demolished. . But its Baroque spirit and

vintage history still shines through, as do

facets of the city Bulgakov adored. .text and photos by Massimiliano Di Pasquale

56 . east . europe and asia strategies number 37 . july 2011 . 57

Bulgakov’s Kiev:Then and NowMikhail Bulgakov serial novel “The White Guard” provides one of the best portraits of Kiev in

the stormy years before and after the Russian Revolution. . The protagonist, clearly the

writer’s alter ego, watches as his way of life comes crumbling down around his. . The

Ukrainian capital suffered badly the grey Soviet era, with countless historic buildings

REPORTAGE . 2

In winter, as in no other city in the world, quiet descendson the streets and alleys of the Upper City, on the hill,and the Lower Town, spreading numbingly through the

bends of Dnepr, the noise of cars soaked in by the stonebuildings, their sounds stunned into gibberish. All the en-ergy of the city, built up through a summer of sunshine

and storms, was subsumed by the light.” Mikhail Bulgakov, “The White Guard”

Russian novelist Bulgakov always referred to Kiev sim-ply as “the city.” It is the true narrator of “The WhiteGuard,” a novel written in serial form in 1926 that Italianhistorian Giulia Lami says represents a “masterly rendi-tion” of the atmosphere of Kiev in the revolutionary yearsof 1918 and 1919. Over two years, the Ukrainian capitalwas occupied by Bolsheviks, the Imperial Germans,Russian nationalist Symon Petliura, again by the Bolshe-viks, and finally the White Russians, before they finallycapitulated to revolutionary forces.

Bulgakov’s story helped evoke the life of the “Whites”who lived in Kiev in those tumultuous years (White Rus-sians was term applied to Russian émigrés who opposedthe Soviet revolution). The novel, set in period betweenDecember 1918 and February 1919, concerns the fate ofthe Turbin family as the various armies fight for controlof the city. “By describing the Turbin family and lives oftheir friends,” writes Lami, a Milan history and literatureprofessor, who has written extensively about the Ukrainein the revolutionary period. “Bulgavov gives substanceto family worries, to their fears, wonders, dreams, hopes,disappointments and sorrows, sufferings and tragedies.”

The story unsettles the life of Aleksey, the family’s eld-est son, a 28-year-old doctor who finds his bourgeois ex-istence suddenly overturned. Aleksey is clearly Bulgakovin thin disguise.

As the narrative continues, the ideals of domestic lifeand the objects that symbolize it – a guitar played sweet,for example – acts as a curtain against the violence andmadness of the outside world. It, too, will soon crumblein the face of the city’s collective tragedy.

A tragedy that Bulgakov thanks his imaginative anddreamy writing skill, infuses with color and acousticsound, gradually yielding to the reality of urban apoca-lypse. “The sun was larger than anyone in the Ukrainehad ever seen before, red as sheer blood. The barely shin-ing ball that drifted through the curtain of clouds lazilyilluminated serumy stretches of dried blood.”

Early 20th centuryhe architecture of Kiev deserves its own chapter,”writes Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book “Imperi-um,” a travelogue of post-Soviet Russia written

by the Polish journalist in early 1990s. “There is no ageor style there is not represented, from medieval monas-teries and churches that survived miraculously over thecenturies to horrific Stalinist socialist realism. Inter-twined are the Baroque, the Neoclassical and above all a

New buildings in the Obolon residential neighborhood.

IRIGHT Sunset in Andriyvsky Uzviz AND BELOW The river port of Podil.

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oung Bulgakov was totally impervious to political and so-cial unrest that had been wracking Tsarist Russia since1905, challenging its underpinnings.

According to classmate Yuri Bukreev, most local stu-dents gathered to pay homage after learning of the deathof author Leo Tolstoy. Not Bulgakov. The then first-yearmedical student preferred the privacy of his own home,among friends, music and dancing. The figure of Bul-gakov, who would later become famous as a result of hismasterpiece “The Maestro and Margarita,” closely resem-bles that of another celebrity of the period: VladimirHorowitz. The Kiev adolescence the famous Jewish pi-anist is vividly evoked in French writer Alexis Salatko’s“Horowitz and My Father” and its details bear a strikingresemblance to the ones that emerge from Bulgakov’s fic-tion. The middle-class world is littered with teachers andstate officials going about their daily and weekly jobs.

The revolution forever put an end to those worlds.

