterintelligence and was forced to flee the army, and now he is begging. Charnota objects: he saved Seraphim from death. Lusya reproaches Seraphim for inaction and goes into the house. Golubkov enters the yard, playing the hurdy-gurdy. Charnota assures him that Serafima is alive and explains that she went to the panel. Seraphim arrives with a Greek, hung with purchases. Golubkov and Charnota rush at him, he runs away. Golubkov tells Seraphim about love, but she leaves with the words that she will die alone. Lyusya, who came out, wants to open the bundle of the Greek, but Charnota does not give it. Lucy takes the hat and announces that she is leaving for Paris. Khludov enters in civilian clothes - he has been demoted from the army. Golubkov explains that he found her, she left, and he will go to Paris to Korzukhin - he is obliged to help her. They will help him cross the border. He asks Khludov to take care of her, not to let her go to the panel, Khludov promises and gives 2 lira and a medallion. Charnota travels with Golubkov to Paris. They are going away. Dark.
Dream 7. Paris, autumn 1921
Golubkov asks Korzukhin for a $1,000 loan for Serafima. Korzukhin does not give, says that he was not married and wants to marry his Russian secretary. Golubkov calls him a terrible soulless person and wants to leave, but Charnota arrives, who says that he would sign up for the Bolsheviks to shoot him, and having shot him, he would sign out. Seeing the cards, he invites Korzukhin to play and sells him Khludov's medallion for $10. As a result, Charnota wins $20,000 and redeems the medallion for $300. Korzukhin wants to return the money, Lucy runs to his cry. Charnota is startled, but doesn't give it away. Lyusya despises Korzukhin. She assures him that he lost the money himself and cannot get it back. Everyone disperses. Lusya quietly shouts out the window to Golubkov to take care of Seraphim, and Charnota to buy his pants. Dark.
Dream 8. Constantinople, autumn 1921
Khludov alone talks with the ghost of the orderly. He is suffering. Serafima enters, tells him that he is ill, and is executed because she let Golubkov go. She is going to return to Peter. Khludov says that he will also return, and under his own name. Seraphim is horrified, it seems to her that he will be shot. Khludov is happy about this. They are interrupted by a knock on the door. This is Charnota and Golubkov. Khludov and Charnota leave, Serafima and Golubkov confess their love to each other. Khludov and Charnota return. Charnota says that he will stay here, Khludov wants to return. Everyone answers him. He invites Charnota with him, but he refuses: he has no hatred for the Bolsheviks. He's leaving. Golubkov wants to return the locket to Khludov, but he gives it to the couple, and they leave. Khludov alone writes something, rejoices that the ghost has disappeared. He goes to the window and shoots himself in the head. Dark.
© site
"Running" is a play written by M. Bulgakov in 1926-1927. Many performances were created based on this play, which, unfortunately, were staged after the death of the author, because Stalin banned all rehearsals.
The first performance took place in 1957 at the Stalingrad Theatre. But in 1970, the magnificent film "Running" directed by A. Alov was shot and the plot touches on the time of the Civil War after the October Revolution, where the rest are desperately resisting and fighting the Reds on the Crimean Isthmus.
"Running" is a play, which, according to the author's idea, consists of four acts and eight dreams. Why sleep? Because a dream is a dramatic convention, representing something unreal and implausible, which is very difficult to believe. Thus, the author himself expressed his attitude to what was happening then with Russia: everything is like a nightmare.
The fate of the Russian intelligentsia
Based on the memoirs of his second wife L. E. Belozerskaya about emigration, Bulgakov wrote his "Running". An analysis of the biography of this woman shows that at that time she fled with her first husband to Constantinople, and then lived in Paris, Marseille and Berlin. The writer also used the memoirs of the white general Ya. A. Slashchev.
Mikhail Bulgakov devoted "Running" to the fate that he considered the best layer of Russia. She was forced to leave the country and live in exile. The writer tried to tell that the majority of emigrants wanted to live in Russia, but they had to find a consensus with the Bolsheviks and even refuse to fight them, but without sacrificing moral principles. Classic even wrote a letter about this to Stalin himself. He wanted to show that he was above the whites and reds, but in the end he was considered an enemy White Guard. Therefore, the publication of "The White Guard" did not happen during the life of the writer, just as "Running" did not see the scene. Bulgakov was able to stage the play "Days of the Turbins" only after a two-year ban, when he received a personal order from Stalin.
"Run". Bulgakov. Summary
So, October 1920. Northern Tavria. There is a fight between reds and whites. The young St. Petersburg intellectual Golubkov is hiding from stray bullets and grenades in the porch of the monastery with Seraphim Korzukhina, a lady from St. Petersburg. Together with him, she flees to the Crimea to meet her husband there. Golubkov wonders where the Reds come from in this area, because it was all in the hands of the Whites.
Then a detachment of Budyonny's cavalry drove into the monastery to check people's documents. Priests and monks prayed in front of the images, there were many other people in the church, among them was the pregnant Baranbanchikova, who suddenly began to have contractions. When the Reds left the monastery, they were followed by soldiers led by the white commander De Brizar and Lyuska, the marching wife of General Charnota. As it turned out later, General Charnota himself was hiding in the image of a pregnant lady, who, having heard his voices, could not be expressed in words how delighted he was. He hugged them all and began to tell how, instead of fake documents, his friend Barabanchikov in a hurry mixed everything up and slipped him the documents of his pregnant wife.
Now they all begin to discuss the escape plan proposed by Charnota. But soon it turns out that Seraphim has typhus, and Golubkov does not leave her. Everyone is leaving.
Khludov
November 1920, Crimea. The headquarters of the White Guards is located in the station hall. The buffet became the command post of General Khludov. He is constantly twitching and obviously sick with something. Here appears the husband of Seraphim, Korzukhin, Deputy Minister of Trade, and asks Khludov to help send trains with smuggled goods to Sevastopol. But he orders everything to be burned. Serafima, Golubkov and Krapilin, the messenger of Charnota, appear. Seraphim attacks Khludov, that he would only hang people, but she is immediately mistaken for a communist. Seeing her husband, Serafima rushes to him, but he pretends not to know her, fearing the reaction of the general.
In this episode, Bulgakov fills his "Running" with yet another tragedy. The summary continues with the fact that guard Krapilin, being in a wild trance from everything that is happening around, also accuses Khludov of atrocities, and then, recovering himself, kneels before him, but the general orders him to be hanged.
Arrest
Golubkov gets interrogated by the counterintelligence chief Tichy, who forces him to sign a document stating that Serafima is a communist. Tichiy and his partner want to make money by blackmailing her husband Korzukhin.
During the interrogation, Serafima sees Golubkov's testimony, knocks out the office window and calls for help. Under the windows at that time was the cavalry of Charnota, who appeared with a revolver and freed Seraphim.
Meanwhile, Khludov is having a conversation with the commander-in-chief, whom he hates because he involved him in a senseless affair. After all clarifications, they part. Khludov has a mental disorder, he constantly sees the ghost of the fighter Krapilin hanged by him. But then Golubkov enters, who is in a panic because of the arrest of Serafima and wants the general to help free her. Khludov orders his adjutant, Yesaul Golovan, to deliver Seraphim to him and immediately adds that she may have already been shot. He returns after a while and reports that she is with Charnota, who took her to Constantinople. Khludov is also expected on the ship. The ghost of the messenger periodically comes to him. Golubkov begs him to take him with him to find Seraphim.
Emigration
Summer 1921, Constantinople. Bulgakov does not end the play "Running" on this. The summary further tells how, on one of the streets of Constantinople, a drunken and penniless Charnota wants to bet on credit in a cockroach race. Artur Arturovich, nicknamed the Cockroach Tsar, refuses him. Charnota yearns for Russia, he sells toys and silver gas in the street. As a result, he puts everything on the main favorite, the cockroach Yanychar. In the midst of the competition, it turns out that Arthur drugged the Janissary. A fight started.
