Relire La Garde Blanche : histoire collective et archives de soi

This text purports to reassess the position of the writer, who, contrary to official ideology, already well established in 1923-24, gives back a voice to those defeated by History. At the heart of his narrative Kiev, he places his “fatherland”, devastated by a fraticide war which put an end to “legendary times” and “broke families”. Among them that of the author of this article. Thanks to Bulgakov, I was able to reconstitute the story of an ordinary participant to this epic and integrate it in the collective History. Reading again The White Guard also means deciphering the town as if it were a palimpsest, finding back the design of its mystical body under the rubble that distorts it. It also implies questioning the relationships between fiction and History, what the former gives to the latter and it also raises the issue of what it is to write about history.