Bulgakov's last years of life briefly. Biography. Education of Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov was born on May 3 (15), 1891 in Kyiv in the family of Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov, a teacher at the Theological Academy. Since 1901, the future writer received his primary education at the First Kyiv Gymnasium. In 1909 he entered the Kyiv University at the Faculty of Medicine. In his second year, in 1913, Mikhail Afanasyevich married Tatyana Lappa.

medical practice

After graduating from the university in 1916, Bulgakov got a job in one of the Kyiv hospitals. In the summer of 1916, he was sent to the village of Nikolskoye, Smolensk province. AT short biography Bulgakov, it is impossible not to mention that during this period the writer became addicted to morphine, but thanks to the efforts of his wife he was able to overcome the addiction.

During the civil war in 1919, Bulgakov was mobilized as a military doctor in the Ukrainian army. People's Republic, and then to the army of South Russia. In 1920, Mikhail Afanasyevich fell ill with typhus, so he could not leave the country with the Volunteer Army.

Moscow. The beginning of the creative path

In 1921 Bulgakov moved to Moscow. He is actively engaged in literary activities, begins to cooperate with many periodicals in Moscow - "Gudok", "Worker", etc., takes part in meetings of literary circles. In 1923, Mikhail Afanasyevich joined the All-Russian Union of Writers, which also included A. Volynsky, F. Sologub, Nikolai Gumilyov, Korney Chukovsky, Alexander Blok.

In 1924, Bulgakov divorced his first wife, and a year later, in 1925, he married Lyubov Belozerskaya.

Mature creativity

In 1924 - 1928, Bulgakov created his most famous works - The Devil, Heart of a Dog, Blizzard, Fatal Eggs, the novel The White Guard (1925), Zoya's Apartment, the play Days of the Turbins ( 1926), Crimson Island (1927), Run (1928). In 1926, the Moscow Art Theater premiered the play "Days of the Turbins" - the work was staged on the personal instructions of Stalin.

In 1929, Bulgakov visited Leningrad, where he met E. Zamyatin and Anna Akhmatova. Due to the sharp criticism of the revolution in his works (in particular, in the drama "Days of the Turbins"), Mikhail Afanasyevich was summoned several times for interrogations at the OGPU. Bulgakov ceased to be printed, his plays are forbidden to be staged in theaters.

Last years

In 1930, Mikhail Afanasyevich personally wrote a letter to I. Stalin with a request to grant him the right to leave the USSR or be allowed to earn a living. After that, the writer was able to get a job as an assistant director at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1934 Bulgakov was admitted to Soviet Union writers, whose chairmen at different times were Maxim Gorky, Alexei Tolstoy, A. Fadeev.

In 1931, Bulgakov parted with L. Belozerskaya, and in 1932 he married Elena Shilovskaya, whom he had known for several years.

Mikhail Bulgakov, whose biography was full of events of various nature, last years was very sick. The writer was diagnosed with hypertensive nephrosclerosis (kidney disease). March 10, 1940 Mikhail Afanasyevich died. Bulgakov was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita is the most important work of Mikhail Bulgakov, which he dedicated to his last wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, and worked on it for more than ten years until his death. The novel is the most discussed and important work in the biography and work of the writer. During the life of the writer, The Master and Margarita was not published due to the prohibition of censorship. The novel was first published in 1967.

Other biography options

• The Bulgakov family had seven children - three sons and four daughters. Mikhail Afanasyevich was the eldest child.
• Bulgakov's first work was the story "The Adventures of Svetlana", which Mikhail Afanasyevich wrote at the age of seven.
• Bulgakov from an early age had an exceptional memory and read a lot. One of the largest books that the future writer read at the age of eight was V. Hugo's novel Notre Dame Cathedral.
• Bulgakov's choice of the profession of a doctor was influenced by the fact that most of his relatives were engaged in medicine.
• The prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky from the story "Heart of a Dog" was Bulgakov's uncle, a gynecologist N. M. Pokrovsky.

Biography test

After reading a brief biography of Bulgakov, test yourself with a test.

Mikhail Bulgakov is a Russian writer and playwright, the author of many works that today are considered classics of Russian literature. Suffice it to name such novels as The Master and Margarita, The White Guard and the stories The Devil, Heart of a Dog, Notes on the Cuffs. Many books and plays by Bulgakov were filmed.

