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When the remnants of the White Army desperately resist the Reds on the Crimean Isthmus. Here the fates of the defenseless Serafima Korzukhina, abandoned to the mercy of fate by her husband, Korzukhin himself, private assistant professor Golubkov, in love with Serafima, the white general Charnota, commander of the white front, the cruel and unfortunate Roman Khludov, and many other heroes are closely intertwined.

History of writing

Bulgakov began working on the play in 1926. For the plot, the author used memories of the emigration of his second wife L. E. Belozerskaya - she and her first husband fled to Constantinople, lived in Marseille, Paris and Berlin. The memoirs of the white general Ya. A. Slashchev were also used.

In April 1927, Bulgakov entered into an agreement with the Moscow Art Theater to write the play “Knight of Seraphim” (the working title of the play, a variant of the title “Outlaws” is also known). According to the terms of the contract, Bulgakov had to finish the play no later than August 20, 1927. In essence, Bulgakov was thus working off the advance he received a month earlier for the production of the censored “Heart of a Dog.” The manuscript of the materials for “Knight of Seraphim” (or “Outlaws”) has not survived; most likely the play was crude and was used only for reporting on the theater’s accounting department.

On January 1, 1928, the author entered into an agreement with the Moscow Art Theater to write a play called “Running” and already on March 16, 1928, the play was transferred to the customer. Due to censorship, the play was not staged during the author's lifetime, although the production was close to realization thanks to the intercession of Maxim Gorky.

Productions

In 1928-1929, rehearsals of the play were held at the Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Nemirovich-Danchenko. The following cast of performers was expected: Alla Tarasova - Seraphim, Mark Prudkin and Mikhail Yanshin - Golubkov, Vasily Kachalov - Charnota, Olga Androvskaya - Lyuska, Nikolay Khmelev - Khludov, Vladimir Ershov - Korzukhin, Yuri Zavadsky and Boris Maloletkov - commander in chief, Vladimir Sinitsyn - Quiet, Ivan Moskvin and Mikhail Kedrov - African. The play was staged by I.Ya. Sudakov with the participation of N.N. Litovtseva, music by L.K. Knipper, artist I.M. Rabinovich. However, under Stalin the play was banned. The play premiered at the Stalingrad Theater on March 29, 1957.
In 1970, the play was filmed by directors A. A. Alov and V. N. Naumov.
In 1980, the play was staged at the Moscow Mayakovsky Theater.
In 2003, the play was staged at the Theater under the direction of Oleg Tabakov (directed by Elena Nevezhina).
In 2010, the play was staged at the Magnitogorsk Drama Theater. A. S. Pushkin directed by Marina Glukhovskaya.
In 2010, the Moscow State Academic Chamber Musical Theater named after B. A. Pokrovsky premiered the opera “Running,” based on the play by composer Nikolai Sidelnikov.
In 2011, the play was staged at the Omsk Academic Drama Theater by the theater's chief director Georgy Zurabovich Tskhvirava.
In 2014, the play was staged at the Altai Youth Theater named after. V. S. Zolotukhin directed by Yuri Yadrovsky.
2015 - “Running”, a joint project of the Theater. E. Vakhtangov and the Open Arts Festival “Cherry Forest”. Director Yuri Butusov. .
2015-2016 - On December 8 and 22, the premiere of the play “Running” based on the play by Mikhail Bulgakov took place, the directorial debut of Maria Fedosova on the Big Stage of the Taganka Actors' Commonwealth Theater (Theater under the direction of Nikolai Gubenko).

Hero prototypes

Africanus, Archbishop of Simferopol, Archpastor of the eminent army- Metropolitan Veniamin Fedchenkov, head of the Church of the Russian Army.
Lieutenant General Roman Khludov- Lieutenant General Yakov Slashchev-Krymsky.
Lyuska- Nina Nechvolodova (“Junker Nechvolodov”), Slashchev’s traveling wife.
Major General Grigory Charnota- Lieutenant General Bronislav Lyudvigovich Chernota-de-Boyary Boyarsky, Lieutenant General Sergei Ulagai.
Commander-in-Chief- Baron Peter Wrangel.

