«The White Guard» on TV: fascinated by masscult mythology

The article analyzes the television adaptation of the famous novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, shown on Russian television in 2012. The author juxtaposes the TV-series with the renowned Soviet film «Days of the Turbins», premiered in 1976. The analysis is carried out in the context of the history of a theatre version of the novel «The White guard», staged in the Moscow Academic Art Theatre in the 1920s, that is «Days of the Turbins», highly appreciated by Stalin. Traditionally, both theatre and cinema directors were drawn to the play adapted by Mikhail Bulgakov after his novel. Anyhow, there is a certain subject and semantic difference between these two works. The author analyzes the structure of the TV version, its style, elaboration of on-screen characters, based on the literary source and previous interpretation of the play «Days of the Turbins». However, the author argues, that ideological and figurative interference into the original, adaptation to the stereotypes of mass culture significantly distort the perception of Bulgakov’s works, largely obliged to the writers’s mood and emotions experienced in the years of Revolution and Civil war. Concluding, the author pinpoints both - complexity unit of Bulgakov’s text adaptation towards contemporary TV, and misjudgements of the TV-series’ makers in the way of conception and realization.