Will the public and the Kiev authorities agree with the compromise proposed by the museum?
35 years ago, the Kiev City Council decided to create a Bulgakov Museum in the house on Andreevsky Spusk, 13; the opening took place on May 15, 1991. Will the museum survive the whirlpool of decommunization and decolonization until the next anniversary?
“Yes, of course,” the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINR), Anton Drobovich, assures “Commander-in-Chief,” “The museum itself, that is, the museum collection, is not in danger. Unless he changes the name. Moreover, there is a professional team working there who can tell the truth about Bulgakov without speculation.”
“The provisions of the law on decommunization concern public space, that is, street names, monuments and names of legal entities,” Drobovich explains the position of the Institute of Memory regarding the recent conclusion of an expert commission that recognized memorial signs and monuments to Bulgakov as symbols of Russian imperial policy. Drobovich believes that recognition as symbols of a hostile empire does not mean an automatic ban on everything connected with the writer. But the monument to Bulgakov next to the estate near house No. 13 will most likely be dismantled.
“We are not waiting for the “Russian world” here, singing every day “The fragrant clusters of white acacia,” historian and leading researcher at the museum Anna Putova reacts emotionally, meaning: museum workers are working, rethinking, and this work is for the benefit of Ukraine.
Last year, work began on updating the exhibition, and it was presented to visitors in February 2024. And this is no longer a story about Mikhail Bulgakov and the White Guard, romanticized by the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1970-1990s. This is the story of Ukrainians, Kievites in two related wars - the beginning of the twentieth century. and the current one, the beginning of the 21st.
What has changed in the museum? The "Commander in Chief" went on an excursion.
Two worlds, two wars
Anna Putova leads “Glavkom” to the second floor, where the Bulgakovs lived and where a new exhibition has recently opened, named with a quote from the writer’s essay “Kyiv-Gorod”: “...And suddenly, and menacingly, history came.”
A year ago, we wrote that a new concept was expected that the museum was working on. Now the museum is working in exhibition mode, monitoring public demand until it is finally determined what the new permanent exhibition will be.
“When we go up the stairs, on the walls we see images of those who took part in the first liberation competitions: here are the Germans, and the soldiers of the UPR army, and Hetman Skoropadsky. The Reds virtually break into the apartment and destroy the familiar world. Flowers grow from the blood of their victims and pour into the hallway of the apartment,” explains Putov’s images.
The “old” exhibition included authentic interior items, in particular those that belonged to the Bulgakovs (they were in their original color) and specially created white furniture, which simultaneously symbolized the idea of a clean slate, winter Kyiv, as well as white blooming spring gardens. The current design also consists of two parts, but it is not the color that separates them. A special organization of space comes into play, when half of the room is the world of home and home comfort, and the other half is the world of the street, where there are no cream curtains, because they are destroyed, and the hero will not be able to hide behind them.
The part symbolizing the street is upholstered in spunbond; in the museum, camouflage nets for the front are woven from it. Spunbond is made on the basis of photographs of greenery; in this case, photographs of the famous Kyiv chestnuts were used. Thus, the Ukrainian war of independence in 1918 is intertwined with the current one.
There are documents and photographs on the walls of the rooms. Most of it was provided by collectors and historians: Oleg Voitovich, Mikhail Kalnitsky, heirs of Kyiv explorer Viktor Kirkevich.
“Here are slogans related to the elections to the Constituent Assembly of 1917, which were never held by the Central Rada. Then 1918 - the attack on Kyiv by the Red Army under the command of Mikhail Muravyov. The wild hordes that moved from the east destroyed five thousand people in Kyiv, and this was only in three weeks of their stay. And here is the exhibit donated by Kalnitsky: the newspaper “Our Days” publishes a photo of the house in which the artist Vasily Krichevsky’s studio and Mikhail Grushevsky’s apartment were located. This house was destroyed by targeted artillery fire from the Bolsheviks, which Muravyov was very proud of,” says Anna Putova.
The room of Bulgakov's sisters is also divided into the external and internal world. External describes the life of women of that time.