Criticism

Stalin about the play

“Running” is a manifestation of an attempt to evoke pity, if not sympathy, for certain layers of anti-Soviet emigrants - therefore, an attempt to justify or semi-justify the White Guard cause. "Beg", in the form in which it exists, represents an anti-Soviet phenomenon. However, I would not have anything against the production of “Run” if Bulgakov added to his eight dreams one or two more dreams, where he would depict 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 private assistant professors turned out to be kicked out of Russia not at the whim of the Bolsheviks, but because they sat on the necks of the people (despite their “honesty”), and the Bolsheviks, driving out these “honest” supporters of exploitation , carried out the will of the workers and peasants and therefore acted absolutely correctly.
Moscow, meanwhile, was empty. There were still people in it, a fiftieth of all the former inhabitants still remained in it, but it was empty. It was empty, just as a dying, exhausted hive is empty.
There is no longer any life in the dehumidified hive, but at a superficial glance it seems just as alive as the others.
The bees hover just as happily in the hot rays of the midday sun around the dehumed hive, as around other living hives; it also smells like honey from afar, and bees fly in and out of it. But you have to take a closer look at it to understand that there is no longer life in this hive. Bees fly differently than in living hives; the wrong smell, the wrong sound amazes the beekeeper. When a beekeeper knocks on the wall of a sick hive, instead of the previous, instant, friendly response, the hiss of tens of thousands of bees, menacingly pressing their butts and quickly beating their wings producing this airy vital sound, he is answered by scattered buzzing sounds echoing in different places of the empty hive. From the entrance there is no smell, as before, of the alcoholic, fragrant smell of honey and poison, it does not bring from there the warmth of fullness, and the smell of emptiness and rot merges with the smell of honey. At the entrance there are no more guards preparing to die for protection, raising their butts in the air, trumpeting the alarm. There is no longer that even and quiet sound, the fluttering of labor, similar to the sound of boiling, but the awkward, disjointed noise of disorder is heard. Black oblong robber bees, smeared with honey, timidly and evasively fly in and out of the hive; they do not sting, but escape from danger. Previously, they only flew in with burdens, and empty bees flew out, now they fly out with burdens. The beekeeper opens the bottom well and peers into the lower part of the hive. Instead of the previously black lashes of succulent bees, pacified by labor, holding each other’s legs and pulling the foundation with a continuous whisper of labor, sleepy, shriveled bees wander in different directions absent-mindedly along the bottom and walls of the hive. Instead of a floor cleanly sealed with glue and swept away by fans of wings, at the bottom lie crumbs of wax, bee excrement, half-dead bees, barely moving their legs, and completely dead, untidy bees.
The beekeeper opens the top well and examines the head of the hive. Instead of continuous rows of bees, clinging to all the spaces of the honeycombs and warming the babies, he sees the skillful, complex work of the honeycombs, but no longer in the form of virginity in which it was before. Everything is neglected and dirty. Robbers - black bees - scurry quickly and stealthily around the work; their bees, shriveled, short, lethargic, as if old, slowly wander, not bothering anyone, not wanting anything and having lost consciousness of life. Drones, hornets, bumblebees, and butterflies knock stupidly on the walls of the hive in flight. In some places, between the wax fields with dead children and honey, angry grumbling is occasionally heard from different sides; somewhere two bees, out of old habit and memory, cleaning the nest of the hive, diligently, beyond their strength, drag away a dead bee or bumblebee, not knowing why they are doing this. In another corner, two other old bees are lazily fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, not knowing whether they are doing it in a hostile or friendly manner. In the third place, a crowd of bees, crushing each other, attacks some victim and beats and strangles it. And the weakened or killed bee slowly, lightly, like fluff, falls from above into a pile of corpses. The beekeeper unfolds the two middle foundations to see the nest. Instead of the previous solid black circles of thousands of bees sitting back and forth and observing the highest secrets of their native work, he sees hundreds of dull, half-dead and sleeping skeletons of bees. Almost all of them died, without knowing it, sitting on the shrine that they cherished and which no longer exists. They smell of rot and death. Only some of them move, rise, sluggishly fly and sit on the enemy’s hand, unable to die, stinging him - the rest, dead, like fish scales, easily fall down. The beekeeper closes the well, marks the block with chalk and, having chosen the time, breaks it out and burns it.
So empty was Moscow when Napoleon, tired, restless and frowning, walked back and forth at the Kamerkollezhsky Val, waiting for that, although external, but necessary, according to his concepts, observance of decency - a deputation.
In different corners of Moscow people were still moving senselessly, keeping old habits and not understanding what they were doing.
When it was announced to Napoleon with due caution that Moscow was empty, he looked angrily at the person who reported this and, turning away, continued to walk in silence.
“Bring the carriage,” he said. He got into the carriage next to the adjutant on duty and drove to the suburbs.
- “Moscow deserte. Quel evenemeDt invraisemblable!” [“Moscow is empty. What an incredible event!”] he said to himself.
He did not go to the city, but stopped at an inn in the Dorogomilovsky suburb.
Le coup de theater avait rate. [The end of the theatrical performance failed.]
Russian troops passed through Moscow from two o'clock in the morning until two o'clock in the afternoon, carrying with them the last residents and wounded who were leaving.
The biggest crush during the movement of troops occurred on the Kamenny, Moskvoretsky and Yauzsky bridges.
While, bifurcated around the Kremlin, the troops crowded onto the Moskvoretsky and Kamenny bridges, a huge number of soldiers, taking advantage of the stop and crowded conditions, returned from the bridges and stealthily and silently snuck past St. Basil's and under the Borovitsky Gate back up the hill to Red Square, on which, by some instinct, they felt that they could easily take someone else’s property. The same crowd of people, as if for cheap goods, filled Gostiny Dvor in all its passages and passages. But there were no tenderly sugary, alluring voices of the hotel guests, there were no peddlers and a motley female crowd of buyers - there were only the uniforms and greatcoats of soldiers without guns, silently leaving with burdens and entering the ranks without burdens. Merchants and peasants (there were few of them), as if lost, walked among the soldiers, unlocked and locked their shops, and themselves and the fellows carried their goods somewhere. Drummers stood on the square near Gostiny Dvor and beat the collection. But the sound of the drum forced the robber soldiers not, as before, to run to the call, but, on the contrary, forced them to run further away from the drum. Between the soldiers, along the benches and aisles, people in gray caftans and with shaved heads could be seen. Two officers, one in a scarf over his uniform, on a thin dark gray horse, the other in an overcoat, on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka and talked about something. The third officer galloped up to them.
“The general ordered everyone to be expelled now at any cost.” What the hell, it doesn't look like anything! Half the people fled.
“Where are you going?.. Where are you going?” he shouted at three infantry soldiers who, without guns, having picked up the skirts of their greatcoats, slipped past him into the ranks. - Stop, rascals!
- Yes, please collect them! - answered another officer. – You can’t collect them; we have to go quickly so that the last ones don’t leave, that’s all!
- How to go? they stood there, huddled on the bridge and didn’t move. Or put a chain so that the last ones don’t run away?
- Yes, go there! Get them out! - the senior officer shouted.
The officer in the scarf got off his horse, called the drummer and went with him under the arches. Several soldiers began to run in a crowd. The merchant, with red pimples on his cheeks near his nose, with a calmly unshakable expression of calculation on his well-fed face, hastily and dapperly, waving his arms, approached the officer.
“Your honor,” he said, “do me a favor and protect me.” It’s not a small matter for us, it’s our pleasure! Please, I’ll take out the cloth now, at least two pieces for a noble man, with our pleasure! Because we feel, well, this is just robbery! You're welcome! Perhaps they would have posted a guard, or at least given a lock...
Several merchants crowded around the officer.
April 25, 2016
“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 Theater. But in 1970, the magnificent film “Running” was shot, directed by A. Alov and V. Naumov. The plot concerns the time of the Civil War after the October Revolution, where the remaining troops of the White Army are waging desperate resistance and fighting the Reds on the Crimean Isthmus.
“Running” is a play that, according to the author’s idea, consists of four acts and eight dreams. Why sleep? Because a dream is a dramatic convention that represents something unreal and implausible, which is very difficult to believe. Thus, the author himself expressed his attitude to what was happening in Russia at that time: everything was like a bad dream.
The fate of the Russian intelligentsia
Based on the memories of his second wife L. E. Belozerskaya about emigration, Bulgakov wrote his “Running”. An analysis of the biography of this woman shows that she then 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 dedicated “Running” to the fate of the Russian intelligentsia, whom he considered the best layer of Russia. She was forced to leave the country and live in exile. The writer tried to talk about the fact 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 compromising their moral principles. The classic even wrote a letter about this to Stalin himself. He wanted to show that he was superior to 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 writer’s lifetime, just as “Running” did not see the stage. 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 battle between the Reds and the Whites. The young St. Petersburg intellectual Golubkov is hiding from stray bullets and grenades in the narthex of the monastery with Serafima Korzukhina, a lady from St. Petersburg. Together with him, she flees to Crimea to meet her husband there. Golubkov is perplexed as to why the Reds are in this area, since it was all in the hands of the Whites.
Then a detachment of Budyonny’s cavalrymen came into the monastery to check the people’s documents. Priests and monks prayed in front of the images; there were many other people in the church, among them the pregnant Baranbanchikova, who suddenly began having contractions. When the Reds left the monastery, they were followed by soldiers led by the white commander De Brizard 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 express in words how happy 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 Charnota's escape plan. But it soon turns out that Seraphima has typhus, and Golubkov does not leave her side. 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 constantly twitches and is clearly sick with something. Then Serafima’s husband, Korzukhin, a fellow minister of trade, appears and asks Khludov to help send trains with smuggled goods to Sevastopol. But he orders everything to be burned. Serafima, Golubkov and Krapilin, Charnota's messenger, appear. Serafima attacks Khludov, saying that he would only hang people, but she is immediately mistaken for a communist. Seeing her husband, Seraphima rushes to him, but he pretends that he does not know her, afraid of the general’s reaction.
In this episode, Bulgakov fills his “Run” with another tragedy. The summary continues with the fact that guard Krapilin, being in a wild trance from everything that is happening around him, also accuses Khludov of atrocities, and then, having come to his senses, kneels before him, but the general orders him to be hanged.
Arrest
Golubkov is interrogated by the counterintelligence chief Tikhy, who forces him to sign a document assuring that Serafima is a communist. Tikhiy and his partner want to make money by blackmailing her husband Korzukhin.
During the interrogation, Serafima sees Golubkov’s testimony, breaks out the office window and calls for help. At that time, Charnota’s cavalry was walking under the windows, who appeared with a revolver and freed Seraphima.
Meanwhile, Khludov has a conversation with the commander-in-chief, whom he hates for involving him in a senseless matter. After all the clarification, they part. Khludov has a mental disorder; he constantly sees the ghost of the fighter Krapilin, who was hanged by him. But then Golubkov enters, who is in a panic over Serafima’s arrest and wants the general to help free her. Khludov orders his adjutant, Yesaul Golovan, to bring Serafima to him and immediately adds that perhaps she has 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 a messenger periodically comes to him. Golubkov begs him to take him with him to find Seraphim.

