Stalin had been a fan of Days of the Turbins, and by his order Bulgakov was reinstated into the Art Theater. He wrote an appeal directly to Joseph Stalin, the secretary general of the Communist Party and leader of the country. In frustration, he burned many of his manuscripts in 1930. Bulgakov found himself unable to publish because his ideologies did not conform to those of the Communists. In 1929, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers became the official government agency overseeing the political content of literary works. From 1925 to 1928, the author was affiliated with the Moscow Arts Theater, where he had an uneasy relationship with the theater's founder and director, Konstatin Stanislavsky, who is known today for developing the theatrical technique referred to as "Method acting." Despite the Communist reaction, Soviet Union audiences would applaud the play. The story features a family that suffers at the hands of the Communists during the revolution, a depiction that would earn Bulgakov the suspicion of the Communists, who by then controlled the government. His greatest success was the play Days of the Turbins, which was his adaptation for the stage of his own novel The White Guard. He had several books published and several plays produced. The following year, 1920, Bulgakov gave up medicine and moved to Moscow to write full time. On a train trip home from Northern Caucasus, where the army had sent him, he sat up all night writing his first short story, and when the train stopped he took the story to the local newspaper office, which promptly published it. The autobiographical stories in Bulgakov's collection A Country Doctor's Notebooks are based on his experiences in Smolensk.īulgakov returned to Kiev in 1918, but was drafted into the White Army to fight in Russia's civil war against the communist Red Army. It was 1916, and Russia was involved in the First World War. Vladimir's University, he went into the army, which sent him to a small town in the province of Smolensk. Bulgakov graduated with distinction from the University of Kiev, and after attaining his medical degree from St. His father was a professor at the Kiev Theological Seminary, an influence that appears in the novel through mentions of the history and philosophy of religious matters. He had been working on the book for twelve years, through eight versions, and he meant it to be his literary legacy.īulgakov was born in Kiev on May 3, 1891. In his final weeks, as he lay dying of nephrosclerosis, Mikhail Bulgakov continued to dictate changes for The Master and Margarita to his wife. Because the book derides government bureaucracy and corruption, the manuscript of The Master and Margarita was hidden for over twenty years, until the more lenient Khrushchev government allowed its publication. The holy life led by Christ in this book is more ordinary than the miraculous one told in the Scriptures. In contrast, he uses a realistic style in telling the story of Yeshua. Using the fantastic elements of the story, Bulgakov satirizes the greed and corruption of Stalin's Soviet Union, in which people's actions were controlled as well as their perceptions of reality. A third story, which is presented as a novel written by the Master, depicts the crucifixion of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, or Jesus Christ, by Pontius Pilate. Another story line features the Master, who has been languishing in an insane asylum, and his love, Margarita, who seeks Woland's help in being reunited with the Master. The main story, taking place in Russia of the 1930s, concerns a visit by the devil, referred to as Professor Woland, and four of his assistants during Holy Week they use black magic to play tricks on those who cross their paths. The book weaves together satire and realism, art and religion, history and contemporary social values. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is considered one of the best and most highly regarded novels to come out of Russia during the Soviet era.
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