Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (/bʊlˈɡɑːkɒf/ buul-GAH-kof; Russian: Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf]; 15 May [O.S. 3 May] 1891 – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet novelist and playwright of Russian origin. His novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
He also wrote the novel The White Guard and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight (also called The Run), and The Days of the Turbins. He wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.
Some of his works (Flight, all his works between the years 1922 and 1926, and others) were banned by the Soviet government, and personally by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins (also called The Turbin Brothers) very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born on 15 May [O.S. 3 May] 1891 in Kiev, Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire, at 28 Vozdvishenskaya Street, into a Russian family, and baptized on 18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1891. He was the oldest of the seven children of Afanasiy Bulgakov [ru] – a state councilor, a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy, as well as a prominent Russian Orthodox essayist, thinker and translator of religious texts. His mother was Varvara Mikhailovna Bulgakova (nee Pokrovskaya), a former teacher at a women's gymnasium. The academician Nikolai Petrov was his godfather, while his godmother was his paternal grandmother, Olympiada.
Afanasiy Bulgakov (1859 - 1907) was born in Oryol, Oryol Governorate, the oldest son of Ivan Abramovich Bulgakov, a priest, and his wife Olympiada Ferapontovna. He first studied in a seminary in Oryol, and then studied in Kiev Theological Academy from 1881 to 1885, and was named a docent of the Academy in 1886. Varvara Bulgakova (1869 - 1922) was born in Karachev; her father, Mikhail Pokrovsky, was a protoiereus. According to Edythe C. Haber, in his "autobiographical remarks" Bulgakov stated that she was a descendant of Tartar hordes, which supposedly influenced some of his works. Afanasiy and Varvara married in 1890. Their other children were Vera (b. 1892), Nadezhda (b. 1893), Varvara (b. 1895), Nikolai (b. 1898), Ivan (b. 1900), and Yelena (b. 1902).
All the children received a good education; they read the classics of Russian and European literature, studied music, and went to concerts. Mikhail played piano, sang baritone, and enjoyed opera. In particular, he enjoyed Faust by Gounod; according to his sister Nadezhda, he attended showings of Faust at least 40 times. At home, Mikhail and his siblings acted out plays that they enjoyed; the family also had a dacha in Bucha.
In 1901, Bulgakov joined the First Kiev Gymnasium, where he developed an interest in Russian and European literature (his favourite authors at the time being Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Dickens), theatre and opera. The teachers of the Gymnasium exerted a great influence on the formation of his literary taste. After the death of his father in 1907, Mikhail's mother, a well-educated and extraordinarily diligent person, assumed responsibility for his education. After graduation from the Gymnasium in 1909, Bulgakov entered the Medical Faculty of Kiev University.
In the summer of 1908, Bulgakov met Tatiana Lappa. Lappa, who lived in Saratov, had arrived in Kiev to visit her relatives; her aunt was a friend of Varvara Bulgakova and thus introduced her to the young Bulgakov. In 1909, Bulgakov began to study medicine at the Kiev University. In 1912, Lappa arrived in Kiev to study. The two married in April 1913.
Bulgakov was staying with Lappa's parents in Saratov at the outbreak of the First World War. Her mother opened a field hospital for wounded soldiers, where Bulgakov worked as a doctor. The couple returned to Kiev in the autumn. In 1916, Bulgakov graduated from the university, after which he volunteered for the Red Cross. His wife volunteered as a nurse. He first worked in Kamianets-Podilskyi, then he was transferred to Chernivtsi in the same year. In September of that year he was transferred to Moscow; and then to the village of Nikolskoye in the Smolensk Oblast. The time he spent working as a doctor would be the inspiration for his short story cycle, A Young Doctor's Notebook and his short story, Morphine. Morphine is based on the author's actual addiction to morphine, which he started taking to alleviate the allergic effects of an anti-diphtheria drug, after accidentally infecting himself with the disease while treating a child with the same condition. While visiting Kiev with his wife, they received advice from Bulgakov's stepfather on countering his addiction in the form of injecting distilled water instead of morphine, which gradually helped Bulgakov to end his addiction.
In the autumn of 1917 he was transferred to the town of Vyazma, but left for Moscow in either November or December of that year in an unsuccessful attempt to gain a military discharge. After briefly visiting Lappa's parents in Saratov, they returned to Kiev in February 1918. Upon returning Bulgakov opened a private practice at his home at Andreyevsky Descent, 13. Here he lived through the Civil War and witnessed ten coups. Successive governments drafted the young doctor into their service while two of his brothers were serving in the White Army against the Bolsheviks.