Emigration
Summer 1921, Constantinople. Bulgakov does not end his play “Run” here. The summary further tells how, on one of the streets of Constantinople, a drunken and penniless Charnota wants to place a bet on credit in a cockroach race. Arthur Arturovich, nicknamed the Cockroach Tsar, refuses him. Charnota yearns for Russia; he sells toys and silver coins on the street. In the end, he bets everything on the main favorite, the cockroach Janissary. In the midst of the competition, it turns out that Arthur drugged the Janissary. A fight broke out.
Lusya and Charnota
Charnota returns home and quarrels with Lyusya because he lies to her that the box with toys and gassyrs was stolen from him. She understands that he lost the last thing in the race. Seraphima also lives with them. Lyuska admits to him that she is forced to engage in prostitution due to the fact that they no longer have anything to eat and have nothing to pay for the room. She reproaches him for destroying the counterintelligence headquarters, then running away from the army, and now they live in poverty far from Russia. Charnota constantly objected and made excuses by saying that he was saving Seraphim. And then suddenly Lucy announces that she is leaving with a French friend for Paris. Serafima, having heard this whole conversation, decides not to sit on anyone’s neck anymore, but also to go earn money for the panel.
On the same day, Charnota meets Golubkov on the street playing the organ. He is looking for Serafima, who has already found herself a Greek client and goes with him to the room. Charnota and Golubkov run in after them and drive the Greek away. Golubkov confesses his love to Serafima, but she refuses him because she does not want to ruin his life.
Here Khludov appears. He was demoted from the army, and now he is entrusted with looking after Seraphim. He gives Golubkov a medallion and two liras because he is going to Paris to ask for money from Korzukhin, who has a sick wife. Charnota decides to go with him.
Korzukhin
Autumn 1921, Paris. Golubkov appears on the threshold of Korzukhin’s apartment and asks to lend him a thousand dollars. But he insists 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 callousness. However, Charnota intervenes here and, seeing Korzukhin’s cards on the table, invites him to play and places 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 comes. The secretary runs out of the room in response to the scream (she turned out to be Lyuska). She, realizing what’s going on and seeing Charnota, tells Korzukhin that they can’t get the money back, since it’s 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 touching and understanding.
Seraphim
In Constantinople, Khludov is still in a mental disorder and often communicates with the ghost of the messenger. 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 the Bolsheviks and he has no hatred for them, so he stays and runs to the Cockroach King 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 understanding of all the events experienced by the Russian intelligentsia and the Russian people in general, it is advisable to watch this play, because plays are best watched, not read. However, if this is not possible, the excellent film “Running” (1970) will tell you everything best.