Childhood and youth

Michael was born in Kyiv in the family of professor-theologian Athanasius Ivanovich and his wife Varvara Mikhailovna, who was engaged in raising seven children. Misha was the eldest child and, if possible, helped his parents manage the household. Of the other Bulgakov children, Nikolai, who became a biologist, became famous, Ivan, who became famous in exile as a balalaika musician, and Varvara, who turned out to be the prototype of Elena Turbina in the novel The White Guard.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Mikhail Bulgakov enters the university at the Faculty of Medicine. His choice turned out to be connected solely with mercantile desire - both uncles of the future writer were doctors and made very good money. For a boy who grew up in a large family, this nuance was fundamental.

During the First World War, Mikhail Afanasyevich served in the frontline zone as a doctor, after which he healed in Vyazma, and later in Kyiv, as a venereologist. In the early 1920s, he moved to Moscow and began his literary career, first as a feuilletonist, later as a playwright and theater director at the Moscow Art Theater and the Central Theater of Working Youth.

Books

The first published book by Mikhail Bulgakov was the story "The Adventures of Chichikov", written in a satirical manner. It was followed by the partially autobiographical Notes on the Cuffs, the social drama The Diaboliad, and the writer's first major work, the novel The White Guard. Surprisingly, Bulgakov's first novel was criticized from all sides: local censorship called it anti-communist, and the foreign press spoke of it as being too loyal just to the Soviet regime.

Mikhail Afanasyevich told about the beginning of his medical activity in the collection of short stories “Notes of a Young Doctor”, which is still read with great interest today. The story "Morphine" stands out in particular. One of the author's most famous books, The Heart of a Dog, is also connected with medicine, although in reality it is a subtle satire on Bulgakov's modern reality. At the same time, the fantastic story "Fatal Eggs" was also written.

By 1930, the works of Mikhail Afanasyevich were no longer printed. For example, "Heart of a Dog" was first published only in 1987, "The Life of Monsieur de Molière" and "Theatrical Romance" - in 1965. And the most powerful and incredibly large-scale novel, The Master and Margarita, which Bulgakov wrote from 1929 until his death, was first published only at the end of the 60s, and then in an abridged form.

In March 1930, the writer, who lost ground under his feet, sent a letter to the government in which he asked to decide his fate - either to allow him to emigrate, or to give him the opportunity to work. As a result, he received a personal phone call and said that he would be allowed to stage performances. But the publication of Bulgakov's books never resumed during his lifetime.

Theatre

Back in 1925, Mikhail Bulgakov's plays, Zoya's Apartment, Days of the Turbins, based on the novel The White Guard, The Run, Crimson Island, were staged with great success on the stage of Moscow theaters. A year later, the ministry wanted to ban the production of The Days of the Turbins as an "anti-Soviet thing", but it was decided not to do this, since Stalin really liked the performance, who visited it 14 times.

Soon, Bulgakov's plays were nevertheless removed from the repertoire of all theaters in the country, and only in 1930, after the personal intervention of the Leader, Mikhail Afanasyevich was reinstated as a playwright and director.

He staged Gogol's "Dead Souls" and Dickens's "Pickwick Club", but his author's plays "", "Bliss", "Ivan Vasilyevich" and others during the life of the playwright were never published.

The only exception was the play "The Cabal of the Hypocrites", staged based on Bulgakov's play "" in 1936 after a five-year series of failures. The premiere was a huge success, but the troupe managed to give only 7 shows, after which the play was banned. After that, Mikhail Afanasyevich quits the theater and later earns a living as a translator.

Personal life

The first wife of the great writer was Tatyana Lappa. Their wedding was more than poor - the bride did not even have a veil, and then they lived very modestly. By the way, it was Tatyana who became the prototype for Anna Kirillovna from the story "Morphine".

In 1925, Bulgakov met Lyubov Belozerskaya, who came from an old family of princes. She was fond of literature and fully understood Mikhail Afanasyevich as a creator. The writer immediately divorces Lappa and marries Belozerskaya.

