Mihail Bulgakov Biography and List of Works

Russian journalist, playwright, novelist, and short story writer, whose major work is the Gogolesque fantasy The Master and Margarita (1966-67), which describes the mass frenzy that ensues when the Devil visits Stalinist Moscow to see if he can do some good. The book is considered one of the major Russian novels of the 20th century. Bulgakov also employs 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')

Bulgakov was born in Kiev Ukraine the eldest son of a professor of divinity at the Kiev Theological Academy. He attended Kiev High School (1900-09) and later studied medicine at Kiev University (1909-16). From 1916 to 1918 he served as a doctor in front-line and district hospitals. These experiences he describes in notes of a young doctor, 'Zapiski yunogo vracha' (1925-26)

In 1918-19 Bulgakov worked as a doctor in Kiev, and witnessed both the German occupation and the occupation by the Red Army. In 1920 Bulgakov abandoned medicine in favour of a career as a writer. He organized in Vladikavkaz, Caucasus, a 'sub-department of the arts', wrote stories for newspapers and moved to Moscow 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) is an account of the turbulent years between 1914 and 1921, reflected in the lives of a White Guardist's family in the Ukraine. The novel emphasizes the moral demands upon the witness of evil, condemning passivity as cowardice.

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 popular with the authorities. The Heart of the Dog, a short novel written in 1925, an imaginative satire on Soviet life in the guise of science fiction, was deemed unpublishable. In the story 'Pokhozhdenia Chichikova', the protagonist of Gogol's Dead Souls, is dropped in the middle of Soviet Russia's New Economic Policy period of 1921-27. 'Diavoliada' (1925) suggests that the diabolic is at work in the ordinary world of men. In 1928 Bulgakov had three plays running in three Moscow's 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 received hostile reviews for its sympathetic portrayal of White officers. Paradoxically, The White Guard was one of Stalin's favourite plays.

By the 1930s Bulgakov's works were published rarely, or not at all. After writing a letter to the 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. During the late 1930s he was librettist and consultant at Bolshoi Theatre. However, Stalin's favour protected Bulgakov from arrests and executions, but his writing remained unpublished. In Black Snow, a Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov describes his love-hate relationship, and takes revenge on Stanislavsky for the failure of his play about Molière.

Bulgakov's most important work is The Master and Margarita, written in 1928-40. The novel is 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 required 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 in a censored form. The fuller text appeared in 1973 and the revised full text in 1989.

Bulgakov was married three times: to Tatiana Nikolaevna Lappa (1913), Liubov Evgenevna Belozerskaia (1924) and Elena Sergeevna (1932). Bulgakov was writing Black Snow, his theatre novel, when he died in Moskow on March 10, 1940. It was not until the 1980s before all Bulgakov's works could be published in Russia.

In the U.S.S.R. Bulgakov was an anomaly, the most "un-Soviet" writer, who was subjected to a number of humiliations but survived attacks from the officials, when others were imprisoned.The supernatural and the occult attracted him,and he uses sudden leaps into the fantastic, Mephistophelean mockery, and grotesque characters in circus-like situations. Bulgakov's language is vivid, dynamic, and flexible, capable of expressing the reality under communist rule in which he lived.

The Master and Margarita (1928-40) - Published in instalments 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 as an agent for good, and the character of Jesus, called Yeshua, is not very Biblical. The philosophical and religious themes 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. Much of 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.

For further reading: Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita' by Elena M. Mahlow (1974); The Master and Margarita by Lesley Milne (1977); Mikhail Bulgakov: Life and Interpretations by A. Colin Wright (1978); Bulgakov. Life and Work by Ellendea Proffer (1984); Mihail Bulgakov by Nadine Natov (1985); Between Two Worlds by Andrew Barratt (1987); Mikhail Bulgakov and His Times by V.G. Vozkvizhenskii (1990); Mihail Bulgakov. A Critical Biography by Lesley Milne (1990); The Gnostiv Novel of Mikhail Bulgakov by Gerorge Krugovoy (1991); Manuscripts Don't Burn by J.A.E. Curtis (1992); Mikhail Bulgakov - Khudozhnik by V.V. Novikov (1996); The Master and Margarita, ed. by Laura Weeks (1996); Entsiklopediia Bulgakovskaia ed. by Boris Sokolov (1996) - See also: Arkady Strugatski.

Books by Mihail Bulgakov