Andriyivsky uzvizeaving behind the Cathedral of Santa Sofia,which took two decades to build and went up in1037 celebrate the victory of Prince Yaroslav the

Wise, the last great ruler of Kievan Rus, against the Pech-

enegs, Turkish nomads who had looted the city, Volo-dymyrska runs into Andriyivsky uzviz, perhaps the mostfamous square in the city and one favored by Bulgakov.The cast iron St. Andrew Staircase, dedicated to the firstChristian preacher in Kiev, retain their charm despite an-tique shops, street vendors, trinket stalls and hordes oftourists.

All you need to do is look away from the shoutingtourists to the church itself, St. Andrew’s, its gold andgreen Baroque details standing out against the backdropof a clear blue sky.

The church was built in 1754 by architect BartolomeoRastrelli, a naturalized Russian of Italian origin, famousfor having designed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.His ambition was to combine the latest Italian architec-tural fashion with traditions of Russian Baroque.

The magnificent basilica with its soft color palette,mostly blues and whites, dominates the upper town, itsshadow extending over Podil, a riverside commercialneighborhood among the oldest in the city that nowteems with young urban professionals. The neighbor-hood lies at the end of a long downhill stretch that seesthe stalls give way to a maze of streets lined with build-ings from the early 1900s.

58 . east . europe and asia strategies number 37 . july 2011 . 59

teries that had been systematically destroyed over theyears. It lists 254 buildings razed by the Bolsheviks to e-rase all traces of the Kiev’s old Bohemian culture.”

The monarchistypical 19th century Volodymyrska buildings in-clude the one at no. 43, where artist, poet, singerand actor Alexander Vertinsky was born, and no.

40/2, with its Baroque towers. The latter has housed a pri-vate school since 1907. It’s where Pyotr Korolyov taught.His son Sergey would be the principle engineer behindthe landmark Soyuz space program. These buildings helpbring to life what life might have been like for teenagerBulgakov as a young high school student in turn-of-the-century Kiev. Bulgakov was an unapologetic monarchist.In “The White Guard,” his alter ego Aleksey Turbin says:“I am unfortunately not a Socialist: I’m a... monarchist.And I to tell the truth, I can’t even stand the word ‘social-ist’…”). Absorbed in the vicissitudes of his private life, y-

luxurious abundance of Liberty.” Walking along Volody-myrskato corner of Prorizna on a fresh spring morning,Kapuscinski gets to no. 39, which in Soviet times housedthe Leipzig Hotel and Restaurant. The walk suddenlyconjures up the ghosts of another time. “What a great citythis must have been once! The devastation of this archi-tectural gem began in 1917 and hasn’t really stopped s-ince.” The Leipzig, designed by architect Karl Shiman in1900, is in fact an archetypical example of the “luxuriousabundance of Liberty” mentioned by Kapuscinski. Com-missioned by Piotr Grigorovich Barsky, who dealt inhunting weapons but eventually went bankrupt, it’s notonly among the most sumptuous structures Kiev but atrue symbol of the city’s architectural grandeur in the ear-ly part of the 20th century. At the time, it was the city’stallest structure.

Located on the ground floor was the famous Marquiseconfectionery store, also mentioned in “The WhiteGuard.” The store actually survived Soviet years. It’s herewhere Aleksey Turbin, heart in his throat, faces off againstsome of Petliura’s troops.

“One day,” writes Kapuscinski, “I bought a strange doc-ument, published recently by lovers of old Kiev, a citymap with a list of buildings, churches, palaces, and ceme-

LEFT Advertising poster.

CENTER Maidan Nezalezhnosti, symbol of the 2004 Orange Revolution.

RIGHT The St. Andrew’s cathedral was designed

by Italian Bartolomeo Rastrelli, a naturalized Russian, 1754.

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The Turbin homehe floors are polished, and on the table, even now,in mid-December, in an opaque column, are twoblue hydrangeas and dark roses that seem by their

very presence to reaffirm the beauty and continuity of life,notwithstanding that the perfidious enemy is at the citygates, waiting to destroy the beautiful city and snow-bound city, trample the last shards of peace beneath itsheels.” Bulgakov’s Kiev is “the most beautiful city in Rus-sia, the richest of greenery and gardens,” the sacred cityof baptism, set down in holy counterpoint to satanicMoscow, a demonic presence in “The Master and Mar-garita.” Bulgavov’s meticulous description of interior ofthe Turbin home is means to worship the city itself.