And in 1932 he met Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, nee Nuremberg. A man leaves his second wife and leads his third wife down the aisle. By the way, it is Elena who is depicted in his most famous novel in the image of Margarita. Bulgakov lived with his third wife until the end of his life, and it was she who made titanic efforts so that later the works of her beloved were published. Michael had no children with any of his wives.

There is a funny arithmetic-mystical situation with Bulgakov's spouses. Each of them had three official marriages, like himself. Moreover, for the first wife of Tatyana, Mikhail was the first spouse, for the second Lyubov - the second, and for the third Elena, respectively, the third. So Bulgakov's mysticism is present not only in books, but also in life.

Death

In 1939, the writer worked on the play "Batum" about Joseph Stalin, in the hope that such a work would definitely not be banned. The play was already being prepared for production when the order came to stop rehearsals. After that, Bulgakov's health began to deteriorate sharply - he began to lose his sight, and congenital kidney disease also made itself felt.

Mikhail Afanasyevich returned to the use of morphine to relieve pain symptoms. From the winter of 1940, the playwright stopped getting out of bed, and on March 10, the great writer died. Mikhail Bulgakov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery, and at the insistence of his wife, a stone was laid on his grave, which was previously installed on the grave.

Bibliography

• 1922 - "The Adventures of Chichikov"
• 1923 - "Notes of a young doctor"
• 1923 - Diaboliad
• 1923 - "Notes on cuffs"
• 1924 - "White Guard"
• 1924 - "Fatal Eggs"
• 1925 - "Heart of a Dog"
• 1925 - "Zoyka's apartment"
• 1928 - "Running"
• 1929 - "Secret Friend"
• 1929 - "The Cabal of the Saints"
• 1929-1940 - The Master and Margarita
• 1933 - "The Life of Monsieur de Molière"
• 1936 - "Ivan Vasilyevich"
• 1937 - "Theatrical novel"

In August 1919, after the capture of Kyiv by General Denikin, Mikhail Bulgakov was mobilized as a military doctor in the White Army and sent to the North Caucasus. Here appeared his first publication - a newspaper article called "Future Prospects".

Soon he parted with the profession of a doctor and devoted himself entirely to literary work. In 1919-1921, while working in the Vladikavkaz subdepartment of arts, Bulgakov composed five plays, three of which were staged at the local theater. Their texts have not been preserved, with the exception of one - "Sons of the Mullah".

In 1921 he moved to Moscow. He served as secretary of the Main Political and Educational Committee under the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR.

In 1921-1926, Bulgakov collaborated with the Moscow editorial office of the Berlin newspaper Nakanune, publishing essays about the life of Moscow in it, with the newspapers Gudok and Rabochiy, the magazines Medical Worker, Rossiya and Vozrozhdenie.

In the literary supplement to the newspaper Nakanune, Notes on the Cuffs (1922-1923), as well as the writer's stories Chichikov's Adventures, The Red Crown, and The Cup of Life (all from 1922) were published. In 1925-1927, the magazines "Medical Worker" and "Red Panorama" published stories from the cycle "Notes of a Young Doctor".

The general theme of Bulgakov's works is due to the author's attitude to the Soviet regime - the writer did not consider himself an enemy of it, but he assessed reality very critically, believing that his satirical denunciations benefited the country and people. Early examples include the stories "The Diaboliad. The Tale of How the Twins Killed the Clerk" (1924) and "Fatal Eggs" (1925), combined in the collection "The Diaboliad" (1925). The story "Heart of a Dog" written in 1925, which was in "samizdat" for more than 60 years, is distinguished by great skill and a sharper social orientation.

The boundary separating the early Bulgakov from the mature one was the novel The White Guard (1925). Bulgakov's departure from the emphatically negative portrayal of the White Guard environment brought accusations against the writer of trying to justify the White movement.

Later, on the basis of the novel and in collaboration with the Moscow Art Theater, Bulgakov wrote the play Days of the Turbins (1926). The famous Moscow Art Theater production of this play (the premiere took place on October 5, 1926) brought Bulgakov wide fame. "Days of the Turbins" enjoyed unprecedented success with the audience, but not with the critics, who launched a devastating campaign against the "apologetic" performance in relation to the white movement and against the "anti-Soviet" minded author of the play.

In the same period, Bulgakov's play "Zoyka's Apartment" (1926), which was banned after the 200th performance, was staged at Yevgeny Vakhtangov's Studio Theatre. The play "Running" (1928) was banned after the first rehearsals at the Moscow Art Theater.