In 1919, he was mobilised as an army physician by the White Army. In September 1919, Bulgakov was in Grozny with his wife. While there, he observed the fighting between the forces of Anton Denikin and Uzun-Hajji in the city of Chechen-Aul; this became part of one of his earliest works, "Unusual Adventures" (Russian: Необыкновенные приключения). There, he became seriously ill with typhus and barely survived. In the Caucasus, he started working as a journalist, but when he and others were invited to return as doctors by the French and German governments, Bulgakov was refused permission to leave Russia because of the typhus. That was when he last saw his family; after the Civil War and the rise of the Soviets most of his relatives emigrated to Paris.
Bulgakov had expressed his desire to be a writer as early as 1912 or 1913, when he showed his sister Nadezhda his first attempt at a story, called The Fiery Serpent (Russian: Огненный змий), about an alcoholic who dies in a fit of delirium tremens, and stated to her that he planned to be a writer. According to his first wife, he first began to consistently write in Vyazma, where at nights he would work on a story called The Green Serpent (Russian: Зеленый змий).
After his illness, Bulgakov abandoned his medical practice to pursue writing. Bulgakov in his autobiography wrote that he abandoned medicine for writing in early 1920; according to his friend Pavel Popov, Bulgakov abandoned medicine for good on 15 February 1920. At this time, he was in Vladikavkaz. His first book was an almanac of feuilletons called Future Perspectives, written and published the same year. He wrote and saw his first two plays, Self Defence and The Turbin Brothers, being produced for the city theater stage with great success.
After travelling through the Caucasus, Bulgakov headed for Moscow, intending "to remain here forever". It was difficult to find work in the capital, but he was appointed secretary to the literary section of Glavpolitprosvet (Central Committee of the Republic for Political Education). In September 1921, Bulgakov and his wife settled near Patriarch's Ponds, on Bolshaya Sadovaya street, 10. To make a living, he started working as a correspondent and feuilletons writer for the newspapers Gudok, Krasnaia Panorama and Nakanune, based in Berlin. For the almanac Nedra, he wrote Diaboliad, The Fatal Eggs (1924), and Heart of a Dog (1925), works that combined bitter satire and elements of science fiction and were concerned with the fate of a scientist and the misuse of his discovery.
Between 1922 and 1926, Bulgakov wrote several plays (including Zoyka's Apartment), none of which were allowed production at the time. The Run, treating the horrors of a fratricidal war, was personally banned by Joseph Stalin after the Glavrepertkom (Department of Repertoire) decided that it "glorified emigration and White generals". In the spring of 1924, Bulgakov divorced Tatyana Lappa. The next year, he married Lyubov Belozerskaya.
When one of Moscow's theatre directors severely criticised Bulgakov, Stalin personally protected him, saying that a writer of Bulgakov's quality was above "party words" like "left" and "right". Stalin found work for the playwright at a small Moscow theatre, and next the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). Bulgakov's first major work was the novel The White Guard (Belaya gvardiya [Белая гвардия]), serialized in 1925 but never published in book form. On 5 October 1926, The Days of the Turbins, the play which continued the theme of The White Guard (the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil war) was premiered at the MAT. Stalin liked it very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.
His plays Ivan Vasilievich (Иван Васильевич), Don Quixote (Дон Кихот) and Last Days (Последние дни [Poslednie Dni], also called Pushkin) were banned. The premier of another, Moliėre (also known as The Cabal of Hypocrites), about the French dramatist in which Bulgakov plunged "into fairy Paris of the XVII century", received bad reviews in Pravda and the play was withdrawn from the theater repertoire. In 1928, Zoyka's Apartment and The Purple Island were staged in Moscow; both comedies were accepted by the public with great enthusiasm, but critics again gave them bad reviews. By March 1929, Bulgakov's career was ruined when Government censorship stopped the publication of any of his work and his plays.
In despair, Bulgakov first wrote a personal letter to Joseph Stalin (July 1929), then on 28 March 1930, a letter to the Soviet government. He requested permission to emigrate if the Soviet Union could not find use for him as a writer. In his autobiography, Bulgakov claimed to have written to Stalin out of desperation and mental anguish, never intending to post the letter. He received a phone call directly from the Soviet leader, who asked the writer whether he really desired to leave the Soviet Union. Bulgakov replied that a Russian writer cannot live outside of his homeland. Stalin gave him permission to continue working at the Art Theater; on 10 May 1930, he re-joined the theater, as stage director's assistant. Later he adapted Gogol's Dead Souls for stage.