Interiors that before “terrible year 1918 after the birthof Christ,” a year marked by Venus the evening and the

symbolic “red quivering of Mars,” were characterize by alife that was slow and serene.

The furnishings are the symbols of Bulgakov’s happychildhood and the emblem of a cultured and refined lifewhose loss he will rue with melancholy in his laterMoscow years.

The yellow building at no. 13 Andriyivsky Uzviz,where Bulgkov lived between 1906 and 1919, was trans-formed in 1991 into a literary museum in his owner. It re-mains a popular tourist destination.

Those who appreciate the romantic atmosphere thatreigns in this area of the capital not surprisingly call it theMontmartre of Kiev, hoping the description helps capture

the flavor of the nostalgia that emerges from the writer’scopious pages.

The Turbin homeaying Khreshchatyk Street is like saying the localChamps-Elysées,” Kapuscinski noted while vis-iting Kiev on Aug. 31, 1991, a week after Ukraine

declared its independence from the USSR.On Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the same square where the

Orange Revolution would unfold 13 years later (“themost elegant revolution of all time,” as Andre Glucks-mann called it), workers were working a crane mountedto haul away the Lenin monument.

Kapuscinski’s Kiev, despite its ample architecturalbeauty, was shrouded in Soviet gray. “Since regime was-n’t able to tear everything down, there are still some note-

BELOW View of the Santa Sofia cathedral.

ABOVE RIGHT Visitors to the home of novelist Mikhail Bulgakov.

BELOW Andriyivskyy Descent, one of the most popular streets

in the country. BELOW CENTER Bathers on Trukhaniv Island.

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worthy churches and buildings, some truly beautifulones,” he wrote.

But he warned readers not to be fooled by facades. En-tire neighborhoods were dilapidated and messy, he not-ed. Some residential buildings had filthy entrancewaysand staircases and were littered with broken glass. Plen-ty of courtyards were pitch black at night. Thieves had s-tolen the light bulbs. What wasn’t stolen was vandalized.

The interiors of komunalky, Soviet communal housingerected in the city, were even worse “Some have no coldwater, some no hot water, many have neither,” he wrote.“All the apartments are infested with cockroaches andother annoying household insects. I speak from experi-ence, since I visited friends and acquaintances all overtown.”

Night movesn a warm Saturday in late March I walk placidlytoward Khreshchatyk.

Over the weekend, the Champs-Elysées of Kievhas been transformed into a huge pedestrian area teem-

ing with people, crowded cafes, and shops with glitter-ing signs. The lively outside decor contrasts nicely withthe Stalinist coating the city received after the war.

Even the martial posture huge constructivist buildinglocated at no. 23, which dominates Bohdana Khmel-nistkoho (I see it while waiting in line for a steamingpirozhki in front of Kyivska Perepichka) seems to lose itsharsher side when immersed in the riot of colors allaround it.

Though Orange enthusiasm has lost much of its lusterand some fear a return to Soviet-era dullness, the citybeloved by Bulgakov still has the feel of a modern,bustling metropolis. It’s the city portrayed in the novelsof Andrei Kurkov, a St. Petersburg writer with an ironicvoice, who long ago moved to the Ukrainian capital. HisKiev, which has purged itself of the one-toned Soviet era

(the kind with images of the Petrivka markey), favorsmore modern venues.

He sets his sometime surreal stories in non-sacredplaces, such as the city’s Hydropark, the zoo, the islandof Trukhaniv and residential district of Obolon. Kurkovwritings are intended, at least in part, to reflect a city thathas undergone profound changes. The only thing thatseems to unite today’s lively Kiev with that of Bulgakovis a kind of nighttime lasciviousness. Some localnightspots nourish the feral tones of the city’s nights.

“At night, string music would play cabarets, andthrough the cigarette smoke you could see the almost sur-real beauty of so many pale faces, the exhausted and co-caine-addled prostitutes,” says Bulgakov’s Mikhail Afa-nasevich, recalling the spring of 1918, when in the citywas packed by prowling outsiders who had fled the ter-

ror that had enveloped Moscow and St. Petersburg.Nightclubs and bars opened by the dozens to cater to thatlonely crowd.

“Cafes where they served coffee, but where you couldalso buy a woman…” .

LEFT Mural along the Dnepr River.

CENTER Liberty-style décor in an early 20th century building.

ABOVE RIGHT The famous Golden Gate in the upper city.

RIGHT Entrance to Podil.

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