The play "Crimson Island" (1927), staged at the Moscow Chamber Theater, was banned after the 50th performance.

In early 1930, his play The Cabal of the Saints (1929) was banned and did not reach rehearsals in the theater.

Bulgakov's plays were removed from the theater repertoire, his works were not published. In this situation, the writer was forced to turn to the highest authorities and wrote a "Letter to the Government", asking either to provide him with a job and, consequently, a livelihood, or to let him go abroad. The letter was followed phone call Joseph Stalin to Bulgakov (April 18, 1930). Soon Bulgakov got a job as a director of the Moscow Art Theater and thus solved the problem of physical survival. In March 1931, he was accepted into the cast of the Moscow Art Theater.

While working at the Moscow Art Theater, he wrote a staging of "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol.

In February 1932, the "Days of the Turbins" at the Moscow Art Theater were resumed.

In the 1930s, one of the main topics in Bulgakov's work was the theme of the relationship between the artist and the authorities, realized by him on the material of various historical eras: the play "Molière", the biographical story "The Life of Monsieur de Molière", the play " Last days", the novel "Master and Margarita".

In 1936, due to disagreements with the management during the rehearsal of Moliere, Bulgakov was forced to break with the Moscow Art Theater and go to work at the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR as a librettist.

In recent years, Bulgakov continued to work actively, creating the libretto of the operas The Black Sea (1937, composer Sergei Pototsky), Minin and Pozharsky (1937, composer Boris Asafiev), Friendship (1937-1938, composer Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy; remained unfinished), "Rachel" (1939, composer Isaak Dunaevsky), etc.

An attempt to renew cooperation with the Moscow Art Theater by staging the play "Batum" about the young Stalin (1939), created with the active interest of the theater for the 60th anniversary of the leader, ended in failure. The play was banned from being staged and was interpreted by the political leaders as the writer's desire to improve relations with the authorities.

In 1929-1940, Bulgakov's multifaceted philosophical-fiction novel "The Master and Margarita" was created - Bulgakov's last work.

Doctors discovered the writer had hypertensive nephrosclerosis, an incurable kidney disease. he was seriously ill, almost blind, and his wife made changes to the manuscript from dictation. February 13, 1940 was the last day of work on the novel.

Mikhail Bulgakov died in Moscow. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

During his lifetime, his plays "Adam and Eve", "Bliss", "Ivan Vasilyevich" did not see the light, the last of them was filmed by director Leonid Gaidai in the comedy "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession" (1973). Also, after the death of the writer, the "Theatrical Novel" was published, which was based on the "Notes of the Dead".

The philosophical-fiction novel "The Master and Margarita" before publication was known only to a narrow circle of people close to the author, the uncopied manuscript was miraculously preserved. The novel was first published in abbreviated form in 1966 in the Moscow magazine. The full text in Bulgakov's last edition was published in Russian in 1989.

The novel has become one of the artistic achievements of Russian and world literature of the 20th century and one of the most popular and books read in the homeland of the writer, was repeatedly filmed and staged on the theater stage.

In the 1980s, Bulgakov became one of the most published authors in the USSR. His works were included in the Collected Works in five volumes (1989-1990).

On March 26, 2007 in Moscow, in an apartment on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, building 10, where the writer lived in 1921-1924, the government of the capital established the first M.A. Museum in Russia. Bulgakov.

Mikhail Bulgakov was married three times. The writer married his first wife Tatyana Lappa (1892-1982) in 1913. In 1925, he officially married Lyubov Belozerskaya (1895-1987), who had previously been married to journalist Ilya Vasilevsky. In 1932, the writer married Elena Shilovskaya (née Nuremberg, after Neelov's first husband), the wife of Lieutenant General Yevgeny Shilovsky, whom he met in 1929. From September 1, 1933, Elena Bulgakova (1893-1970) kept a diary, which became one of the important sources of Mikhail Bulgakov's biography. She preserved the extensive archive of the writer, which she transferred to the State Library of the USSR named after V.I. Lenin (now the Russian State Library), as well as the Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Pushkin House). Bulgakova managed to achieve the publication of Theatrical Novel and The Master and Margarita, the reprinting of The White Guard in full, and the publication of most of the plays.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov is a Russian writer.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born on May 15 (May 3 according to the old style), 1891, in Kyiv, in the family of Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov, a professor at the Department of Western Religions of the Kyiv Theological Academy. The family was large (Mikhail is the eldest son, he had four more sisters and two brothers) and friendly. Later, M. Bulgakov will remember more than once about his “carefree” youth in a beautiful city on the steep slopes of the Dnieper, about the comfort of a noisy and warm native nest on Andreevsky Spusk, and the bright prospects for a future free and wonderful life.