In 1932, Bulgakov married for the third time, to Yelena Shilovskaya, who would prove to be inspiration for the character Margarita in The Master and Margarita, which he started working on in 1928. During the last decade of his life, Bulgakov continued to work on The Master and Margarita, wrote plays, critical works, and stories and made several translations and dramatisations of novels. Many of them were not published, others were "torn to pieces" by critics. Much of his work (ridiculing the Soviet system) stayed in his desk drawer for several decades. The refusal of the authorities to let him work in the theatre and his desire to see his family who were living abroad, whom he had not seen for many years, led him to seek drastic measures. Despite his new work, the projects he worked on at the theatre were often prohibited, and he was stressed and unhappy.
In the late 1930s, he joined the Bolshoi Theatre as a librettist and consultant. He left after perceiving that none of his works would be produced there. Stalin's favor protected Bulgakov from arrests and execution, but he could not get his writing published. His novels and dramas were subsequently banned and, for the second time, Bulgakov's career as playwright was ruined. When his last play Batum (1939), a complimentary portrayal of Stalin's early revolutionary days, was banned before rehearsals, Bulgakov requested permission to leave the country but was refused.
In poor health, Bulgakov devoted his last years to what he called his "sunset" novel. The years 1937 to 1939 were stressful for Bulgakov, veering from glimpses of optimism, believing the publication of his masterpiece could still be possible, to bouts of depression, when he felt as if there were no hope. On 15 June 1938, when the manuscript was nearly finished, Bulgakov wrote in a letter to his wife:
In 1939, Bulgakov organized a private reading of The Master and Margarita to his close circle of friends. Elena Bulgakova remembered 30 years later, "When he finally finished reading that night, he said: 'Well, tomorrow I am taking the novel to the publisher!' and everyone was silent", "...Everyone sat paralyzed. Everything scared them. P. (P. A. Markov, in charge of the literature division of MAT) later at the door fearfully tried to explain to me that trying to publish the novel would cause terrible things", she wrote in her diary (14 May 1939).
In the last month of his life, friends and relatives were constantly on duty at his bedside. On 10 March 1940, Bulgakov died from nephrotic syndrome (an inherited kidney disorder). His father had died of the same disease, and from his youth Bulgakov had guessed his future mortal diagnosis. On 11 March, a civil funeral was held in the building of the Union of Soviet Writers. Before the funeral, the Moscow sculptor Sergey Merkurov cast a death mask of his face. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
During his life, Bulgakov was best known for the plays he contributed to Konstantin Stanislavski's and Nemirovich-Danchenko's Moscow Art Theatre. Stalin was known to be fond of the play Days of the Turbins (Дни Турбиных, 1926), which was based on Bulgakov's novel The White Guard. His dramatization of Molière's life in The Cabal of Hypocrites (Кабала святош, 1936) is still performed by the Moscow Art Theatre. Even after his plays were banned from the theatres, Bulgakov wrote a comedy about Ivan the Terrible's visit into 1930s Moscow. His play Batum (Батум, 1939) about the early years of Stalin was prohibited by the premier himself. Bulgakov later reflected his experience of being a Soviet playwright in Theatrical Novel (Театральный роман, 1936, unfinished).
His prose remained unprinted from the late 1920s to 1961; from 1941 to 1954 the only Bulgakov plays that were staged were The Last Days and his adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls. In 1962, his Life of Monsieur de Molière was published; in 1963, Notes of a Young Doctor; in 1965, Theatrical Novel and a collection of his plays were published; in 1966, a collection of his prose including The White Guard; and in 1967 The Master and Margarita was published.
Bulgakov began writing novels with The White Guard (Белая гвардия) (1923, partly published in 1925, first full edition 1927–1929, Paris) – a novel about a life of a White Army officer's family in civil war Kiev. In the mid-1920s, he came to admire the works of Alexander Belyaev and H. G. Wells and wrote several stories and novellas with elements of science fiction, notably The Fatal Eggs (Роковые яйца) (1924) and Heart of a Dog (Собачье сердце) (1925). He intended to compile his stories of the mid-twenties (published mostly in medical journals) that were based on his work as a country doctor in 1916–1918 into a collection titled Notes of a Young Doctor (Записки юного врача), but the book came out only in 1963.
