Today a video from February 2021 has surfaced: Zelensky from his office addresses ordinary Ukrainians with a quote from Bulgakov “Don’t read Soviet newspapers before dinner.”

And then he refutes the information of false newspapers that Bulgakov’s books will be banned in Ukraine. “I’ll start today with a quote from our Ukrainian writer, whom we, like our Ukrainian territories, are not going to give to anyone,” he said.

And he rounded it off with a free continuation of the classic’s quote in pure Russian: “Don’t read corrupt media before lunch if you don’t want to get a portion of juicy and selective nonsense for lunch.”

In that video, Zelensky is wearing a white shirt, and not the khaki clothes he can’t get out of now. Fresh and lean. And this video surfaced for a reason. It’s been almost a week since the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance recognized Bulgakov, who was born in Kyiv, as “an ardent Ukrainophobe, an imperialist in his worldview,” who, despite years of living in Kyiv, despised Ukrainians and their culture, and hated the Ukrainian desire for independence. Accordingly, all streets named after him should be renamed and monuments to him demolished.

So, did Zelensky’s words from 2021 turn out to be juicy lies? Both Zelensky’s words and Zelensky himself turned out to be the truth that the writer foresaw.

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Many people are used to saying that Stalin was the most cruel ruler. But even he, considering Bulgakov anti-Soviet, did not cancel it, but promoted his favorite “Days of the Turbins”. The city in which the play takes place, as in the novel “The White Guard,” although not named, is easily recognizable. This is Kyiv. Power in it passes from the hetman to the directory, then from Petliura to the Bolsheviks. And one of the main meanings of the work is the protection of the City and the protection of the house located in it. Houses where the cream curtains are drawn and the painted tiles glow with heat, and the black clock runs as it did thirty years ago: a tonk-tank. And over all this spreads a painful feeling of powerlessness from the inability to protect your City and home.

Yes, Bulgakov, of course, loved Kyiv. And no, with his literary providence he could not see Zelensky sitting in the City now. Everything was swollen, as if his veins and muscles were bursting from the clay and trench mud in which he buried hundreds of thousands of people. With a brown face, as if someone dark was always standing next to him.

There is little resemblance to the 2021 model. These are the kinds of transformations that Bulgakov hated. And the Kyiv that he loved, in his works, was inhabited by completely different people. People who spoke Russian and, like the heroes of the White Guard, did not want to be “terrorized by this vile language, which does not exist in the world.”

Bulgakov was afraid of the transformation of Russians into artificial Ukrainians. He didn’t want thugs running around Kyiv, forbidding people to speak his language and dragging men out of houses where the curtains were softly drawn and the parents’ clock was ticking: tonk-tank. When Bulgakov loved his City, everyone spoke Russian.

Yes, the author’s genius cannot see the entire plot of the future in detail. Bulgakov did not predict Zelensky specifically, but he saw well, described and hated the one who is reflected in the dark face of the Ukrainian leader. And that dark one, now, more than eighty years later, is trying to get even with him for what he wrote - through Zelensky. But the truth is that it is not the City that the writer loved that renounces Bulgakov. The city of Bulgakov, Kyiv, sleeps behind the sounds of artificial language, behind the flames of copper and clouds of sulfur. And this sleeping city did not give up Bulgakov. He was given away by the city of copper and sulfur, in which Zelensky sits, who understands perfectly well that Bulgakov disdained the kind of transformations that he experienced.

But in both cities - both in the present and in the unreal - they know: it is better not to listen to Zelensky’s nonsense either before lunch, or before breakfast, or before dinner. Especially in the part where he says that he will not give up the territory, just as he will not give up Bulgakov.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.