The role of the family also played an indisputable influence on the future writer: the firm hand of Varvara Mikhailovna’s mother, who was not inclined to doubt about what is good and what is evil (idleness, despondency, selfishness), the father’s education and industriousness (“My love is green a lamp and books in my office,” Mikhail Bulgakov would later write, recalling his father, who stayed up late at work). The unconditional authority of knowledge and contempt for ignorance, which is not aware of this, reigns in the family.

When Mikhail was 16 years old, his father died of kidney disease. Nevertheless, the future is not canceled yet, Bulgakov becomes a student Faculty of Medicine Kyiv University. “The profession of a doctor seemed brilliant to me,” he would later say, explaining his choice. Possible arguments in favor of medicine: independence of future activity (private practice), interest in the “human device”, as well as the opportunity to help him. Next - the first marriage, too early for that time. Mikhail, a sophomore, against the will of his mother, marries the young Tatyana Lappa, who has just graduated from high school.

Young doctor Mikhail Bulgakov

Bulgakov's studies at the university were interrupted ahead of schedule. There was a world war, in the spring of 1916, Mikhail was released from the university as a “warrior of the second militia” (the diploma was received later) and voluntarily went to work in one of the Kyiv hospitals. Wounded, suffering people became his medical baptism. “Will anyone pay for the blood? No. Nobody,” he wrote a few years later on the pages of the White Guard. In the autumn of 1916, Dr. Bulgakov received his first appointment - to a small zemstvo hospital in the Smolensk province.

The choice associated with the constant tension of the moral field, against the backdrop of the breakdown of the routine course of life, extreme everyday life, shaped the future writer. It is characterized by the desire for positive, effective knowledge - the seriousness of reflection on the atheistic worldview of the "naturalist", on the one hand, and faith in a higher principle, on the other. Another important thing is that medical practice left no room for deconstructive mindsets. Perhaps that is why Bulgakov was not touched by the modernist trends of the beginning of the century.

The daily surgical practice of a recent student who worked in military field hospitals, then - the invaluable experience of a rural doctor who was forced to cope with numerous and unexpected diseases alone, saving human lives. The need for acceptance independent decisions, a responsibility. Yes, and an infrequent gift of a brilliant diagnostician. In the future, Mikhail Afanasyevich also showed himself as a social diagnostician. It is obvious how perceptive the writer turned out to be in a disappointing forecast of the development of social processes in the country.

At the turning point

While yesterday's student was growing up, turning into a determined and experienced zemstvo doctor, events began in Russia that determined her fate for many decades to come. Abdication of the tsar, February days, finally - the October coup of 1917. “The present is such that I try to live without noticing it ... Recently, on a trip to Moscow and Saratov, I had to see everything with my own eyes, and I would not want to see it anymore. I saw how gray crowds with whooping and vile swearing smash windows in trains, I saw how people were beaten. I saw destroyed and burned-out houses in Moscow... stupid and brutal faces... I saw crowds that besieged the entrances of seized and locked banks, hungry tails at the shops... I saw newspaper sheets where they write, in essence, about one thing: about blood that pours in the south, and in the west, and in the east, and about prisons. I saw everything with my own eyes, and finally understood what happened ”(from a letter from Mikhail Bulgakov on December 31, 1917 to his sister Nadezhda).

In March 1918, Bulgakov returned to Kyiv. Waves of White Guards, Petliurists, Germans, Bolsheviks, nationalists of Hetman Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky, and again Bolsheviks are rolling through the city. Each government is mobilizing, and doctors are needed by everyone who holds a gun in their hands. Bulgakov was also mobilized. As a military doctor, together with the retreating Volunteer Army, he goes to the North Caucasus. The fact that Bulgakov remained in Russia was only the result of a combination of circumstances, and not a free choice: he lay in a typhoid fever when the white army and its sympathizers left the country. Later, T. N. Lappa testified that Bulgakov blamed her more than once for not taking him, the patient, out of Russia.