“The sisters were supporters of women's emancipation, very independent. Mom writes to her daughters Nadezhda and Vera: “You both are in extremely favorable working conditions. I can’t even imagine that you were so blind that you don’t notice what’s going on around you... and how well you need to arm yourself with knowledge, prepare for work in order to enter the arena of life, if you don’t want to lead a miserable existence somewhere in the back, in the train of the powerless and inept”... These words echo the general attitudes of that time. Here are portraits of three women who personified the mainstream of that time: Sofia Rusova, Nadezhda Surovtseva and Lyudmila Staritskaya-Chernyakhovskaya,” says Putova.
The teacher and writer Rusova is best known for creating the first Ukrainian kindergarten in Kyiv and teaching at the Frebel Institute, where Vera Bulgakova studied. Surovtseva, a public figure, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UPR, was the first Ukrainian woman to have a Ph.D. degree, and was subsequently subjected to repression for her activities. After serving her time in Soviet camps, she remained in communist Ukraine, lived in Uman and carried out monument protection activities. Staritskaya-Chernyakhovskaya's daughter, Veronica, was shot by the Bolsheviks, and the writer and public figure herself died in a cattle car on the way to exile.
All of these women held positions in Ukrainian governments.
“In the UPR, women had the right to both vote and be elected, unlike European states of those times,” notes the guide.
The transition from the “female” world to the “male” one occurs through the closet, on the door of which the sign “50” is an allusion to the “bad” apartment from the novel “The Master and Margarita”. In the closet is a jacket of a modern Ukrainian military man who is fighting in the Donetsk region. Military artifacts in the exhibition - like the accent of today, shoulder straps and chevrons, current and then, modern cartridge cases and the figurative suitcase of a man who is going to the front.
Therefore, we move to the seventh room of the museum - the world of male choice, the place where the feminine and masculine intersect for the last time.
“The table is covered with a camouflage net, on it is a mold for cottage cheese Easter cake, which is called “Golgotha,” and an egg as a symbol of the Resurrection. Ukrainian emigrant Easter cards included the congratulation “Christ is risen, Ukraine will rise too.” This is an extremely important message for us today,” emphasizes Anna Putova.
Museum workers emphasize that the current exhibition is dedicated to the liberation struggle of 1917-1921. The Bulgakov family, which at that time lived in Kyiv, naturally found itself in a whirlpool of events. The museum tells the story of a Kyiv family, inextricably linked with all the political vicissitudes that it witnessed. The context of time is especially important here, and the attention of the narrator and the tourist is focused on it.
“If there is this new exhibition, then I am surprised by the position of the museum, which continues to strive to remain a Bulgakov museum. You need to familiarize yourself with everything yourself in order to understand how it’s all possible to combine Bulgakov and the liberation struggle,” says the former head of the Institute of National Remembrance, people’s deputy Vladimir Vyatrovich, to whom the “Commander in Chief” briefly retells what he saw and heard during the excursion.
What's wrong with the museum?
To Vladimir Vyatrovich, as well as to a significant part of Ukrainians, Bulgakov today seems to be the personification of the “Russian world”. Museum workers who advocate for the writer strongly disagree with this approach.
The views that Vyatrovich articulates are consonant with the recent conclusion of an expert commission that worked on behalf of the Institute of National Remembrance and, as a result, recognized memorial signs and monuments to the writer as symbols of Russian imperial policy.
When, after the tour, we drink tea on the veranda of the estate of house No. 13, the director of the Bulgakov Museum, Lyudmila Gubianuri, explains the position of the museum staff regarding the conclusions of the expert commission.
First, she says, the methodology that guided the expert commission, which only released its conclusion without explaining the process itself, is unknown.
Secondly, according to the director, the Institute of National Remembrance should have involved museum workers in the discussion.
“But they decided in advance that they were judges, and the Bulgakov Museum was a collective criminal. And this is a big problem in communication between institutions,” notes Gubianuri.
Thirdly, the expert commission still has the role of an advisory body, which proves its opinion to the Institute, and it then makes recommendations to the Kyiv City State Administration.
“Drobovich asked the commission to reconsider the findings and include our response. Now they are working on it,” informs Lyudmila.