Lucy and Charnota
Charnota returns home and quarrels with Lucy, because he lies to her that the box with toys and gas was stolen from him. She understands that on the run he lost the last. Seraphim lives with them. Lyuska admits to him that she is forced to engage in prostitution due to the fact that they have nothing to eat and nothing to pay for the room. She reproaches him for the fact that he defeated the counterintelligence headquarters, then fled the army and now they live in poverty far from Russia. Charnota, on the other hand, constantly objected and justified himself by saving Seraphim. And then suddenly Lucy declares that she is leaving with a French acquaintance for Paris. Seraphim, having heard all this conversation, decides not to sit on anyone's neck anymore, but also go to earn money on the panel.
On the same day, Charnota meets Golubkov on the street, playing the hurdy-gurdy. He is looking for Seraphim, who has already found a Greek client and goes with him to the room. Behind them, Charnota and Golubkov run in and chase the Greek away. Golubkov confesses his love to Seraphim, but she refuses him, because she does not want to spoil his life.
Khludov appears here. He was demoted from the army, and now he is instructed to look after Seraphim. He gives Golubkov a medallion and two lire because he is going to Paris to ask Korzukhin, who has a sick wife, for money. Charnota decides to go with him.
Korzukhin
Autumn 1921, Paris. Golubkov appears on the threshold of Korzukhin's apartment and asks him to lend him a thousand dollars. But he assures that he has no wife, and refuses to give money. In addition, he states that he wants to marry his secretary. Golubkov accuses him of heartlessness. However, here Charnota intervenes and, seeing Korzukhin's cards on the table, invites him to play and puts Khludov's medallion. As a result, he wins 20 thousand dollars from Korzukhin and buys the medallion back from him for 300 dollars.
Korzukhin is drunk and beside himself with rage, he screams and demands the police. The climax is coming. The secretary runs out of the room to scream (it turned out to be Lyuska). She, realizing what was the matter and seeing Charnota, tells Korzukhin that they can no longer return the money, since they have been lost. In parting, she asks Golubkov to take care of Seraphim.
It should be noted that "Running" (Bulgakov's work) tells about each hero with extraordinary touchingness and understanding.
Seraphim
In Constantinople, Khludov is still in a mental disorder and often communicates with the ghost of the orderly. Serafima enters and confesses to him that she is ready to accept Khludov's offer and return with him to St. Petersburg. Khludov says that he will also return to Russia, even under his own name. Here the long-awaited and already rich Golubkov and Charnota appear. The latter understands that he no longer wants to fight with the Bolsheviks and he has no hatred for them, so he stays and runs to the Tarakan Tsar Arthur.
denouement
Serafima and Khludov return to their homeland. Khludov remains alone in the room and, going to the window, shoots himself.
This is how Bulgakov ended his tragic play "Running". Its summary is just a small part of all the events, so it is better to read the play in the original. And for a better representation of all the events experienced by the Russian intelligentsia and the Russian people in general, it is advisable to watch this play, because it is best to watch plays, and not read them. However, if there is no such possibility, the excellent film “Running” (1970) will tell about everything best of all.
At the crossroads of temporary collisions: during the Civil War, in the Crimea, an intellectual from St. Petersburg Golubkov and Serafima Korzukhina meet. There is a war, people are dying. Hungry, scary and unhappy. A woman is looking for her husband in this difficult, turbulent time. These two, together, overcoming difficulties, hunger, Seraphim's illness, when Golubkov does not leave her a single step, saving her during typhus.
Her husband serves with General Khludov, who is distinguished by cruelty and atrocities. Fearing for his future, he refuses Seraphim. She is accused of being a Bolshevik and arrested along with Golubkov. The woman is saved and helped to cross the border by the cavalry of Charnota, who takes Seraphim to Turkey. Golubkov gets there with the army of General Khludov.
Korzukhina in Constantinople lives in the same room with Lyusya and the playing, and often losing, Blackness. They don't have money. Everything has been sold for a long time. Luska is engaged in prostitution to pay for the apartment. Serafima, understands that she can no longer sit on their neck and decides to also earn money on the panel. Charnota meets Golubkov on the street, he plays the hurdy-gurdy, and tells him about their affairs. Together they search for Korzukhina and prevent her from committing a "moral fall". General Khludov appears and gives some money to Golubkov so that he can go to Paris and ask Korzukhin for money. When he finds him, he finds out that he has no money, and he is also going to marry his secretary, and gives his wife complete freedom, entrusting Golubkov to take care of her.
Serafima accepts Khludov's offer and is going to return with him to St. Petersburg. Charnota and Golubkov are returning to Turkey. They found a way to get rich. But Korzukhina, bound by a word, leaves with the general for Russia, where he shoots himself out of worries and fear.
The described events give an idea of what the Russian intelligentsia experienced in the difficult years before and during emigration.
Picture or drawing Running
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Fenimore Cooper's novel "Prairie" is the final part of the works of the American classic about the bloody conquest of the natives of America by whites.
"RUN"
A play subtitled "Eight Dreams". During Bulgakov's lifetime it was not staged. Only one excerpt from B. was published - the seventh dream with a scene of a card game at Korzukhin's: Krasnaya Gazeta. Evening issue, L., 1932.1 Oct. For the first time: Bulgakov M. Plays, M .: Art, 1962. Bulgakov began work on the text in 1926. The idea of the play was associated with the memories of the second wife of the playwright L. E. Belozerskaya about emigre life and with the memoirs of the former white general Ya. A. Slashchev "Crimea in 1920" (1924), as well as a number of other historical sources, which told about the end of the civil war in the Crimea in the autumn of 1920. In April 1927, an agreement was concluded with the Moscow Art Theater, according to which Bulgakov undertook to present no later than August 20, 1927, the play "Knight of Seraphim "(Outcasts). Thus, the playwright repaid the advance paid on March 2, 1926 for the future production of the staging of The Heart of a Dog, which was not carried out due to the prohibition of the story. The manuscript of the "Knight of the Seraphim" (or "Outcasts") has not been preserved. On January 1, 1928, Bulgakov signed a new agreement with the Moscow Art Theater. Now the play was called B. On March 16, 1928, the playwright handed it over to the theater. On April 16, 1928, at the artistic council of the Moscow Art Theater, it was planned to begin work on staging B next season. However, on May 9, 1928, the Main Repertoire Committee recognized B. as an “unacceptable” work, since the author did not consider the crisis of the worldview of those characters who accept Soviet power, and their political justification for this step. The censorship also considered that the white generals in the play were too heroized, and even the head of the Crimean counter-revolution, Wrangel, was allegedly "brave and noble" by the author's description. In fact, Bulgakov in the first edition of B. has a white Commander-in-Chief, in which the commander-in-chief of the Russian army in the Crimea is easily recognizable, Lieutenant-General Baron Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel (1878-1928) (a magazine clipping with a photograph of his funeral was preserved in the Bulgakov archive), in a portrait remark was described as follows: “He has fatigue, courage, cunning, anxiety on his face” (but not nobility). In addition, the Glavrepertkom did not like “the episodic figure of a Budyonnovist in the 1st picture, wildly screaming about executions and physical violence”, which supposedly “even more emphasizes the superiority and inner nobility of the heroes of the white movement” (a different image of enemies than a simple caricature, censors resolutely did not recognize). The theater was forced to demand from the author B. alterations. Maxim Gorky (A. M. Peshkov) (1868-1936). On October 9, 1928, at a meeting of the artistic council, he spoke highly of B.: “Charnota is a comic role, as for Khludov, he is a sick person. The hanged messenger was only the last straw that overflowed the cup and completed the moral illness.
On the part of the author, I do not see any coloring of the white generals. This is an excellent comedy, I read it three times, read it to A.I. Rykov (Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. - B.S.) and other comrades. This is a play with a deep, skillfully hidden satirical content...
"Running" is a magnificent thing that will be an anathema success, I assure you."