Upon recovery, Mikhail Bulgakov left medicine and began to collaborate with newspapers. One of his first publicistic articles is called "Future Prospects". The author, who does not hide his commitment to the white idea, prophesies that Russia will lag behind the West for a long time. The first dramatic experiments appeared in Vladikavkaz: the one-act humoresque "Self-Defense", "Paris Communards", the drama "The Turbine Brothers" and "The Mullah's Sons". All of them walked on the stage of the Vladikavkaz theatre. But the author treated them as steps forced by circumstances. The author will evaluate the “Sons of the Mullah” as follows: “they were written by three of us: me, the attorney’s assistant and a hunger striker. In 1921, at its beginning...”. He will bitterly tell his brother about a more thoughtful thing (“The Turbine Brothers”): “When I was called after the second act, I left with a vague feeling ... I vaguely looked at the made-up faces of the actors, at the thundering hall. And he thought: “But this is my dream come true ... but how ugly: instead of the Moscow stage, the provincial stage, instead of the drama about Alyosha Turbin, which I cherished, hastily done, immature thing ... ".

Bulgakov's move to Moscow

Perhaps the change of profession was also dictated by circumstances: a recent military doctor of the White Army lived in a city where the power of the Bolsheviks was established. Soon Bulgakov moved to Moscow, where writers flocked from all over the country. Numerous literary circles were created in the capital, private publishing houses were opened, bookstores worked. In the hungry and cold Moscow of 1921, Bulgakov persistently mastered a new profession: he wrote in Gudok, collaborated with the Berlin editorial office of Nakanune, attended creative circles, and made literary acquaintances. He regards forced work in the newspaper as a hateful and senseless activity. But you also have to earn a living. “... I lived a triple life,” wrote Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov in the unfinished story “To a Secret Friend” (1929), which was born as a letter to the writer’s third wife, Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya. In the essays published in Nakanun, Bulgakov sneered at official slogans and newspaper stamps. “I am an ordinary person, born to crawl,” the narrator certified himself in the feuilleton “Forty Forties”. And in the essay "Red Stone Moscow" he described a cockade on the band of a uniform cap: "Not a hammer and a shovel, not a sickle and a rake, in any case not a sickle and a hammer."

In The Eve, The Extraordinary Adventures of a Doctor (1922) and Notes on the Cuffs (1922-1923) were published. In The Doctor's Extraordinary Adventures, the descriptions of the successive authorities and armies are given by the author with an undisguised feeling of hostility. It comes to seditious thoughts about the reasonableness of desertion. The hero of Adventures does not accept either the white idea or the red idea. From work to work, the courage of the writer, who dared to condemn both warring camps, grew stronger.

Mikhail Bulgakov mastered new material, requiring other forms of display: Moscow in the early 1920s, character traits new way of life, previously unknown types. At the cost of mobilizing mental and physical strength (in Moscow there was a housing crisis, and the writer lived in a room in a communal apartment, which he would later describe in the stories “Moonshine Life”, with dirt, drunken brawls and the impossibility of solitude), Bulgakov published two satirical stories: “The Devil” ( 1924) and Fatal Eggs (1925), wrote Heart of a Dog (1925). The story about the pain points of the modern day he pours into fantastic forms.

"Fatal Eggs"

In the Soviet Republic there was a chicken pestilence ("Fatal Eggs"). The government needs to restore the “chicken stock”, and it turns to Professor Persikov, who discovered the “red ray”, under the influence of which living beings not only instantly reach colossal sizes, but also become unusually aggressive in the struggle for existence. Allusions to what is happening in Soviet Russia are extremely transparent and fearless. The ignorant director of the state chicken farm Rokk, who mistakenly receives snake and ostrich eggs sent from abroad for professorial experiments, uses a "red beam" to bring out hordes of giant animals from them. Giants go to Moscow. The capital is saved only by a happy accident: unprecedented frosts fall on it. At the end of the story, the brutal crowds smash the professor's laboratory, and his discovery perishes with him. The accuracy of the social diagnosis proposed by Bulgakov was duly appreciated by the wary critics, who wrote that it was quite clear from the story that "the Bolsheviks are completely unsuitable for creative peaceful work, although they are able to organize military victories well and protect their iron order."