“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 Theater. But in 1970, the magnificent film “Running” was filmed by directors A. Alov and the plot concerns the time of the Civil War after the October Revolution, where those who remained fought desperately and fought with the Reds on the Crimean Isthmus.
“Running” is a play that, according to the author’s idea, consists of four acts and eight dreams. Why sleep? Because a dream is a dramatic convention that represents something unreal and implausible, which is very difficult to believe. Thus, the author himself expressed his attitude to what was happening in Russia at that time: everything was like a bad dream.
The fate of the Russian intelligentsia
Based on the memories of his second wife L. E. Belozerskaya about emigration, Bulgakov wrote his “Running”. An analysis of the biography of this woman shows that she then 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 dedicated “Running” to the fate of which he considered the best layer of Russia. She was forced to leave the country and live in exile. The writer tried to talk about the fact 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 compromising their moral principles. The classic even wrote a letter about this to Stalin himself. He wanted to show that he was superior to 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 writer’s lifetime, just as “Running” did not see the stage. 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 battle between the Reds and the Whites. The young St. Petersburg intellectual Golubkov is hiding from stray bullets and grenades in the narthex of the monastery with Serafima Korzukhina, a lady from St. Petersburg. Together with him, she flees to Crimea to meet her husband there. Golubkov is perplexed as to why the Reds are in this area, since it was all in the hands of the Whites.
Then a detachment of Budyonny’s cavalrymen came into the monastery to check the people’s documents. Priests and monks prayed in front of the images; there were many other people in the church, among them the pregnant Baranbanchikova, who suddenly began having contractions. When the Reds left the monastery, they were followed by soldiers led by the white commander De Brizard 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 express in words how happy 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 Charnota's escape plan. But it soon turns out that Seraphima has typhus, and Golubkov does not leave her side. 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 constantly twitches and is clearly sick with something. Then Serafima’s husband, Korzukhin, a fellow minister of trade, appears and asks Khludov to help send trains with smuggled goods to Sevastopol. But he orders everything to be burned. Serafima, Golubkov and Krapilin, Charnota's messenger, appear. Serafima attacks Khludov, saying that he would only hang people, but she is immediately mistaken for a communist. Seeing her husband, Seraphima rushes to him, but he pretends that he does not know her, afraid of the general’s reaction.
In this episode, Bulgakov fills his “Run” with another tragedy. The summary continues with the fact that guard Krapilin, being in a wild trance from everything that is happening around him, also accuses Khludov of atrocities, and then, having come to his senses, kneels before him, but the general orders him to be hanged.
Arrest
Golubkov is interrogated by the counterintelligence chief Tikhy, who forces him to sign a document assuring that Serafima is a communist. Tikhiy and his partner want to make money by blackmailing her husband Korzukhin.
During the interrogation, Serafima sees Golubkov’s testimony, breaks out the office window and calls for help. At that time, Charnota’s cavalry was walking under the windows, who appeared with a revolver and freed Seraphima.
Meanwhile, Khludov has a conversation with the commander-in-chief, whom he hates for involving him in a senseless matter. After all the clarification, they part. Khludov has a mental disorder; he constantly sees the ghost of the fighter Krapilin, who was hanged by him. But then Golubkov enters, who is in a panic over Serafima’s arrest and wants the general to help free her. Khludov orders his adjutant, Yesaul Golovan, to bring Serafima to him and immediately adds that perhaps she has 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 a messenger periodically comes to him. Golubkov begs him to take him with him to find Seraphim.
Emigration
Summer 1921, Constantinople. Bulgakov does not end his play “Run” here. The summary further tells how, on one of the streets of Constantinople, a drunken and penniless Charnota wants to place a bet on credit in a cockroach race. Arthur Arturovich, nicknamed the Cockroach Tsar, refuses him. Charnota yearns for Russia; he sells toys and silver coins on the street. In the end, he bets everything on the main favorite, the cockroach Janissary. In the midst of the competition, it turns out that Arthur drugged the Janissary. A fight broke out.
Lusya and Charnota
Charnota returns home and quarrels with Lyusya because he lies to her that the box with toys and gassyrs was stolen from him. She understands that he lost the last thing in the race. Seraphima also lives with them. Lyuska admits to him that she is forced to engage in prostitution due to the fact that they no longer have anything to eat and have nothing to pay for the room. She reproaches him for destroying the counterintelligence headquarters, then running away from the army, and now they live in poverty far from Russia. Charnota constantly objected and made excuses by saying that he was saving Seraphim. And then suddenly Lucy announces that she is leaving with a French friend for Paris. Serafima, having heard this whole conversation, decides not to sit on anyone’s neck anymore, but also to go earn money for the panel.
On the same day, Charnota meets Golubkov on the street playing the organ. He is looking for Serafima, who has already found herself a Greek client and goes with him to the room. Charnota and Golubkov run in after them and drive the Greek away. Golubkov confesses his love to Serafima, but she refuses him because she does not want to ruin his life.
Here Khludov appears. He was demoted from the army, and now he is entrusted with looking after Seraphim. He gives Golubkov a medallion and two liras because he is going to Paris to ask for money from Korzukhin, who has a sick wife. Charnota decides to go with him.
Korzukhin
Autumn 1921, Paris. Golubkov appears on the threshold of Korzukhin’s apartment and asks to lend him a thousand dollars. But he insists 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 callousness. However, Charnota intervenes here and, seeing Korzukhin’s cards on the table, invites him to play and places 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 comes. The secretary runs out of the room in response to the scream (she turned out to be Lyuska). She, realizing what’s going on and seeing Charnota, tells Korzukhin that they can’t get the money back, since it’s 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 touching and understanding.
Seraphim
In Constantinople, Khludov is still in a mental disorder and often communicates with the ghost of the messenger. 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 the Bolsheviks and he has no hatred for them, so he stays and runs to the Cockroach King 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 understanding of all the events experienced by the Russian intelligentsia and the Russian people in general, it is advisable to watch this play, because plays are best watched, not read. However, if this is not possible, the excellent film “Running” (1970) will tell you everything best.