In any case, the monument to Bulgakov, which is next to the estate, may be removed, but decolonization does not affect the museum collections, says Anton Drobovich.
“The museum is not under threat (liquidation - “Glavkom”),” the official assures.
The Institute of National Remembrance actually asked the commission of experts to clarify its conclusions and take into account the position of the museum. When asked by the “Commander-in-Chief” about when these clarifications will be prepared, Drobovich replies that the commission, consisting of nine well-known historians, doctors of science from different universities in the country, has a lot of work, and it is connected not only with Bulgakov.
“Over time, when the commission gets around to it, it will publish new conclusions and the methodology of its research, which is what the museum insists on,” assures the head of the Institute.
Is it possible to “repurpose” the Bulgakov Museum?
Drobovich, however, suggests that the museum will have to change its name.
Lyudmila Gubianuri does not agree with this idea: “I just don’t understand, are we going to go underground? That is, a different sign will appear, and inside we will talk about Bulgakov?”
The institution could be called the “Museum of the Bulgakov Family” or “Museum of the Bulgakov and Glagolev Family,” Drobovich suggests. (Note that the Kiev family of the Glagolev-Egorichevs, included in the list of Righteous Among the Nations, has no relation to the estate on Andreevsky Spusk, 13).
Although the members of this family were familiar with the Bulgakovs, and the priest Alexander Glagolev married Mikhail to his first wife Tatyana Lappa and became the prototype of one of the heroes of the novel “The White Guard,” and the museum has a collection of the Glagolev family, handed down by the descendants of Alexander’s father.
Another figure is mistakenly linked to the address Andreevsky Spusk, 13 - composer Alexander Koshits. Now at the Bulgakov Museum there is a plaque on which it is indicated that Koshits lived in this house. But this does not correspond to historical truth.
The Koshitsa plaque on the building was installed in 2021 by two public unions - the Musical Battalion and the People's Museum of Ukraine, says Anna Putova. The Kyiv History Museum, of which the Bulgakov Museum is a branch, was simply presented with a fait accompli without asking the opinion of historians.
Meanwhile, researchers Olga Musiyachenko and Daria Kucherezhenko recreated the Kyiv addresses of Koshits, using various sources, in particular, the memories of the composer himself.
He settled on Andreevsky Spusk in an estate that consisted of three houses - No. 22, 22-A and 22-B. According to the recollections of the owner of the estate, Ivan Shatrov, he bought it from the tradesman Serkov, the real prototype of Staritsky’s comedy “Chasing Two Hares.” By the way, in the memoirs of Koshits himself, the address Andreevsky Descent, 13 is not mentioned in a word.
Vladimir Vyatrovich proposes that the focus of the updated museum be on the owner of the house where the Bulgakovs rented the second floor. We are talking about Vasily Listovnichy.
Vasily Pavlovich Listovnichy is not deprived of the museum’s attention - the first floor of the building preserves his memory.
“Here is a corner dedicated to the Leafman. Here is a photo of his workshop. Here is a painting painted by his daughter Inna. Notes copied by the hand of his wife Yadviga Viktorovna. Vasily Listovnichy bought this house in 1909, when the Bulgakovs had been living in it for three years, and kept the first floor for himself - at the request of Varvara Mikhailovna, the mother of Mikhail Bulgakov,” says Anna Putova. According to her, the general public learned about Listovnichy’s personality thanks to exhibitions and publications of the Bulgakov Museum, which has been developing this topic for many years.
In 2021, on the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar tragedy, the museum held the exhibition “The House that Saves,” which told about two families of Jewish rescuers associated with the Bulgakovs. The first is the already mentioned Glagolevs-Egorichevs. The second is the Listovnichi-Konchakovsky family, the owners of the house. They were awarded the honorary title established by the Jewish Council of Ukraine: the righteous of Babyn Yar
The opinions and emotions of the public and scientists have radically diverged, and this undoubtedly affects the indecisiveness of government institutions in determining the future fate of the Bulgakov Museum. But museum workers hope that in this matter the truth of history will not be replaced by either the conjuncture of today or the conjuncture of yesterday.