Meanwhile, earlier at the same discussion, director B. Ilya Yakovlevich Sudakov (1890-1969) reported that with the participation of the author, an agreement had been reached with the Main Repertoire Committee on the direction of changes in the text of the play: “Now Khludov leaves the play only under the influence of conscience (Dostoevism). .. Khludov should be drawn to Russia due to the fact that he knows what is now happening in Russia, and because of the consciousness that his crimes were meaningless. B.'s supporters sought to present the play primarily as a satirical comedy that denounced the white generals and the white cause as a whole, somewhat relegating to the background the tragic content of the image of General Khludov, the prototype of which was Ya. A. Slashchev, who returned to Soviet Russia. Interestingly, the changes outlined by I.Ya. On October 11, 1928, Pravda reported that the Glavrepertkom allowed the Moscow Art Theater to start rehearsing B. subject to some changes in the text, and rehearsals began on the same day. However, on October 13, Gorky went to Italy for treatment, and on October 22, at an extended meeting of the political and artistic council of the Repert Committee, the play was rejected by B.. As a result, on October 24, the production was banned. The press launched a campaign against B., although the authors of the articles were often not even familiar with the text of the play. October 23, 1928 "Komsomolskaya Pravda" published a selection "Running back must be stopped." Biting names also appeared in other newspapers and magazines: "Cockroach raid", "Let's hit Bulgakovism." These titles, like many others, were later brilliantly parodied in the campaign against the Master's novel in The Master and Margarita.
On February 2, 1929, J.V. Stalin, responding to a letter from the playwright Vladimir Naumovich Bill-Belotserkovsky (1884/85-1970), gave a sharply negative assessment of B.: ““ Flight ”is a manifestation of an attempt to arouse pity, if not sympathy, some sections of the anti-Soviet emigrants - therefore, an attempt to justify or semi-justify the White Guard cause. "Running", in the form in which it is, is an anti-Soviet phenomenon.
However, I would have nothing against staging The Run if Bulgakov added one or two more dreams to his eight dreams, where he depicted the internal social springs of the civil war in the USSR, so that the viewer could understand that all these their “honest”, Seraphim and all sorts of privatdozents, turned out to be kicked out of Russia not at the whim of the Bolsheviks, but because they sat on the neck of the people (despite their “honesty”), that the Bolsheviks, driving out these “honest” supporters exploitation, carried out the will of the workers and peasants, and therefore acted absolutely correctly. The leader of the intelligentsia really did not like, “all sorts of privatdozents”, this is well felt by the tone of the letter, and a common language with the writer, who set his main task (in a letter to the government, i.e. to the same Stalin, March 28, 1930) “ stubborn portrayal of the Russian intelligentsia as the best stratum in our country,” the leader of the Bolsheviks could not find. Stalin's wishes about B. were unacceptable for Bulgakov, although they naturally coincided with the recommendations of the Glavrepertkom. The director of the play, I.Ya. So, at a meeting on October 9, 1928, he expressed the opinion that Serafima Korzukhina and Privatdozent Golubkov, intellectuals who ended up in exile with the White Army, should “return not to see snow on Karavannaya, but in order to live in the RSFSR. A.I. Svidersky (1878-1933), the head of the Main Arts Department, rightly objected to him, who was inclined to B.’s permission: “The idea of the play is running, Serafima and Golubkov are fleeing from the revolution, like blind puppies, as thousands of people fled to that period of our life, and they return only because they want to see exactly Karavannaya, namely snow, - this is the truth, which is understandable to everyone. If, however, their return is explained by the desire to take part in the industrialization of the country, this would be unfair and therefore bad. However, after the Stalinist verdict, the prospects for staging B. became completely illusory.
The Moscow Art Theater tried to return to the question of Bulgakov's play, the last rehearsal of which took place on January 25, 1929 (at that time they still did not believe that it was really the last), in 1933. Before that, however, the theater managed to terminate the contract with Bulgakov on October 14, 1929 and demand back an advance (in repayment of this debt, the playwright began work on the play "The Cabal of the Saints"). Also, the attempt to stage B. at the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater, an agreement with which was concluded on October 12, 1929, had no consequences. On April 29, 1933, a new contract was concluded with Bulgakov, and the playwright began reworking the text. The direction of the alterations was determined in a conversation between I.Ya. Sudakov conveyed them in a letter to the Directorate of the Moscow Art Theater on April 27, 1933: “... To resolve the play, it is necessary to clearly convey the idea in the play that the white movement died not because of good or bad people, but because of the viciousness of the white idea itself.” The contract required the author to make the following changes:
“a) rework the last picture along Khludov’s line, and Khludov’s line should lead him to suicide as a person who realized the groundlessness of his idea;
b) to rework the last picture along the line of Golubkov and Serafima so that both of these characters remain abroad;
c) to rework in the 4th scene the scene between the commander-in-chief and Khludov in such a way as to best explain Khludov’s illness, associated with the realization of the viciousness of the idea to which he gave himself up, and his hatred towards the commander-in-chief, who replaced Khludov’s idea with his idea ”(here in The text of the agreement contains an explanation inscribed in Bulgakov’s hand: “He replaced Khludov’s broad idea with his narrow idea”).
On June 29, 1933, the playwright sent I.Ya.Sudakov the text of the corrections. On September 14, 1933, he wrote to his brother N.A. Bulgakov in Paris about this: “In the Run, I was asked to make changes. Since these changes completely coincide with my first draft version and do not violate the writer's conscience in the slightest, I made them. Probably, the draft version refers to the manuscript of the Knights of the Seraphim, which has not come down to us, so today it is impossible to say exactly in what way the required amendments coincided with the original author's intention. However, by 1933, Bulgakov had strong internal, and not just censorship, grounds for a significant revision of the first edition of B.
If in 1926-1928. Bulgakov’s plays had not yet been banned and were successfully staged, then by 1933 only the Days of the Turbins had survived, and the general tightening of censorship and the requirements of ideological unanimity that had taken place since the late 1920s made it illusory the possibility of reviving some kind of civilized life, with hopes for which Golubkov, Serafima and Khludov himself returned to Russia. Now it would be more logical for the first two to remain in exile, and for the former general to commit suicide. And the fate of Khludov's prototype had already reached its tragic end by that time. In January 1929, Ya.A. Slashchev was shot dead in his apartment by a relative of one of his many victims. In life, the ghost of the innocently murdered messenger Krapilin killed the general, it was quite natural to make him do it in the play. In addition, by 1933, Bulgakov may have already familiarized himself with the memoirs of P. N. Wrangel, published in 1928-1929. in the Berlin almanac "White Deed". There Ya.A. Slashchev was characterized extremely negatively, emphasizing the painful elements of his consciousness, although the military talent of the general was not questioned. Wrangel gave such a portrait of Slashchev, which probably influenced the image of Khludov in the latest editions of B.: “Tears were constantly flowing down my cheeks. He handed me a report, the content of which left no doubt that I was facing a mentally ill person. He mentioned that “as a result of the actions of General Konovalov, there was consistent work to destroy the 2nd Corps and bring it to the left social revolutionary denominator” ... The report ended with the following words: “as a subordinate I petition, as an officer I ask an officer , but as a Russian from a Russian, I demand the appointment of an investigation over the chief of staff of the commander-in-chief, the chief of staff of the 2nd corps and over me ... ”Wrangel described his visit to Slashchev no less colorfully:“ An incredible mess reigned in the car. A table laden with bottles and snacks, scattered clothes, maps, weapons on sofas. In the midst of this mess, Slashchev, in a fantastic white cape, embroidered with yellow cords and trimmed with fur, surrounded by all kinds of birds. There were also a crane, and a raven, and a swallow, and a starling. They jumped on the table and sofas, fluttered on the shoulders and on the head of their master (it is possible that under the influence of this particular message from Wrangel, Bulgakov in The Master and Margarita altered in his own way the vaudeville song that Koroviev-Fagot forces to “embed” after the scandalous session at the Variety Theatre: "His Excellency loved poultry // And took under the protection of pretty girls." - B.S.).
I insisted that General Slashchav let the doctors examine him. The latter identified the strongest form of neurasthenia, requiring the most serious treatment.
Slashchev's illness, as we see, was not associated with pangs of conscience for extrajudicial executions, but with suspicions that turned into mania that he was surrounded by "socialist conspirators", including at the headquarters of his 2nd army corps. Now the task of reducing the return of Khludov not to pangs of conscience, but to political awareness of the correctness of Soviet power, fell away. The general's mental disorder led him to commit suicide, and in some variants of the final, before shooting himself, he fired a clip of his revolver at the spectators of cockroach races. "Smenovekhovism", which was personified by Slashchev (and Khludov), by the 30s had long been dead, and the Soviet government no longer required voluntary and conscious recognition from the intelligentsia, both within the country and in exile. Now the principle of the Roman emperor Caligula (12-41) was in effect: "Let them hate, if only they were afraid." Under the new conditions, censorship was more satisfied with Khludov's suicide and Seraphim and Golubkov, who remained in exile, and such an ending already seemed the most reasonable to the playwright himself. The argument of I.Ya.
