The writing and publication of
Belaia gvardiia(
The White Guard), Mikhail Bulgakov’s first novel, have a complex history. Bulgakov started writing the novel in 1922, with the first two parts appearing three years later in the journal
Rossiia. After a number of revisions, the work was finally completed in 1928, the year Bulgakov was to embark on his other full-length masterpiece,
The Master and Margarita. By then, however, with Stalin’s full accession to power, the mood in the country had considerably darkened, and for reasons that will become clear below, its chances of immediate publication in the Soviet Union had shrunk to vanishing point. Although the first complete version was to appear in Paris in 1929, the novel was not published in the Soviet Union until 1966, twenty-six years…
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Citation: Cockrell, Roger. "Belaia gvardiia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 October 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33150, accessed 22 November 2024.]
