The Days of the Turbins (Russian: Дни Турбиных, romanized: Dni Turbinykh) is a four-act play by Mikhail Bulgakov that is based upon his novel The White Guard.

[2] When the Moscow Art Theatre approached Bulgakov in 1925 and suggested that he should write a play for it to stage, the author had been toying with that idea for some time.

The character of Myshlayevsky apparently had no immediate real-life prototype, but some sources point to Nikolai Syngayevsky, the author's friend during his years of childhood,[3] but by way of bizarre coincidence, it "found" itself one, in retrospect.

By the January 1926 final casting, Malyshev was also gone, and Alexey Turbin became the artillery colonel, as well a kind of proponent for the White movement's ideology[2] The next change was prompted by censors.

The scene at the (Ukrainian nationalist leader) Symon Petliura's headquarters had to be removed because the atmosphere of anarchic violence there, apparently, resonated too strongly with many people's reminiscences of the Russian Civil War's realities relating to the atrocities committed by the Red Army.

The first Soviet play to portray the White Army officers realistically, not as caricature villains but as likeable people, caused furore.

In particular, to show, in the War and Peace tradition, one single family of intelligentsia, belonging to the dvoryanstvo, which, by the will of history itself had been thrown into the White Guard camp.

His letter remained unanswered, but on 18 April, soon after Vladimir Mayakovsky's suicide, Bulgakov received a telephone call from Stalin, who promised support and asked the author not to think of leaving the Soviet Union.

They remained unanswered, but on 16 February 1932, unexpectedly, the production of the Days of the Turbins was revived, and the play re-entered the Moscow Art Theatre's major repertoire.

"For reasons unknown to me, which I am not in a position to speculate upon, the Soviet government issued an extraordinary order for the MAT to re-start the production of The Days of the Turbins.

For the author of that play this means only one thing: the huge bulk of his life has been risen from the dead, simple as that," Bulgakov wrote to his friend, the literary and philosophy historian Pavel Popov (1892-1964).

Apparently, Stalin came to such a decision spontaneously upon having returned from the Moscow Art Theatre and being disgusted with what he called "a bad play," Alexander Afinogenov's Fear (tellingly, he criticized the idea that the old intelligentsia should be integrated into the new Soviet society, and it was quite popular with the party-controlled media), and he impulsively decided that the "good one," The Days of the Turbins, should be restored.

That the likes of the Turbins decide to lay down the arms and succumb to the will of the people, conceding the defeat, could mean only one thing: that the Bolsheviks are invincible.

"[6] Such a line of argument served as a red herring for Stalin, the critic Marianna Shaternikova argued, for "there was nothing in the play which might have been interpreted even as a hint at Bolshevism's invincibility.

What there was instead is the all-pervading sense of total betrayal... as the White Army generals, the Hetman, the Germans and all those whom they considered friends or allies, abandoning [the Turbins]."

The Turbins are a family caught in the turmoil by suffering their own tragedies, watching their whole world crash by the mindless violence, and feeling abandoned and betrayed.

The Days of the Turbins premiered on 5 October 1926 in Moscow Art Theatre and as directed by Konstantin Stanislavsky and codirected by Ilya Sudakov (1890-1969).

[8] The cast included Nikolai Khmelyov as Alexey Turbin, Ivan Kudryavtsev as Nikolka, Vera Sokolova as Elena, Mark Prudkin as Shervinsky (his song has been performed for several years by the Bolshoi Theatre opera singer Pyotr Selivanov), Evgeny Kaluzhsky as Studzinsky, Boris Dobronravov as Myshlayevsky, Vsevolod Verbitsky as Talberg, Mikhail Yanshin as Lariosik, Viktor Stanitsyn as Von Shratt, Robert Schilling as Von Dust, Vladimir Ershov as Getman, Nikolai Titushin as the deserter, Alexander Anders as Bolbotun and Mikhail Kedrov as Maxim.

"[2] The publicist Ivan Solonevich remembered an episode in which the White Army officers on stage after having drunk some vodka, were supposed sing the anthem "God Save the Tsar!"

[2] Throughout its first three years in the MAT, the play was severely criticised in the Soviet press, with numerous celebrities like Vladimir Mayakovsky, joining the chorus of detractors.

Education Ministre Anatoly Lunacharsky, writing for Izvestia on 8 October 1926, insisted that the play amounted to the apology of the White movement.

"[2] The only review that could be said to be positive was that of N. Rukavishnikov in Komsomolskaya Pravda who, replying to the poet Alexander Bezymensky, who had called Bulgakov "the neo-bourgeous scum", argued that "now, as we are approaching the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution... it is quite safe to portray [the 'white' officers] in a more realistic manner," and "the viewer has had enough of the agitprop-spawned hairy priests and fat capitalists in bowler hats."