With all this, the finale of the first edition of B., with the return of Khludov to his homeland, in the general opinion of those around him, was much stronger artistically. In this, Bulgakov's first wife L.E. Belozerskaya, his second wife E.S. Bulgakov and close friend playwright Sergei Yermolinsky (1900-1984) were in solidarity. In the autumn of 1937, when the question of staging B. again arose and the author worked on new versions of the finale, E.S. Bulgakova wrote in her diary on September 30: “In the evening she proved to Misha that the first version - without Khludov's suicide - is better. (But M.A. disagrees).” The playwright Alexander Afinogenov (1904-1941) also preferred the option of Khludov’s return, according to E.S. - No, the second final is better" (with Khludov's shot). Indeed, the finale of the first edition of B., where the pangs of conscience of the protagonist were resolved not by traditional suicide, but in a very non-trivial way: by returning to his homeland - the place of past crimes, which symbolized the readiness to accept any sentence, was much more interesting, was an artistic innovation.
In 1933, the Moscow Art Theater continued to seriously prepare for the production of B. The artist V.V. Dmitriev (1900-1948) worked on the scenery, and on October 11, 1933, even discussed, in the presence of Bulgakov, the musical and noise design of the future performance. Another year has passed. On November 8, 1934, Bulgakov received information that B. seemed to be allowed and the distribution of roles was beginning. On November 9, he wrote a new version of the final, with the suicide of Khludov, who had previously shot cockroach races, and with the return of Serafima and Golubkov to Russia. However, on November 21, 1934, the playwright learned about B.
The last time Bulgakov returned to the text of the play was after he learned on September 26, 1937 that the Committee on Arts was asking for a copy of B. On October 1, the alteration was completed, and B. was given to the Committee of Arts. However, that was the end of the matter. On October 5, 1937, having received no news from the Moscow Art Theater about the play, Bulgakov, according to his wife’s diary entry, came to the absolutely correct, albeit sad, conclusion: “This means that Run is dead.” There were no more attempts to stage the play during the life of the playwright.
In the autumn of 1937, Bulgakov wrote two versions of the B.'s finale, without specifying which one was preferable. In one of them, as in the edition of 1926-1928, Khludov, Golubkov and Serafima were returning to their homeland. Another option provided for the suicide of Khludov (with the execution of the "cockroach kingdom"), but, unlike the 1933 option, Golubkov and Serafima returned to Russia, and did not leave for France, and did not call themselves outcasts anymore. Probably, Bulgakov never got over the fluctuations between the consciousness of the greatest artistic persuasiveness of the finale with the return of Khludov and the censorship demand, reinforced by his own moods, of the protagonist's suicide. As for the fate of Serafima and Golubkov, it obviously had already lost its relevance in 1937 from the point of view of censorship, and Bulgakov himself was inclined to return them to their homeland. It is interesting that already after Bulgakov's death, the Commission on the literary heritage of the writer on May 4, 1940 decided to publish B., choosing the final option with the return of Khludov. Then the war with Finland had just ended and the war with Germany was approaching, the Soviet government and Stalin again adopted the patriotic idea, so the return of the former general, the unification of emigration around the communist metropolis again became relevant and censorship preferred.
One of the zealous persecutors of Bulgakov, critic Osaf Semyonovich Litovsky (1892-1971), who headed the Glavrepertkom in 1932-1937, and after the war ended up in a camp as part of a campaign to combat "cosmopolitanism", in his memoirs "So It Was" (1958) is as follows B. summed up the results of the censorship epic in a way: “There were no “naked” administrative prohibitions in Soviet times, with rare exceptions. Even such an obviously vicious play as Bulgakov's "Running" was not discarded, and all sorts of attempts were made to make it the property of the theater.
For a very long time, even before I started working in the GURK, the story of permission and prohibition of "Run" by the control authorities dragged on, but Bulgakov stubbornly refused to correct the play.
Many of Bulgakov's admirers who still exist today believe that "Running" is a revolutionary play, a vivid story about emigrant decay.
Well, in form, in plot moves in "Running" everything is more than orthodox. The unstoppable run of the defeated White Guard armies ended only off the coast of the Black Sea: the last ships of the Entente transported the crashed "patriots" to different countries. And it is true that abroad, Russian emigrants organized cockroach races to support their lives. It is true that the generals opened brothels, and high-society ladies constituted their first clientele (rather not a clientele, but a labor force that worked hard. - B.S.).
Once A.N. Tolstoy told me about a terrible episode from the life of an emigrant in Constantinople, an incident in a cabaret, which he himself witnessed.
A completely obscene spectacle was played out on the stage: a naked black man chasing a naked white woman. And so, sitting next to Tolstoy, a white émigré girl, an employee of this institution, whispered indignantly in Tolstoy's ear: “Intrigues, by God, intrigues, Alexei Nikolaevich! I played this role much better!”
Although Bulgakov does not show this extreme degree of fall, the Parisian scenes by General Khludov and Charnota are worth this erotic revue (probably, this story of Tolstoy also came to Bulgakov, which, most likely, became one of the sources of the Great Ball with Satan, where they bathe in cognac naked "entertainer-dressmaker", going back to the main character of "Zoyka's apartment", and "her gentleman, an unknown young mulatto" - B.S.).
According to Bulgakov, Khludov, whose prototype was the Crimean hangman-executioner General Slashchev, having lost faith in the possibility of victory and spattered with the blood of hundreds and thousands of the best sons of the working class and our party, decided to suffer "for the truth", to atone for his guilt. And for this he crossed the border and gave himself into the hands of Soviet intelligence.
As if everything is fine. But the theme of Khludov, like the theme of the real-life Slashchev, is by no means a recognition of the Bolshevik truth, but the collapse of unfulfilled dreams.
Yes, like Slashchev, the Khludovs came to the Soviet authorities with a confession, but only because they realized that together with embezzlers, cowards, dissolute and dissolute officers and volunteers, they could not create a new Russia - Russia in white robes. It was a step of desperation, because in reality, in fact, Khludov-Slashchev considered Wrangel too liberal.
As you know, Slashchev took away the Bolshevik revolutionaries languishing there from the Wrangel prisons to his headquarters and there he dealt with his court, namely: he “hung” the Bolsheviks, workers and revolutionary underground workers along the entire road - from the headquarters to Simferopol.
No, according to Bulgakov, Khludov is not to blame for such a collapse. He, Khludov himself, wanted the best, hoped for a miracle. And his crossing the Soviet border is nothing more than a way to commit suicide not with his own hand.
One might think that if there were more such Khludov and cavalry daring Charnots and Sivash did not freeze too early this year, the Reds would not have been able to take the Crimea.
Was it possible to approach such a work “by form”? Of course not. In terms of form, everything in it is completely safe: the collapse of the White Guard is presented, one might say, in expanded form, and the repentance of the Khludovs looked very cruel. Cockroach races averted.
But in fact it was a staged memorial service for the white movement. In some way, this conclusion cannot be denied exactly.
But contrary to the widespread belief of contemporaries and descendants, the main problem of B. is not the problem of the collapse of the white cause and the fate of emigration. In the conversation with A. N. Afinogenov mentioned above on September 9, 1933, Bulgakov declared: “This is not a play about emigrants at all ...”. Indeed, even in 1926, which Bulgakov dated the beginning of work on B., the problems of the ideology of the white movement that had sunk into oblivion or the recently deceased Smenovekhism (in connection with the closure in May 1926 of the Smenovekhovsky magazine Rossiya and the expulsion of its editor abroad I. G. Lezhnev (Altshuller) (1891-1955) Bulgakov was searched) could not be relevant. Bulgakov’s idea probably originated at the very end of 1924. In his diary entry on the night of December 23-24, he recalled the night battle for Shali-aul in November 1919. Bulgakov captured a picture of his concussion under an oak tree and “colonel, wounded in the stomach"
Immortality is a quiet bright shore...
