Michaił Bułhakow
Russian journalist, playwright, novelist, and short story writer, whose major work was the Gogolesque fantasy The Master and Margarita. In the story the Devil visits Stalinist Moscow to see if he can do some good. The book is considered a major Russian novel of the 20th century. It first appeared in savagely censored form in the Soviet journal Moskva in 1966-67. Bulgakov also used satire and fantasy in his other works, among them the short story collection Diaboliad (1925).
The naked man pushed his way to the front, tapped with his nail on the bronze bonnet and said:
"Here, comrades, we have a remarkable character. A notorious harlot of the first half of the 19th century..."
The lady with the stomach turned purple, took her young daughter by the hand and quickly drew her away.
(from 'The Fire of the Khans')
Mihail Bulgakov was born in Kiev. Ukraine as the eldest son of a theology professor at the Kiev Theological Academy. He attended First Kiev High School (1900-09) and studied then medicine at Kiev University (1909-16). From 1916 to 1918 he served as a doctor in front-line and district hospitals. These experiences he described in notes of a young doctor, 'Zapiski yunogo vracha' (1925-26).
In 1918-19 Bulgakov worked as a doctor in Kiev, and witnessed the German occupation and then the occupation by the Red Army. During these war years he suffered from a morphine addiction, but was helped by his first wife to win the addiction. In 1920 Bulgakov abandoned medicine in favor of a career as a writer. He organized in Vladikavkaz, Caucasus, a 'sub-department of the arts', wrote stories for newspapers and moved to Moskow in 1921. There he worked for the literary department of the People's Commissariat of Education, writing as a journalist for various groups and papers. His largely autobiographical novel BELAYA GVARDIYA (1925, full text 1966, The White Guard) was an account of the turbulent years between 1914 and 1921 as reflected in the lives of a White family in the Ukraine. Two parts of the work was published in the journal Rossiya, whch was closed before the third part could appear.
From 1925 Bulgakov was associated with the Moscow Arts Theatre. He wrote and staged many plays, which enjoyed great popularity. Bulgakov's criticism of the Soviet system was not swallowed by the authorities. The Heart of the Dog (written in 1925), a satire on Soviet life in the guise of science fiction, was condemned unpublishable. In the story 'Pokhozhdenia Chichikova' the protaginist of Gogol's Dead Souls was dropped in the middle of the Soviet Russia's New Economic Policy period of 1921-27. 'Diaboliad' (1925) portrayed a poor clerk in a gigantic bureaucracy, where he loses his identity and life. In 1928 Bulgakov had three plays running in three Moscow theatres, Zoya's Apartment, The Crimson Island, and The Days of the Turbins, dramatized from his novel The White Guard. It brought the author overnight success and became 'a new Seagull' for the new generation, although it also received hostile reviews for the sympathetic portrayal of White officers. Paradoxically, The White Guard was one of Stalin's favorite plays. It was banned in 1929, reinstated in 1932 but published only in 1955.
By 1930s Bulgakov's works were published rarely or not at all - Zoya's Apartment (1926), a play set in an atelier-bordello, was banned, as The Crimson Island (1928). Flight (1928), dealing with White fugitives leaving Russia, was banned before its premiere. In 1929 he wrote to Maxim Gorky: "All my plays have been banned; not a line of mine is being printed anywhere; I have no work ready, and not a kopeck of royalties is coming in from any source; not a single institution, not a single individual will reply to my applications..."
After writing a letter to Soviet government, requesting permission to emigrate, Bulgakov received a personal telephone call from Stalin and was employed as an assistant producer with the Moscow Arts Theatre. He adapted classics for the stage and during the late 1930s he was librettist and consultant at Bolshoi Theatre. However, Stalin's favour protected Bulgakov only from arrests and executions, but his writings remained unpublished. In Black Snow, a Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov described his love-hate relationship and took a revenge on Stanislavsky for the failure of his play A Cabal of Hypocrites, produced under the title Molière. In one scene Louis XIV, the Sun King, says: "Then hear this: my author is oppressed. He is frightened. I will show kindness to anyone who forewarns me of whatever danger imperils him... The ban is lifted. You may stage Tartuffe." The Last Days was performed first in 1943 under the title Pushkin.
Bulgakov's most important work was The Master and Margarita, written in 1928-40. The novel was a fantasy about the Devil, disguised as a professor, who causes havoc in the city. The work was suppressed because Bulgakov refused to make the changes reguired by the authorities. Although Bulgakov was still making changes to the text on his death bed, the novel was completed. A first Soviet edition was published in 1966-67. The fuller text appeared in 1973 and the revised full text in 1989.
