The original photograph was taken in 1908. It shows Bulgakov’s mother, Varvara Mikhailovna, in the living room of her house on Andrew’s Descent in Kyiv. Behind her, two photographs can be seen on the wall: a large portrait of her late husband Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov and a family photo with children.

Varvara Bulgakova had been working as a teacher at a women’s progymnasium for two years, and in 1890 she married Afanasy Bulgakov. Mikhail was the first child in the family, then Vera, Nadezhda, Varvara, Nikolay, Ivan and Elena were born.

From early on, the Bulgakovs instilled a love of music and reading into the children.“By the way, our parents somehow brought us up rather skillfully, they didn’t bother us: ‘Oh, what are you reading? Oh, what did you take? ’ We had different books. Including the classics of Russian literature, which we read avidly. There were children’s books. I still remember entire pages of nursery rhymes from them. And there was foreign literature. And this freedom that our parents gave us also contributed to our development, it did not affect us badly. We chose books with taste,” from the memoirs of Nadezhda Zemskaya, née Bulgakova.

In 1907, a year before this photograph was taken, Afanasy Bulgakov died. Varvara Mikhailovna was then 37 years old.“Think about it, seven children were left in my mother’s arms, and yet she managed to provide us a joyful childhood. At first (it was obvious) she did not know what to do, but then she found the strength,” Nadezhda Zemskaya, Varvara Mikhailovna’s daughter, said about that time.

Varvara Bulgakova was naturally jolly and cheerful and maintained a happy atmosphere in the family. Nadezhda, Mikhail Bulgakov’s sister, recalled that the leitmotif of their lives was the phrase “we were laughing so much.”

Varvara Bulgakova, in her second marriage, Voskresenskaya, died of typhus on February 1, 1922. Due to the difficult financial situation, Mikhail Bulgakov could not come and say goodbye to her. The novel “The White Guard” begins with the scene of the funeral of the Turbins’ mother.

“I have sufficiently paid my debt of respect and love to my mother. Her monument is the lines in the ‘White Guard’,” Bulgakov wrote to his sister in the late 1930s.