The play “Running” by Mikhail Bulgakov was a landmark work for the author’s work and was written based on the memoirs of Bulgakov’s wife about emigrant life and on the memoirs of General Slashchev.

The work was delivered to the Moscow Art Theater on March 16, 1928. Work on the production was supposed to begin a month later, but after some time the production was canceled, and then completely banned.

Stalin gave a sharply negative assessment of the work, although he considered it possible to add that he could allow the play to be staged if Bulgakov edited it, but Bulgakov refused to do this, the play was banned from showing, and only in 1940, after the death of the author, was it published.

The essence of the play

The work tells the story of the end of the Civil War; its entire action is literally permeated with the bitterness of despair of the death of the White movement.

The fates of white emigrants thrown abroad by the revolution run through the entire work. Crimea - Constantinople - Paris and beyond, the infinity of flight from the revolution, from Russia, and that at some certain moment there is an understanding that flight is not an option, you cannot run away from yourself, and the Motherland is part of their sick, suffering souls.

The second, third, fourth dream - the action takes place in early November 1920. The fifth and sixth dream describe the life of the heroes in Constantinople, in the summer of 1921. The seventh - Paris in the autumn of 21. The eighth dream - Constantinople, autumn 1921.

Act one

First dream. In just a few words, Bulgakov shows the harsh conditions of the war, the work of the front headquarters, introduces the reader to General Khludov, who takes revenge on his homeland for betrayal by hanging and killing Red Army soldiers, giving the order to open fire “in separation” on Taganash.

The general gives the order to hang Korzukhin, who renounces his wife Seraphima when she was accused of red, saying that “he started well, ended badly.” Khludov has a real life prototype of General Slashchev. The author introduces General Chernota, who also has a real prototype - General Ulagai. Blackness is fleeing from the Budenovites under the guise of the pregnant Barabanchikova.

Second dream. Everyone is fleeing abroad, and although Archbishop African compares the flight with the Egyptian exodus of the sons of Israel, General Khludov finds a more capacious analogy of flight, comparing it to the escape of cockroaches from a suddenly lit light.

Act two

Dream Three A new character, counterintelligence officer Tikhiy, appears on the scene, looking for dirt on Serafima Korzukhin. Serafima is sick, when accused that she is a communist, she breaks out the window and calls for help. General Chernota is passing by with a detachment of cavalry; the general with a weapon in his hands fights her off from counterintelligence.

