Ivan Afanasyevich Bulgakov, the younger brother of the famous Russian writer, was born in 1900, nine years after Mikhail Afanasyevich. From childhood, he showed creative abilities: he sang beautifully, played the balalaika, and wrote poetry. Like his older brothers, Ivan entered the Alexandrov Gymnasium but could not finish due to the arrival of the Bolsheviks, who changed the familiar way of life. At seventeen, Vanya Bulgakov struggled with youthful upheavals, especially seeing injustice and the death of innocent people. After the arrival of the White Army, he voluntarily joined the Astrakhan army, where his sister Varvara Afanasyevna's husband served as a colonel. Ivan quickly matured and fully dedicated himself to the Civil War. In early spring 1919, he fell ill with typhus and was taken home, where his sisters and brothers cared for him. After recovering, he joined the Volunteer Army and left.

In January 1920, 19-year-old Ivan Bulgakov saw his home for the last time. The Bolsheviks were already close, and he, along with General Bredov's detachment, decided to break through to Poland, where he was interned, and then moved to Crimea. In July 1920, already an experienced White Guard, he joined Baron Wrangel's Russian Army and left his homeland forever in November. In exile, he first found himself in Gallipoli and then lived for a long time in Bulgaria. In Varna, Ivan created an orchestra of White émigrés and became the champion of Bulgaria in football. With small fees, he was able to rent a place and in 1924 married Natalia Minko, the daughter of a general, who bore him two children.

In 1930, at the invitation of his brother Nikolai, Ivan moved with his family to Paris, where he performed with the orchestra in restaurants throughout his life. In 1934, his marriage to Natalia Kirillovna fell apart, and he never remarried. Ivan Afanasyevich worked a lot on poetry and music, lived for 69 years, and passed away in 1969, finding peace on foreign French soil.