The Fatal Eggs tells of the events of a Professor Persikov, who, in experimentation with eggs, discovers a red ray that accelerates growth in living organisms. At the time, an illness passes through the chickens of Moscow, killing most of them, and to remedy the situation, the Soviet government puts the ray into use at a farm. Due to a mix-up in egg shipments, the Professor ends up with chicken eggs, while the government-run farm receives the shipment of ostrich, snake and crocodile eggs ordered by the Professor. The mistake is not discovered until the eggs produce giant monstrosities that wreak havoc in the suburbs of Moscow and kill most of the workers on the farm. The propaganda machine turns on Persikov, distorting his nature in the same way his "innocent" tampering created the monsters. This tale of a bungling government earned Bulgakov his label of counter-revolutionary.
Heart of a Dog features a professor who implants human testicles and a pituitary gland into a dog named Sharik (means "Little Balloon" or "Little Ball" – a popular Russian nickname for a male dog). The dog becomes more and more human as time passes, resulting in all manner of chaos. The tale can be read as a critical satire of liberal nihilism and the communist mentality. It contains a few bold hints to the communist leadership; e.g. the name of the drunkard donor of the human organ implants is Chugunkin which can be seen as a parody on the name of Stalin ("stal'" is steel). It was adapted as a comic opera called The Murder of Comrade Sharik by William Bergsma in 1973. In 1988, an award-winning film version Sobachye Serdtse was produced by Lenfilm, starring Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev, Roman Kartsev and Vladimir Tolokonnikov.
The novel The Master and Margarita is a critique of Soviet society and its literary establishment. The work is appreciated for its philosophical undertones and for its high artistic level, thanks to its picturesque descriptions (especially of old Jerusalem), lyrical fragments and style. It is a frame narrative involving two characteristically related time periods, or plot lines: a retelling in Bulgakov's interpretation of the New Testament and a description of contemporary Moscow.
The novel begins with Satan visiting Moscow in the 1930s, joining a conversation between a critic and a poet debating the most effective method of denying the existence of Jesus Christ. It develops into an all-embracing indictment of the corruption of communism and Soviet Russia. A story within the story portrays the interrogation of Jesus Christ by Pontius Pilate and the Crucifixion.
It became the best known novel by Bulgakov. He began writing it in 1928, but the novel was finally published by his widow only in 1966, twenty-six years after his death. The book contributed a number of sayings to the Russian language, for example, "Manuscripts don't burn" and "second-grade freshness". A destroyed manuscript of the Master is an important element of the plot. Bulgakov had to rewrite the novel from memory after he burned the draft manuscript in 1930, as he could not see a future as a writer in the Soviet Union at a time of widespread political repression.
The Mikhail Bulgakov Museum (Bulgakov House) in Kyiv has been converted to a literary museum with some rooms devoted to the writer, as well as some to his works. This was his family home, the model for the house of the Turbin family in his play The Days of the Turbins.
In Moscow, two museums honour the memory of Mikhail Bulgakov and The Master and Margarita. Both are situated in Bulgakov's old apartment building on Bolshaya Sadovaya street nr. 10, in which parts of The Master and Margarita are set. Since the 1980s, the building has become a gathering spot for Bulgakov's fans, as well as Moscow-based Satanist groups, and had various kinds of graffiti scrawled on the walls. The numerous paintings, quips, and drawings were completely whitewashed in 2003. Previously the best drawings were kept as the walls were repainted, so that several layers of different colored paints could be seen around the best drawings.
The Bulgakov House (Russian: Музей – театр "Булгаковский Дом") is situated at the ground floor. This museum has been established as a private initiative on 15 May 2004.
The Bulgakov House contains personal belongings, photos, and several exhibitions related to Bulgakov's life and his different works. Various poetic and literary events are often held, and excursions to Bulgakov's Moscow are organised, some of which are animated with living characters of The Master and Margarita. The Bulgakov House also runs the Theatre M.A. Bulgakov with 126 seats, and the Café 302-bis.
In the same building, in apartment number 50 on the fourth floor, is a second museum that keeps alive the memory of Bulgakov, the Museum M.A. Bulgakov (Russian: Музей М. А. Булгаков). This second museum is a government initiative, and was founded on 26 March 2007.
The Museum M.A. Bulgakov contains personal belongings, photos, and several exhibitions related to Bulgakov's life and his different works. Various poetic and literary events are often held.
After graduating from the Medical School in 1909, he spent the early days of his career as a venereologist, rather than pursuing his goal of being a pediatrician, as syphilis was highly prevalent during those times. It was during those early years that he described the symptoms and characteristics of syphilis affecting the bones. He described the abnormal and concomitant change of the outline of the crests of the shin-bones with a pathological worm-eaten like appearance and creation of abnormal osteophytes in the bones of those suffering from later stages of syphilis. This became known as "Bulgakov's Sign" and is commonly used in the former Soviet states, but is known as the "Bandy Legs Sign" in the west.