Dream four. The case is still happening in Crimea. Khludov talks to a ghost - a messenger. Golubkov witnesses what is happening in horror. The Cossack who came in with a report informs Khludov that Blackness and Seraphim are waiting for him on the ship. Everything is covered in darkness.

Act three

Dream five. Pseudo-Russian district of Constantinople, General Chernota sells silver gazyrs, a symbol of the general's distinction, in order to receive winnings from cockroach races. Khludov accompanies him and bitterly states, “Stuffy city! And this is a disgrace - cockroach races.” Khludov is constantly haunted by the ghost of Krapilin, whom he told.

Dream six. Still Constantinople, but already summer. There is a fight between Blackness and Lyusya, Golubkov playing the organ. Seraphim appears with a Greek carrying purchases. Blackness and Golubkov drive the Greek away, Golubkov declares his love to Seraphim. Khludov was demoted from the army. The heroes are painfully looking for a way out of this situation, they are homesick, they are literally permeated by the thirst for death not just anywhere, but at home in Russia.

Act four

Seventh dream. The action takes place in Paris. Blackness beats Korzukhin at cards for $20,000 and buys Khludov’s medallion from him. Now Golubkov has money to help Seraphima.

Eighth Dream Constantinople again. Khludov is still tormented by the ghost of the hanged messenger, Seraphim takes pity on him and is about to leave for St. Petersburg. Blackness and Doves appear. Golubkov and Serafima confess their love to each other. When Khludov is left alone, he shoots himself in the head. And again darkness.

Cameraman - L. Paatashvili

Mosfilm, 1970

The play "Running" was transferred by Mikhail Bulgakov in 1928 for production at the Moscow Art Theater. But the censorship did not see in it evidence of the “historical correctness of the conquests of October,” Stalin called the play “an anti-Soviet phenomenon,” and it was banned. The writer never had a chance to see his beloved brainchild on stage.

Meanwhile, the very title of the play indicated that Bulgakov did not at all intend, as he was accused of doing, to glorify the “White Guard martyrs.” In depicting the Civil War, the writer sought to take a high and objective point of view, impartially assessing both reds and whites. It is not for nothing that the poet and artist Maximilian Voloshin called Bulgakov the first who managed to capture the soul of Russian strife.

“Running” is a rapid whirlpool of historical events, seemingly spontaneous and exceeding in their power the meaning of anyone’s individual wills and desires. “Flight” is the retreat and defeat of the whites in Crimea, the emigration to Constantinople of those who lost the war, and with them those who, due to confusion and spinelessness, were drawn into the general flow. “Running” is a cockroach betting pool, a metaphor for the humiliating struggle for existence of Russian emigrants in Constantinople and Paris, their position as outcasts (“Outlaws” is one of the original titles of the play). The finale of the play is the return of two of the many heroes of the play to their beloved Russia.

Directors Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov filmed "Running" in 1971. Bulgakov's play is a purely theatrical thing. To go beyond the stage, the film's directors use some motifs and images from Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard", as well as documents on the history of the Civil War. The school of Igor Savchenko, with whom they studied at VGIK and as assistants, helped the directors get away from the theatricalization of film spectacle. As well as significant personal experience accumulated in the creation of such famous films as “Troubled Youth”, “Pavel Korchagin”, “Wind”, “Peace to the Entering One”, “Bad Joke”.

In the first parts of the two-part film “Running,” its directors decisively transform the drama into the film epic genre. This is facilitated by the art of cinematographer Levan Paatashvili, whose expressive large-scale compositions convey both the tension of battles and the quiet beauty of fading nature, dusted with the first, clean snow. The snow has not yet compacted and envelops the fields and copses with bluish fluff, through which the golden domes of the temples gleam. This is how the image of Holy Rus' is created on the screen, about which the heroes of the film, abandoned by fate to foreign lands, will yearn.

Pictures of the flight, as well as the subsequent life of the emigrants in Constantinople, embody the drama of the guilty: those fleeing lost Russia, they lost the right to live like masters in their native land. The reason is simple: the people for the most part did not support the white movement. A gap arose between working people and “gold diggers.” This feeling of a fatal break, as the film shows, penetrates into the white army, leading to a growing stratification even among the officers, not to mention the sentiments of the soldiers from the peasants and workers, mobilized for another war after the recent world war.

The episodes of the preparation of the troops of the Southern Front of the Red Army for the crossing of the Sivash and the assault on the Yushun strongholds, in comparison with the colorful pictures of the running of the Wrangel troops, look boringly businesslike on the screen. The plan for the attack on Crimea is discussed, front commander Mikhail Frunze listens to the views of his subordinates, gives instructions, and makes amendments to the original plan caused by the arrival of early cold weather.

And then the film shows Sivash. Under the feet of the Red Army soldiers there is difficult-to-pass mud. Their boots and windings are covered with mud. The Red Army soldiers were tired from previous battles. The passage through Sivash is devoid of even a hint of external majesty on the screen. And yet, these scenes are beautiful in their own way: they are inspired by the faith of the Red Army soldiers in the justice of the last battles “for land, for freedom,” their hope for the coming peace, the dream of returning to their families, to peaceful work. When discussing “Running,” voices were sometimes heard that the epic of its first episode did not always fit in with the multi-genre scenes of the second, in which the film’s authors allegedly made a concession to theatricality. It seems that such reproaches are unfair. Of course, at the beginning the film reveals more obvious signs of a director's work. But even by narrowing the action to actor duets, to everyday scenes, Alov and Naumov do not betray the cinema.