Our way is aspiration to it.
Rest in peace, who finished his run,
You wanderers of patience...
In order not to forget and so that posterity does not forget, I write down when and how he died. He died in November of the 19th year during a campaign for Shali-aul, and he said the last phrase to me like this: - In vain you console me, I'm not a boy.
I was already shell-shocked half an hour after it.
So, I saw a triple picture. First - this November night fight, through it - the car, when I already talked about this fight, and this, immortally cursed hall in the "Beep". "Blessed is he who has suffered a battle." He did little for me, and I must get my portion.
Characteristically, the record further condemns the strikes organized by the communists in France and the activities of the Soviet embassy there, which the writer considered as aimed at inciting revolution and civil war in the country. Bulgakov's sympathies were clearly on the side of the Whites - opponents of the Bolsheviks. The quoted lines (without the last one) from Vasily Zhukovsky's (1783-1852) poem "A Singer in the Camp of Russian Soldiers" (1812) became an epigraph to B. Bulgakov sought to assess all aspects of the civil war objectively and, as he wrote in a letter to the government on March 28, 1930 ., "TO BECOME DISCHARGED OVER RED AND WHITE". The epigraph symbolized the end of the era of revolution and civil war; Bulgakov looked at it from another time. The image of the nameless colonel was reflected not only in the fearless Colonel Nai-Turs from the novel The White Guard and Colonel Turbina, who inherited him from the play Days of the Turbins, but also in the words that Khludov utters in B.: “I won’t swim in buckets, not a cockroach, not running! I remember snow, pillars, armies, fights! And all the flashlights, flashlights. Khludov is going home" (in later versions: "Khludov will pass under the lanterns" - an allusion to the widely used hanging on the lanterns, to the fact that Khludov returns to the places where he hung). Bulgakov also recalled past battles as something much more sublime than the harsh day labor in Gudok. He could well say as General Charnot, who, unlike Khludov, did not have executions in the rear on his conscience: “I've been longing for a long time, brother! He's tormenting me with hell, I remember the lavra! I remember the fights! The writer Alexander Drozdov (1895-1963)'s article "Intelligentsia on the Don", published in 1922 in the second volume of the Berlin Archive of the Russian Revolution, played an important role in B.'s plan. In his diary entry on October 26, 1923, Bulgakov himself rated A.M. join the pro-Soviet editorial board of Nakanune. In The Intelligentsia on the Don, Bulgakov was undoubtedly attracted by the place where it was told about the collapse of the army of General A. I. Denikin (1872-1947) and the subsequent fate of that part of the intelligentsia that was associated with the White an hour - and not a fluff was left of the new young Russia, which so wonderfully and sacredly raised the tricolor patriotic flag. Everything that could run rushed to the Black Sea, in a crush, among the groans of those dying of typhus, among the screams of the wounded, who remained in the city in order to receive a blow from the bayonet of a brutal Red Army soldier. Ah, there are moments which the most loving heart will not forgive, which the meekest hand will not bless! The fields lay damp and cold, gloomy, sensing close blood, and there was an avalanche of fleeing, stubborn, embittered, groaning, towards a new bared obscurity, towards new destinies that hid their mysterious face in the darkness of the future. And with small steps the intelligentsia went to new places, carrying on their shoulders the coffin of their ideology, broken in half along with the sword of General Denikin. The friendly fetters that bound her at the moments of a common desire for Belokamennaya broke up - and now crowds of Eternal Zhids went to roam the brilliant, intoxicated with victory Europe, embittered at each other, multilingual, many-hearted, confused, buried a lot back, taking nothing with them except longing in Russia, inglorious and combustible. In the finale, General Charnota addressed Golubkov and Serafima, who were leaving for Russia, with similar words: “So you are going? Well, we're not on our way. Fate divorced us, some in a loop, some in St. Petersburg, and I, like the Eternal Jew, from now on ... I am Dutch! Farewell!" For the "descendant of the Cossacks" the run from the Crimea to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Paris and back continues; for Golubkov, Serafima and Khludov it is over.
Khludov's predecessor in Bulgakov's work was the unnamed white general from the short story The Red Crown (1922). At night, the ghost of a worker hanged in Berdyansk comes to him (perhaps Bulgakov himself had a chance to see this executed man). It is difficult to say to what extent the prototype of Khludov, Ya. A. Slashchev, could be reflected in the image of the general from the Red Crown. By that time, he had not yet had time to release his memoirs "Crimea in 1920", but he had already returned to Soviet Russia, which in 1921 the newspapers paid a lot of attention to. Slashchev, while still in Constantinople, published the book “I demand the judgment of society and publicity” about his activities in the Crimea. With this book, the author B. could well be familiar. The formidable Slashchev orders quoted here could have influenced the image of the hangman general from the Red Crown.
In B. Khludov, he acts as the immediate predecessor of Pontius Pilate in The Master and Margarita. This novel was begun by Bulgakov in 1929, immediately after the completion of the first edition of the play, and was conceived in parallel with it - in 1928. In B., the main emphasis is not on the analysis of the lessons of the civil war in itself, but on the philosophical understanding of the price of blood in general , the execution of the innocent in the name of the idea - and moral punishment (in the form of pangs of conscience) for this crime. For reasons of censorship, B. is talking about a white idea, and it is precisely as its bearer that Charnota accuses Khludov of his unenviable fate as an émigré. However, with the same success, the image of Khludov can be projected onto any other idea, communist or even Christian, in the name of which rivers of innocent blood were also shed in history (Levi Matvey will talk about the Christian idea and the blood shed for it later in The Master and Margarita and Pontius Pilate). Note that the ending with Khludov's suicide looks quite artificial in the light of this. After all, the words of the protagonist remained in the text that he decided to return to Russia, to pass under the “lanterns”, and as a result “my burden melts”, and the ghost of the hanged Krapilin releases the general. Repentance and readiness to answer for a crime before people, even at the cost of a possible execution, according to Bulgakov, brings redemption and forgiveness. Pontius Pilate is deprived of the opportunity to appear before a court other than the court of his own conscience, for the executed Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who can condemn his executioners only to the suffering of an unclean conscience, but not to earthly punishment. Therefore, in the finale of The Master and Margarita it is not entirely clear whether the procurator of Judea committed suicide by throwing himself into a mountain abyss, or was simply doomed after death in the place of his exile to the pangs of conscience for cowardice, which led to the execution of an innocent. At the same time, Bulgakov nevertheless grants forgiveness to Pontius Pilate through the lips of the Master. It is possible that it was precisely in connection with the development of the image of Pilate in 1937 that the writer did not choose between two options for the finale of B. - with suicide or with the return of Khludov, who was already regarded as a kind of double of the procurator of Judea.
In the first edition B. Khludov before his famous maxim: “We need love. Love. And without love you can’t do anything in the war, ”quoted the well-known order of L.D. Trotsky:“ Victory rolls along the rails .. . ”, threatening to hang the head of the station if he fails to send an armored train on time. Here is a further development of the thought of Colonel Alexei Turbin (“The people are not with us. They are against us”), that any idea can become effective only by gaining the support of the masses, here is the “turnover” of red and white ideas: Khludov, like Slashchev, like and Wrangel, who in this respect did not differ much from Khludov’s prototype, is similar to L.D. Trotsky, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and head of the Red Army, with calm cruelty and military organizational talent (except that the cruelty of Wrangel and Trotsky is more prudent than that of Slashchev).
It is possible that Bulgakov rewarded Khludov with his own experiences, only not because of the murder of an innocent, but due to the fact that he could not prevent the death of a person. In The Red Crown, where the protagonist becomes a double of the general, tormented by the death of his brother, in the stories "I Killed" and "On the Night of the 3rd", in the novel "The White Guard" characters with obvious autobiographical roots experience similar pangs of conscience. When and how such a tragedy could happen in the life of the playwright, it is unlikely that it will be possible to reliably establish. It is possible that the experiences were connected with the death of the nameless colonel, whom the doctor Bulgakov was powerless to help near Shali-aul. Memories of this event served, no doubt, as an important impetus for the creation of B.
