![]() A dramatization of Bulgakov's first novel, it focuses on the ordeal of a middle-class Kiev family-typical Chekhovian liberals, in the parlance of Soviet criticism-caught in the civil war and facing, beyond its physical horrors, the agonizing moral choices implicit in this kind of fratricidal butchery. In a recently published and deeply personal tribute to him, the Soviet novelist Viktor Nekrassov estimates that at least a million people saw The Days of the Turbins, Bulgakov's best-known play, in the course of its thirteen-year run, one of the spectators being Stalin, who, according to the theater's archives, attended no less than fifteen performances over the years. He represents the spirit and the fate of Chekhov in the age of Stalin.īulgakov's eclipse, like that of most writers suppressed along with him, has of course always been relative. Bulgakov started practicing medicine during World War I, began to write after the October Revolution, reached the crest of his fame in the 20's and died on the eve of World War II, an un-person to the extent of not even rating an obituary notice in the Soviet press. Chekhov's world was that of 19th-century Russia he died before the fall of Port Arthur. For their deeper kinship rests mainly on a skeptical humanism and compassionate irony which, though common to both, are inevitably shaped and scarred by their respective times. In 1966-7, thanks to the persistance of his widow, the novel made a first, incomplete, appearance in Moskva, and in 1973 appeared in full.Beyond these intriguing if surface parallels loom the essential points of contact touching upon their creative work, and here the evidence is more complex. In 1938, a year before contracting a fatal illness, he completed his prose masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. Stalin telephoned him personally and offered to arrange a job for him at the Moscow Arts Theatre instead. ![]() By 1930 Bulgakov had become so frustrated by the political atmosphere and the suppression of his works that he wrote to Stalin begging to be allowed to emigrate if he was not to be given the opportunity to make his living as a writer in the USSR. This was one of the many defeats he was to suffer at the hands of his censors. In 1925 he completed the satirical novella The Heart of a Dog, which remained unpublished in the Soviet Union until 1987. Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940) was born and educated in Kiev where he graduated as a doctor in 1916, but gave up the practice of medicine in 1920 to devote himself to literature. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky with an Introduction by Richard Pevear Read more Details Brimming with magic and incident, it is full of imaginary, historical, terrifying and wonderful characters, from witches, poets and Biblical tyrants to the beautiful, courageous Margarita, who will do anything to save the imprisoned writer she loves. Bulgakov's carnivalesque satire of Soviet life describes how the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow one Spring afternoon. Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, The Master and Margarita became an overnight literary phenomenon when it was finally published it, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere. ![]() 'Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest' Independent Mikhail Bulgakov's devilish salute to artistic freedom, now in a beautiful clothbound edition
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