The White Guard is the first novel by the outstanding Russian writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov. The events of the novel take place during the Civil War in Ukraine at the end of 1918. Bulgakov talks about a family of Russian intellectuals and their friends who are experiencing the social cataclysm of the civil war. The novel is largely autobiographical; almost all the characters have prototypes-relatives, friends and acquaintances of the Bulgakov family. The setting of the novel was the streets of Kyiv and the house in which the Bulgakov family lived in 1918.