Autobiographical motifs in the play are also associated with the images of Golubkov and Seraphim. Golubkov is an anagram of the surname Bulgakov. This character probably reflected the thoughts of the author B. about the possibility of emigration, which did not leave him until the beginning of the 30s. Serafima Korzukhina, as can be assumed, is endowed with some of the experiences of L.E. Belozerskaya during the emigrant period of her life. However, there are other prototypes. Privatdozent, the son of an idealist professor Sergei Golubkov brings to mind the outstanding idealist philosopher and theologian S.N. Bulgakov, as well as the writer's father, who had a professorship. Golubkov in the first edition of B. recalls his life in Kyiv: “Obviously, the caves are like in Kyiv. Have you ever been to Kyiv, Serafima Vladimirovna?” And not only the author of the play lived in Kyiv, but also S. N. Bulgakov. The latter, like Bulgakov's hero, ended up in the Crimea at the end of the civil war and in December 1922 was expelled from Sevastopol to Constantinople. Golubkov also recalls St. Petersburg, where the philosopher S.N. Bulgakov also had a chance to teach. Privatdozent in B. carries out the function of philosophical understanding of the problem of "intelligentsia and revolution", which his famous prototype tried to solve in articles published in the collections "Milestones" (1909) and "From the Depths" (1921). Only Golubkov is a reduced likeness of a great thinker and solves the problem quite conformist, returning to Russia and putting up with the Bolsheviks. The prototype of Serafima Korzukhina, perhaps, was the hostess of the literary association "Nikitinsky Subbotniks" Evdoksia Fyodorovna Nikitina (1895-1973), whose husband, A. M. Nikitin (1876 - after 1920), was the Minister of the Provisional Government, and in 1920, together with Denikin's army retreated to the sea. Bulgakov, who attended the literary evenings of Nikitinskie subbotniks, was well acquainted with Nikitina. But the main prototype of the husband of Seraphim Paramon Ilyich Korzukhin, according to L.E. Belozerskaya, was another person. It was her good acquaintance, the St. Petersburg writer and businessman-millionaire Vladimir Pimenovich Krymov (1878-1968), who came from Siberian Old Believer merchants. In her memoirs “Oh, the honey of memories”, L.E. Belozerskaya reported about him: “I left Russia as soon as the revolution smelled, “when the hazel grouse in the restaurant began to cost sixty kopecks instead of forty, which indicated that the country was unfavorable , are his own words. Being a rich man, he acquired real estate in almost every European state, up to Honolulu ...
The scene in Paris at Korzukhin's was written under the influence of my story about how I sat down to play nine with Vladimir Pimenovich and his company (for the first time in my life!) and beat everyone. It is possible that the very name of the prototype prompted Bulgakov to place Paramon Ilyich Korzukhin, who ascended to him, in the Crimea. Before the revolution, Krymov graduated from the Petrovsky-Razumovskaya Agricultural Academy, published the "high society" magazine "Capital and Estate", wrote an interesting book about his round-the-world trip made after the February Revolution in Russia, "Praying Mantises in a Box", in exile he created the tetralogy "For Millions" (1933-1935), which enjoyed great success with readers. He also wrote adventure novels and detective stories translated into English and other foreign languages. Being a very rich man, he provided material assistance to needy emigrants. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he emigrated from Germany to France, where in Chatou near Paris he acquired a villa that previously belonged to the famous spy Mata Hari (Dutch dancer Margaret Celle (1876-1917)), who was shot by the French authorities on charges of spying for Germany. At one time, Krymov was close to the "Smenovekhovites", which did not add Bulgakov's sympathies to him. In general, the prototype of Bulgakov's Korzukhin was not at all a bad person, by no means obsessed with the process of making money and not devoid of literary abilities. But the hero B. has become a symbol of the money-grubber. It is no coincidence that only the scene from the play containing his “ballad about the dollar” (in the unpreserved draft version of the “Knight of the Seraphim” it was contrasted with the “ballad about the Mauser”, which was probably spoken by the Budennovite Baev), saw the light during the life of Bulgakov in 1932, not encountering censorship. Paris is illuminated in the ballad by the golden ray of the dollar next to the chimera of Notre Dame Cathedral. A postcard with the image of this chimera, brought by L. E. Belozerskaya, was in Bulgakov's archive. In The Master and Margarita, Woland sits in the pose of the Chimera of Notre Dame on the roof of the Pashkov House, so that in the Ballad of the Dollar, the chimera symbolizes the devil, to whom Korzukhin sold his soul for gold. The unknown soldier who died for a dollar is the personification of Mephistopheles' "people die for metal." Krymov, of course, did not possess any infernal traits, the characteristic that Golubkov gives Korzukhin: “you are the most disgusting, most soulless person I have ever seen” is hardly applicable to him. It is interesting that the name and patronymic of the prototype - Vladimir Pimenovich were transformed into the name and patronymic of the character through. .. name and patronymic of the leader of the world proletariat. The rare Old Believer name Paramon replaced the equally rare middle name Pimenovich, and Korzukhin's name Vladimir corresponds to the notorious Ilyich. In his article “On the Significance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism” (1921), V.I. Lenin suggested making toilets out of gold in the future communist society; Korzukhin in B., on the contrary, makes a universal idol out of a gold dollar. It should be emphasized that this Leninist article was first published in Pravda on November 6-7, 1921. It was from this issue that Bulgakov cut out the memoirs of A.V. Shotman about Lenin, preserved in his archive, which were later reflected in The Master and Margarita.
In order to bypass censorship, to try to comprehend the civil war from non-communist positions, it was often necessary to resort to such an “Aesopian language”, which was understandable only to a very narrow circle of people. In B. there is a very powerful layer of national self-criticism, which is not noticed by the overwhelming majority of readers and viewers. It is most clearly expressed in the first edition of the play and is associated with one of the prototypes of General Charnota.
The only “seventh dream” published during Bulgakov’s lifetime is a scene of a card game in Paris between a millionaire, the former Wrangel minister Paramon Ilyich Korzukhin, and the Kuban general Grigory Lukyanovich Charnota. Charnot has absolutely fantastic luck, and he wins all the cash from Korzukhin - ten thousand dollars. A characteristic detail: the former general comes to the former minister literally without pants: in a Circassian coat and underpants, since the pants had to be sold during a hungry journey from Constantinople to Paris. Meanwhile, the story of the Polish writer Stefan Zeromski (1864-1925) is known to his friend theatrical and literary critic Adam Grzhmaylo-Sedlecki (1876-1948) about his meeting with the future head of the Polish state Jozef Pilsudski (1867-1935) even before the First World War, when the future head of the Polish state and the first marshal of Poland lived in Zakopane in extreme poverty. Here is how this story was presented in Grzhmailo-Sedletsky's diary entry made in 1946: “It was proletarian poverty. I found him sitting at the table playing solitaire. He sat in long johns, as he gave the only pair of trousers he had to a tailor to mend the holes. When Żeromski asked about the reasons for the excitement with which Piłsudski plays the solitaire, he replied: "I made a guess: if the solitaire plays out well, then I will be the dictator of Poland." Zeromsky was shocked: "Dreams of a dictatorship in a hut and without trousers struck me."
Characteristically, Zeromski's conversation with Grzhmailo-Sedlecki took place in the winter of 1917, when the independence of Poland and the establishment of Pilsudski's dictatorship there were still far away. It is not known how this story reached Bulgakov. Whether Zeromsky or Grzhmailo-Sedletsky published it in the press in the 1920s, I have not yet been able to find out. It cannot be ruled out that Żeromski told this story with Piłsudski not only to Grzhmailo-Sedlecki, but also to his other acquaintances, and from them it could somehow reach Bulgakov. It is worth considering that one of Bulgakov's friends in the 1920s, the famous writer Yuri Karlovich Olesha (1899-1960), was a Pole and had acquaintances in the Polish cultural environment both in the USSR and in Poland.
Piłsudski's dreams, as we know, have come true. In November 1918, he headed the revived Polish Republic, and in May 1926, after the death of Żeromski, he carried out a military coup and remained the de facto dictator of Poland until his death in 1935.