Bulgakov was married three times: with Tatiana Nikolaevna Lappa (1913), Liubov Evgenevna Belozerskaia (1924), and Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya (1932), who gave invaluable support to the author when he wrote The Master and Margarita and had his fits of paranoia. Bulgakov was writing Black Snow, his theatre novel, when he died in Moskow on March 10, 1940. It took until 1980s before all Bulgakov's works could be published in Russia. Bulgakov was considered decades an outsider and the most "un-Soviet" writer. Supernatural and occult attracted him, and he used sudden cuts into the fantastic and mockery. Although he was subjected to a number of restrictions as a writer, he survived attacks from the officials, when others were imprisoned and perished in the 'Gulag Archipelago'.
The Master and Margarita (1928-40) - Published in installments in 1966 and 1967 in the journal Moskva. - The large novel takes place on three levels, each of which provides a commentary on the others. Historical narrative is set in Jerusalem, where Pontius Pilate condemns to death a man, Jeshua, whom he knows to be innocent. Contemporary narrative is set in Moscow, where the Master and Margarita live and where the Master has written a novel about Pilate. The third, fantastic level introduces the devil, who steps out of Goethe's Faust and appears in Moscow with a retinue that includes an enormous black cat. The devil, Woland, is unconventionally seen more as an agent for good and the character of Jesus, called Yeshua, in not very Biblical. The philosophical and religious themes and examination of the freedom of art circulate around the intrusion of the devil into the life of modern Moscow and the crucifixion of Christ. The narrative is further complicated by a combination of interacting and competing discourses from the realms of science, religion, literature, history, and politics. Master burns his manuscript and retires to a madhouse. Margarita's love for the master drives her to a pact with Satan.
Bulgakov composed two versions of the work. One was written at home and another, when he did not have the original available, was born while he was living with a mistress. Much of the the satire in The Master and Margarita is aimed at greed, vanity, and pettiness. It is possible to read the book as a tribute to Stalin's policy to cut the bourgeois elements of Soviet society. After the publication of the novel Bulgakov was seen as a link between such writers as Vasilii Aksenov, Andrei Siniavskii, and the Strugatskii brothers and the great past tradition of Gogol and Dostoevskii.
Selected works:
ZAPISKI NA MANZHETAKH, 1922-23 - Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories
RAKOVYJE JAITSA, 1924 - Kohtalokkaat munat
DIAVOLIADA, 1925 - Diaboliad
BELAYA GVARDIYA, 1925 - The White Guard (published in book form in 1969) - Valkokaarti
DYAVOLIADA, 1925 - Deviltries
DNI TURBINYKH, 1926 (banned afterwards) - The Days of Turbins -
ZOIKINA KVARTIRA, 1928 - Zoya's Apartment, published in The Early Plays and Six Plays
BEG, 1928 - Flight - filmed in 1971
BAGROVYI OSTROV, 1928 - The Crimson Island, published in The Early Plays
TEATRALNY ROMAN, (written in the 1930s, published in 1965) - Black Snow: A theatrical Novel - Teatteriromaani
MERTVYE DUSHI, 1932 (Dead Souls, from Gogol's novel)
KABALA SVYATOSH, 1934 (publ. 1970) - A Cabal of Hypocrites
IVAN VASILIEVICH, 1935 - filmed in the early 1970s
MOLIČRE, 1936 - Salaliitto
POSLEDNIYE DNI (PUSHKIN), 1936 - The Last Days [Pushkin]
KABALA SVYATOSH, 1936 - published in The Early Plays and Six Plays
PUSHKIN, 1940
DON KIKHOT, 1940 (for the novel by Cervantes)
POSLEDNIE DNI (PUSHKIN), 1943
RASHEL', 1943
SBORNIK RASSKAZOV, 1952
BEG, 1962 - Flight
P'ESY, 1962
ZAPISKI IUNOGO VRACHA, 1963 - A Country Doctor's Notebook
DRAMY I KOMEDII, 1965
IZBRANNAIA PROZA, 1966
IVAN VASILEVICH, 1966
MASTER I MARGARITA, 1966-67 - The Master and Margarita - Saatana saapuu Moskovaan
POSLEDNIE DNI, 1970
PIESY, 1971
DON KIKHOT, 1971
The Early Plays, 1972
Diaboliad, and Other Stories, 1972
ROMANY, 1973
NEZDANNYI BULGAGOV, 1977
RANNYAYA NESOBRANNAYA PROZA, 1978
SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1982-90 (volumes 1-4 and 8 published)
SOBACHYE SERDTSE - The Heart of a Dog (written 1925, published officially in 1987 in the Soviet Union) - Koiran sydän
MININ I POZHARSKII, 1976
VOINA I MIR, 1981
CHERNOE MORE, 1988
PETR VELIKII (Peter the Great), 1988
P'ESY 1920-KH GODOV, 1989
SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1989-90 (5 vols.)
POD PIATOI. MOI DNEVNOK, 1990
Manuscripts Don't Burn, 1991
Six Plays, 1991
P'ESY 1930-KH GODOV, 1994