Life in exile, the film shows, turned out to be so difficult that it deformed many characters, making some people funny, others - darkly tragic in their actions. Already in the first episode, General Khludov looks like a man with an upset consciousness. The front commander is exhausted by terrible fatigue, openly despises the cowardly and inept commander-in-chief Wrangel, and is the first to realize that the white army is doomed to complete defeat.

General Khludov is unable to change anything in the conditions of general chaos and paralysis of will; moreover, he begins to understand that the “run,” that is, the course of historical events, is inevitable and independent of individual aspirations. And yet he continues to fulfill his duty of honor, as he understands it, trying in vain to stop the enemy’s advance. He gives orders, mercilessly punishing those who disobey or are unable to carry them out. He hangs people, wanting to restore order in conditions of absolute confusion and panic. Being perfectly aware of the futility of his own intentions and the cruelty of his actions and ironizing himself.

“He winces, twitches, likes to change his intonation... When he wants to portray a smile, he grins. He arouses fear,” - this is how Bulgakov defined the external drawing of the role of Khludov, a character who is “all sick, from head to toe.”

The remarkable acting achievement of Vladislav Dvorzhetsky lies in the fact that in the film he plays a man who brought the passionate fulfillment of duty to executioner execution, outwardly completely dispassionately. Only Khludov’s huge eyes on his deathly pale face correspond to Bulgakov’s description - “his eyes are old.”

Without raising his voice or changing his intonation, General Khludov talks to the messenger Krapilin. Krapilin, a tall, strong soldier with a properly sculpted Slavic face and a serious, honest look, is played in the film by Nikolai Olyalin. It is the messenger Krapilin who boldly tells the hanging general the truth that he himself already knows: “You can’t win the war with nooses alone.” And Khludov promises this future: “And you will perish, jackal, you will perish, rabid beast, in a ditch.” Khludov immediately orders Krapilin to be executed. They put a sack over the soldier and hang it from the nearest lantern.

Time passes, Khludov finds himself with other emigrants in Constantinople, he becomes like a somnambulist: the ghost of Krapilin appears to him again and again.

Bulgakov's play "Running" has the subtitle "Eight Dreams". And it tested a special form of dramaturgy, in which events look partly real, partly as if arising in disturbing dreams. In the film by Alov and Naumov, the phantasmagoric nature of the “eight dreams” is conveyed through a variety of means.

In the image of Khludov, the general abnormality of the existence of emigrants, whom fate carries across the world, is reinforced by the general’s mental illness. Khludov accepts the phantom of an inflamed conscience as reality, but at first he cannot understand why the soldier Krapilin is haunting him. The general asks the messenger: “How did you get unstuck from the long chain of bags and lanterns, how did you leave eternal peace? After all, there were many of you, you were not alone.”

Later, General Khludov, who is constantly accompanied by the ghost of a courageous soldier who loves truth, cannot withstand the pangs of conscience and decides to “execute himself.” The action that emerged in Khludov’s sick imagination is visibly and impressively unfolded on the screen.

Khludov rides across a huge snow-covered field past endless chains of motionless soldiers, getting closer and closer to Krapilin, who is waiting for him. Having approached closely, he asks: “Say something, soldier! Don’t be silent!” Krapilin only nods in response, and Khludov of his own free will goes to the gallows, the executioner throws a sack over him. “And then what happened? Just darkness, nothing - heat...” mutters Khludov, experiencing the fate of a hanged man.

In the earliest version of Bulgakov's play, Khludov committed suicide. In the finale of "Running", given to the Moscow Art Theater in 1928, General Khludov, together with Serafima Korzukhina and Golubkov, returned to Russia. In 1937, Bulgakov partially remade his work. Now in the finale, Khludov, remaining in Constantinople, put a bullet in his forehead. Despite all the differences between these endings, they were certainly associated with the figure of Khludov, on the resolution of whose fate the meaning of the play largely depended.

Alov and Naumov preferred a different move. The ending of their film is not connected with Khludov at all, but represents another, bright this time, dream - the dream of Korzukhina and Golubkov about Russia. The authors of the film leave Khludov’s fate unclear. The general wanted to board a ship sailing to Russia, but did not dare to do so. His lonely figure on the shore of the Bosphorus is seen from a steamship moving away from the shore. She gets smaller and smaller in the distance, and suddenly the filmmakers cut in a close-up of Khludov. With frozen, cold and old eyes, he looks after the people who will soon see their homeland.

One critic called Bulgakov's play a "pessimistic comedy." The film by Alova and Naumova also mixes drama with comedy, tragedy with farce. The figures of General Khludov and the Cossack General Charnota, brilliantly played by Mikhail Ulyanov, are contrasting and at the same time inextricably linked.

In Charnota's line, the tragedy of the white officers is reduced to a farce. Unlike Khludov, Charnota is not a hangman, but a brave slasher in open battle. “I didn’t run from death,” he recalls in Constantinople, not without pride. But he, too, subordinate to people like Khludov and the commander-in-chief, is involved in the general “race” of historical events, which for him personally in foreign lands acquired the grotesque form of participation in cockroach races.