Bulgakov's Charnota, however, is not a marshal, but only a general. However, for him, a change for the better in fate comes at the moment when the general was left in his underpants. But Czarnota also has another connection with Piłsudski. One of the prototypes of Charnota was the general convoy in the army of Hetman Khmelnytsky, Zaporozhye Colonel Charnota, an episodic character in Senkevich’s novel “With Fire and Sword” (hence the characterization of General Charnota in the author’s remark as “a descendant of the Cossacks”). And Sienkiewicz was Pilsudski's favorite writer and was quoted abundantly by the marshal in his book on the Soviet-Polish war "1920", translated into Russian in 1926. Bulgakov was probably familiar with Pilsudski's book. After all, the novel The White Guard was originally conceived by the writer as a trilogy, the second part of which would cover the events of 1919, and the third - 1920, including the war with the Poles. The "Zaporozhian origin" of Bulgakov's Charnota can also be read as an indirect reference to Pilsudski. The fact is that the Cossacks are primarily associated with readers with large lush mustaches. And the most characteristic detail of Pilsudski's portrait is just a magnificent mustache, albeit not quite Zaporozhye.
If we accept that Pilsudski served as one of the prototypes of Charnota, and Lenin was Korzukhina, then their fight at the card table is a parody of the fight between Pilsudski and Lenin in 1920, the unsuccessful campaign of the Red Army against Warsaw. And this campaign is directly mentioned in the first edition of B. in the speech of the white commander-in-chief addressed to Korzukhin: “Are you the editor of this newspaper? So, you are responsible for everything that is printed in it?.. Is your signature Paramon Korzukhin? (Is reading). “The commander-in-chief, like Alexander the Great, walks along the platform ...” What does this pig parsley mean? During the time of Alexander the Great were there platforms? And am I like? Next, sir! (Reads) "At a glance at his cheerful face, every worm of doubt should dissipate ...". The worm is not a cloud or a battalion, it cannot disperse! Am I cheerful? Am I very cheerful?.. You received millions in subsidies and this disgrace was printed two days before the disaster! Do you know what the Polish newspapers wrote when Budyonny went to Warsaw - "The Fatherland is dying"!
Here is a hidden opposition between Pilsudski and the Poles, who were able to unite around the national idea and repel the invasion of the Bolsheviks, Wrangel and other generals and ordinary members of the white movement, who could not put forward an idea that could unite the nation, and lost the civil war. No wonder Khludov throws in the face of the commander-in-chief: “I hate that you and your French involved me in all this. You understand how a person can hate who knows that nothing will work out and who must do it. Where are the French troops? Where is the Russian Empire? Look out the window! Korzukhin ironically says goodbye to the Fatherland, which he is leaving forever, from which he has already taken all the goods and capital: “Ahead is Europe, a clean, smart, calm life. So! Farewell, united, indivisible RSFSR, and may you be damned now, and forever, and forever and ever ... ". And Charnota in the finale throws Khludov: “You have a map before your eyes, the Russian former empire is imagining, which you lost at Perekop, and dead soldiers are walking around behind your back? .. I no longer have a Motherland! You lost it to me!" It is no coincidence that there is a hint at the "French rati" that did not come to the aid of the whites (in later editions - "allied rati"). After all, Pilsudski near Warsaw was able to do without the help of French troops, limiting himself to the assistance of French advisers.
In all likelihood, Bulgakov was also familiar with Stefan Żeromski's play The Rose (1909), whose protagonist, the revolutionary Jan Czarowiec, was based on Piłsudski's prototype. This connection was pointed out, in particular, by the party publicist and leader of the Comintern Karl Radek (1885-1939) in his 1920 article “Joseph Pilsudski”, reprinted in a separate edition in 1926: “... Stefan Zeromsky published in 1912 (in reality - in 1909 - B.S.) under the pseudonym Katerlya drama, the hero of which is precisely Pilsudski. This drama reflects all the despair of Piłsudski and his friends about the real balance of power in Poland, as it manifested itself in the revolution of 1905, about the groundlessness of the ideas of independence among the leading classes of Polish society. Not knowing how to make his hero, Joseph Pilsudski, a winner, Zeromski orders him to make a great technical invention, with which he burns the tsarist army. But since in reality Pilsudski did not invent a new gunpowder, he had to turn to the mighty of this world, who had ordinary artillery gunpowder in sufficient quantities.
Zeromsky's play has a number of parallels with B. For example, in the masquerade scene in The Rose, after the girl, symbolizing the defeated revolution, and those sentenced to death, dressed in clothes like in Goya's etching, incomprehensible figures appear - bodies sewn into triangular bags, and in the place where the neck should be behind the canvas, a piece of rope sticks out. These figures are the corpses of the hanged, dressed in shrouds. And when the society, which has just booed the girl-revolution, scatters in a panic, the voice of Charovets is heard from behind the curtain, calling the corpse in the sack a “Warsaw musician”, a “Khokhlov”, ready to play his song. Not to mention the obvious consonance of the names Charovets and Charnot (in both there are associations with the words “enchantment”, “enchanted”), the figures in bags from B. are immediately recalled - the corpses of those hanged on the orders of Khludov, who, in typhoid delirium, is thrown in the face by Seraphim Korzukhin : "The road and, where human eyes are not enough, all bags and bags! .. Beast, jackal!". The last victim of Khludov - the messenger Charnoty Krapilin, like the one executed in the "Rose", is a "crest" (Kuban Cossack). There is another parallel between "Rose" and B. An important role is played by Zeromsky in detail, with naturalistic details, the scene of the interrogation of the worker Oset by the police in front of his comrade Charovets. Osset's fingers are broken, they are beaten in the stomach, in the face. The prisoner performs a terrible "dance", thrown by blows from side to side. And where drops of the blood of the tortured have fallen, red roses grow. Charovets, on the other hand, courageously denounces those who try to intimidate him. “You will not wash off the clothes, from the soul and from the memories of the Polish peasant and worker of the blood that is shed here! he says to the chief of police. - Your torture awakens the soul in those who have fallen asleep. Your gallows is working for a free Poland... In time, all Polish people will understand what an inexhaustible source of health for the people this revolution was, what a living force began to beat along with this source, born in suffering by our land. And after this, Charovets, like his prototype, manages to escape.
In B. there is a scene of the interrogation of Privatdozent Golubkov by the head of counterintelligence, Tikhim, and his henchmen. Golubkov is almost not beaten - they only knock a cigarette out of his mouth with a blow. He is only threatened with a red-hot needle, which causes the scene to turn red. And instead of blood - only a bottle of red wine on the table at the head of counterintelligence. And for the intellectual Golubkov, one threat is enough for him to break down and sign a denunciation of his beloved woman. The arrested Serafima Korzukhina is saved only thanks to the intervention of General Charnota, who recaptured her from counterintelligence.
The play "Rose" has not been translated into Russian until now. However, Bulgakov himself knew the Polish language to some extent, having lived in Kyiv for a long time and communicated with the local Polish intelligentsia. Polonisms are very appropriately introduced into the speech of Bulgakov's Polish characters - the staff captain Studzinsky in The White Guard and the spy Pelenzhkovsky in The Fatal Eggs. So, Studzinsky says to the division commander, Colonel Malyshev: "It is a great happiness that good officers were caught." That is what a Pole would say, while for a Russian it would be more natural to say “great happiness”. By the way, in the early editions of The Days of the Turbins, Myshlaevsky’s Polish origin was also emphasized, but in the final text this hero, who symbolized the recognition of communist power by the intelligentsia, could not be a Pole, whom the Soviet leadership considered as enemies No. 1 in Europe.
There are a number of other details connecting Charnota with Piłsudski. Grigory Lukyanovich recalls Kharkov and Kyiv. Meanwhile, in Kharkov, Pilsudski studied at the medical faculty of the university, and in Kyiv, after escaping from the Warsaw prison hospital, he published the last issue of the illegal Rabotnik magazine before fleeing abroad. In the finale, B. Charnota recalls how he robbed the carts. This can also be understood as an allusion to the famous expropriation at the Bezdana station, organized and directly led by Pilsudski in 1908. At that time, a mail train was robbed, and Russian newspapers widely wrote about this incident.
But Charnota, for all the sympathy that this hero evokes from both the author and the audience, is still a reduced, parodic likeness of the Polish marshal. After all, the white generals lost the civil war with the Bolsheviks, and Pilsudski won his war with the same Bolsheviks. Lenin and Piłsudski waged a struggle that determined the political map of Europe for two decades, and tens of thousands of people died on both sides. For Korzukhin and Charnota, the battlefield is just a card table.
Bulgakov did not feel hatred for Pilsudski and the Poles, although he condemned their occupation of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. In "Kiev-Gorod" he criticized "our Europeanized cousins" for the fact that during the retreat from the "mother of Russian cities" they "thought to flaunt their subversive means and smashed three bridges across the Dnieper, and Chain to smithereens", but immediately comforted the people of Kiev: “Cheer up, dear Kiev citizens! Someday the Poles will stop being angry with us and build us a new bridge, even better than the old one. And at the same time at your own expense. The writer believed that the age-old enmity between Russia and Poland would someday be overcome, just as Senkevich, in the finale of the novel “With Fire and Sword”, expressed the hope that hatred between the twin nations - Poles and Ukrainians - would disappear.
Probably, Bulgakov felt that the fate of not the millionaire Krymov, but Golubkov, Khludov, or, at best, Charnota, would rather have awaited him in exile, if an unexpected win had fallen. Back in Days of the Turbins, Myshlaevsky predicted: “Wherever you go, they will spit in your mug: from Singapore to Paris. We are needed there, abroad, like a third wheel for a cannon. Krymov, who had real estate in Paris, and in Singapore, and in Honolulu, in the face, of course, no one spit. But the writer Bulgakov understood that he himself would definitely not become a millionaire in exile, and he had a strong dislike for the rich, who were associated primarily with boorish Soviet NEPmen, which resulted in the caricature image of Korzukhin. The author B. made him phenomenally lose at cards to a much more likeable General Grigory Lukyanovich Charnot, whose name, patronymic and surname, however, make one recall Malyuta Skuratov - Grigory Lukyanovich Belsky (died in 1573), one of the most ferocious associates of Tsar Ivan Grozny (1530-1584). But Charnota, even though by the name of “black”, unlike the “white” villain Skuratov-Belsky, did not sully his conscience with crimes and, despite all the talk of B.’s defenders before censorship about the satirical nature of this image, enjoys strong author and audience sympathy. Fate grants him a win from Korzukhin, who made a deal with the yellow devil. Bulgakov does not condemn his hero for the fact that, unlike Khludov, Charnota remains abroad, not believing the Bolsheviks.
At the same time, the “descendant of the Cossacks” is also endowed with comic features. His trip to Paris in underpants is the realization of Khlestakov's idea from Gogol's The Inspector General (1836) about selling pants for dinner (the unbridled passion for the card game is also related to this character of the hero B.). The Constantinople enterprise of Charnota - the manufacture and sale of rubber devils-commissars, which was eventually liquidated for two and a half Turkish liras, goes back to the story of Roman Gul (1896-1986) in the book "Life on Fuchs" (1927), which described the life "Russian Berlin". There, the former Russian minister of war, cavalry general Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinov (1848-1926) “was engaged in making soft dolls from pieces of cloth stuffed with cotton, with sewn-on painted heads. Beautiful Pierrots, Harlequins, Colombines came out. The general rejoiced, because the ladies bought them for 10 marks each. And dead dolls sat with long legs near porcelain lamps in the boudoirs of wealthy German ladies and cocottes. Or they lay like corpses on the couches of pale girls who love poetry. The business of General Charnota in B. is much less successful, because Turkish ladies and girls who love poetry do not want to buy his "red commissars" even for the insignificant sum of 50 piastres.
The secondary characters of B. also have prototypes. According to L. E. Belozerskaya, Krymov “did not recognize female servants. The house was serviced by a former military man - Klimenko. In the play, the footman Antoine Grishchenko. It is possible that the prototype was Nikolai Konstantinovich Klimenko, a writer and playwright who, in particular, left interesting memories of another émigré writer, Ilya Dmitrievich Surguchev (1881-1956). Probably, V.P. Krymov, having taken N.K.Klimenko to himself, thus provided him with assistance. Ironically, Bulgakov rewarded Antoine Grishchenko in B. with a tongue-tied tongue and an amusing mixture of "French with Nizhny Novgorod."
Budyonnovets Baev, the regiment commander, is the personification of the Red Army bayonet mentioned by Alexander Drozdov in the "Intelligentsia on the Don", death from which threatened all those who stopped the rapid run to the sea and beyond. In the first edition, Baev directly promised the monks: “I will put you all to the last and with your gray-haired shaitan together against the wall ... Well, now you will have execution!” declaring: “Well, if I weren’t a maroon devil, if I don’t hang someone in the monastery for the joy of it” (the devil also resembles a Budennovite). The word "shaitan" in the vocabulary of the red commander emphasized Baev's Asian origin, a hint of which is his surname. With subsequent alterations, Bulgakov had to significantly soften and ennoble the image of the red commander, freeing him from Asian, barbaric features. Baev no longer promised to arrange an execution in the monastery, and even threw sympathetically to Charnota, who had taken refuge under a blanket in the guise of a pregnant Barabanchinova: “I found the time, the place to give birth!”
Fantastic cockroach races were borrowed by Bulgakov from the stories of Arkady Averchenko (1881-1925) in the collections Notes of the Innocent (1922) and The Ruined Ant Hill. Emigrant Stories" (1927) (story "Constantinople menagerie"), as well as from the story of Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1882/83-1945) "The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibikus" (1925). According to L.E. Belozerskaya, in fact, there were no cockroach races in Constantinople. However, there is evidence that "cockroach races" in Constantinople did exist. The Zarnitsa magazine, published by the Wrangel army soldiers who were in the Gallipoli camp, reported in the issue of May 8-15, 1921: “The lotto was closed on May 1 ... Now the cockroach races have opened.” According to some later testimonies, the idea of "cockroach races" belonged to the emigrant filmmaker A.I. Drankov. Nevertheless, Bulgakov, most likely based on the words of his second wife, believed that the “cockroach race” was a literary fantasy, and not a real fact from the life of Russian emigrants in Constantinople.
In B., the spinner of cockroach races with the “cockroach king” Arthur becomes a symbol of emigrant Constantinople - the “cockroach kingdom”, the meaninglessness of the race that ended with emigration. From this realm, those who do not want, like cockroaches in a jar, to lead a hopeless struggle for existence, but are trying to find the meaning of life - Golubkov, Seraphim and Khludov are breaking out.
In B. Bulgakov he managed to masterfully merge the grotesque and tragedy, the genres of high and low. The tragic image of Khludov is not at all diminished by the phantasmagoric cockroach races or the comical scene of a card game by Korzukhin. Charnota is somewhat Khlestakov, but the epic beginning prevails in the image of a brave cavalry general, a “descendant of the Cossacks”, who remembers the excitement of battles, in comparison with which cockroaches tote and emigrant vegetation are nothing. The purely reliable details of the civil war and emigrant life, taken from reliable sources, do not contradict the cockroach races created by the author's imagination, demonstrating the futility of hopes to escape from the homeland and from fate.
There were no direct assessments of B. in Bulgakov's letters, but people close to the playwright unanimously testify that he considered this work to be his best play. L.E. Belozerskaya noted in her memoirs: “Running” is my favorite play, and I consider it a play of extraordinary power, the most significant and interesting of all Bulgakov’s dramatic works.” Khludov was supposed to be played by N.P. Khmelev (1901-1945) and, as Bulgakov’s second wife stated: “M.A. and I anticipated joy in advance, imagining what Khmelev would make of this role with his unlimited possibilities. The play was accepted by the Moscow Art Theater and has already begun to rehearse... It was a terrible blow when it was banned. It was as if a dead person had appeared in the house ... ”E.S. Bulgakova also recalled that“ The Run ”was a great excitement for me, because it was Mikhail Afanasyevich’s favorite play. He loved this play as a mother loves a child.