Charnot squandered all his remaining property, becoming an inspired regular at the booth, where he invariably bet on the Janissary cockroach. One must see how Charnot’s fan surrenders to his own bad dream - forgets about everything in the world, screaming: “Janissary! Janissary!” - in despair, he tears off his pince-nez when the insect fails him once again, interrupting his run along the path. How Charnota throws her fists at the owner of the betting shop, how she begins to beat everyone with pleasure in the general brawl that ensues in the booth.

If Khludov's orderly became a circus rider in Constantinople, General Charnota became something of a clown. He sells stupid toys from a stall and shouts invitingly: “It doesn’t break, it doesn’t break, it just tumbles.” The same can be said to a certain extent about himself. From the balcony of a miserable hotel, Charnot powerlessly “shoots” with a revolver the hated Constantinople with its stuffy streets, minarets and bazaar, and then, mingling with the crowd, begs for alms. But he does this too with evil passion: “Give it to me, well... I’m a general, I want to eat... well, give it to me!”

Arriving in Paris, the former landowner and owner of the Charnot stud farm is forced to sell his trousers and walk along the Latin Quarter and the Seine embankment in only his underpants. Once in the respectable house of the rich emigrant Paramon Korzukhin, Charnota squeezes him in her arms and kisses him with a hickey, with a whistle, passionately. But Korzukhin, having come to his senses and spat, declares that he will not lend money. Then Charnota offers to play cards.

The general’s eyes sparkle from under his pince-nez, and the figure in his underwear tenses, as if preparing to jump. The tragic and farcical line of Charnota, which Ulyanov confidently led, reaches its climax here. As the game progresses, the stakes continue to rise, the excitement grows, the players (Korzukhin is played by Evgeniy Evstigneev) drink strong drinks, and the pace increases. Satirical grotesque turns into buffoonery. The scene is built on long panoramas and a series of short medium shots, allowing one to see the growing tension in the players’ movements and facial expressions. At the end of it, a drunken Korzukhin is on the floor, among the bottles, trying with his frail little hand to pull at least one of the huge piles of dollars won by Charnota.

Throughout the entire film, Ulyanov plays a hot-tempered, gambling man, capable of being carried away to the point of oblivion by some kind of betting or cards, Charnot, while conveying, through inexplicable acting means, an ironic subtext: his hero “doesn’t beat, doesn’t break, but only tumbles.” Charnota constantly maintains a distance between her inner self and the clown mask she is forced to wear.

Returning from Paris to Constantinople, Charnota does not dare to sail on a ship to Russia, which he would like more than anything in the world, and bitterly reconciles himself with the fate of the eternal wanderer: “Who am I now? I am the eternal Jew now! I am Agasfer! I am the flying Dutchman Damn I'm a dog!

Only the former private assistant professor of St. Petersburg University Golubkov and Serafima Korzukhina, the wife of a greedy and cowardly Parisian rich man, whom he disowned, return to their homeland. It is she - the most defenseless and innocent victim of the historical "flight" - that Golubkov, Charnot and even Khludov try to help throughout the entire plot. In a moment of despair, the poor and hungry Serafima goes out onto the street, but the matter ends in tragedy: Golubkov and Charnota find the voluptuous Greek, who barely managed to invite Serafima to the coffee shop, and throw him out the door. However, Seraphima’s line is dramatic only in the external course of events; actress Lyudmila Savelyeva was unable to fill the role with any intelligible emotional content.

Alexei Batalov plays Golubkov as a kind of average “Chekhovian intellectual.” However, he gets lost in the powerful imagery of the film.

The private assistant professor in the story is tested by too cruel circumstances: in the counterintelligence of the White Army, under the threat of torture, he broke down and wrote a denunciation against Seraphim, as a result putting the life of his beloved woman at risk. His chivalrous attitude towards Seraphim in exile should have reflected not only nobility, but also pangs of conscience and attempts to make amends. But these shades are barely distinguishable in the monotonously restrained, quiet and faded Golubkov.

However, it is precisely the characters, almost devoid of characters, who are given by the authors of the film (which seems aesthetically not entirely justified) a magnificent ending: Golubkov and Serafima joyfully gallop on horses through a winter forest covered with lacy frost, and then for a long, long time across the virgin soil, until their figures dissolve in the snowy fields of Russia. It is clear that the reality of the return of Golubkov and Seraphima will be different: in the country they will find devastation, hunger and will be forced to begin the struggle for survival again. But it’s not for nothing that the ending is preceded by Golubkov’s remark about both the past and the future: “But nothing happened... it was all a dream. We’ll get there... It will snow again and cover our tracks.”

The film transfers the action from the nightmare “dream” of emigration not into a reliably depicted reality, but again into a dream - a bright dream-dream about Russia. In the chastely pure and lofty image of the Motherland, leaving which means losing one’s dignity, losing face and betraying oneself to an eternal, gnawing and unquenchable longing for the Fatherland “I won’t go, I’ll be here in Russia. And whatever happens to it” , says one of the heroes of Bulgakov’s “Days of the Turbins,” expressing the author’s personal position. This idea of the writer is embodied in the play “Running”, and in the film of the same name by Alov Naumov - one of the best adaptations of Bulgakov’s works in Russian cinema.