"Dog's heart"

The next thing, "Heart of a Dog" (1925), was no longer allowed to print and was printed in Russia only during the years of perestroika, in 1987. Her phrases and formulas immediately entered the oral speech intelligent person: “devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads”, “everyone knows how to occupy seven rooms”, later “sturgeon of the second freshness” will be added to them, and “what you don’t miss, you don’t have anything”, “it’s easy to tell the truth and Nice".

Main character story, Professor Preobrazhensky, conducting a medical experiment, transplants the organ of the “proletarian” Chugunkin, who died in a drunken brawl, to a stray dog. Unexpectedly for the surgeon, the dog turns into a man, and this man is an exact repetition of the deceased lumpen. If Sharik, as the professor called the dog, is kind, intelligent and grateful to the new owner for the shelter, then miraculously revived Chugunkin is militantly ignorant, vulgar and impudent. Convinced of this, the professor carries out the reverse operation, and the good-natured dog reappears in his cozy apartment.

The professor's risky surgical experiment is a nod to the "daring social experiment" taking place in Russia. Bulgakov is not inclined to see the "people" as an ideal being. He is convinced that only the difficult and long path of enlightening the masses, the path of evolution, not revolution, can lead to a real improvement in the life of the country.

"White Guard"

Does not let go of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov and experienced during the Civil War. In 1925, the first part of The White Guard appeared in the Rossiya magazine. During these months, the writer has a new novel, and, leaving Tatyana Lappa, he dedicates the "White Guard" to Lyubov Evgenievna Beloselskaya-Belozerskaya, who became his second wife. Bulgakov chooses the path of writing in radically changed conditions, when many are sure that the traditions of the great Russian literature of the 19th century are hopelessly outdated, no one is interested anymore.

Bulgakov writes a demonstratively "old-fashioned" thing: "The White Guard" opens with an epigraph from Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter", it openly continues the traditions of Tolstoy's family novel. In The White Guard, as in War and Peace, family thought is closely connected with the history of Russia. In the center of the novel is a broken family that lived in Kyiv in the “house of the white general”, on Andreevsky Spusk during the fratricidal war in Ukraine. The main characters of the novel were the doctor Alexei Turbin, his brother Nikolka and sister, the charming red-haired Elena, and their "tender, old" childhood friends. Already in the first phrase that opens the "White Guard": "Great was the year and terrible year after the Nativity of Christ 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution" - Bulgakov introduces two points of reference, two systems of values, as if "looking back" at each other. This enables the writer to more accurately assess the meaning of what is happening, to see contemporary events through the eyes of an impartial historian.

Back in 1923, on the pages of a diary bearing the eloquent title “Under the Heel,” Mikhail Bulgakov wrote: “It cannot be that the voice that disturbs me now was not prophetic. Can't be. I can't be anything else, I can be one - a writer." Bulgakov's powerful entry into literature, about which Maximilian Alexandrovich Voloshin (real name Kiriyenko-Voloshin) said in a private letter that it "can only be compared with the debuts of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy", will pass by the general reading public. And although the birth of a great Russian writer took place, few people noticed him.

"Days of the Turbins"

Soon the magazine "Russia" was closed, the novel remained unpublished. However, his characters continued to disturb the consciousness of the writer. Bulgakov begins composing a play based on The White Guard. This process is wonderfully described on the pages of the later Notes of a Dead Man (1936-1937) in the lines about the "magic box" that opens in the evenings in the writer's imagination.

In the best theaters of those years, there was an acute repertoire crisis. The Moscow Art Theater in search of new drama turns to prose writers, including Bulgakov. Bulgakov's play "Days of the Turbins", written in the footsteps of the "White Guard", becomes "the second" Seagull "of the Art Theater, and the People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky called it "the first political play of the Soviet theater." The premiere, which took place on October 5, 1926, made Bulgakov famous. Every performance is a sell-out. The story told by the playwright shocked the audience with its life truth of disastrous events that many of them had recently experienced. In the wake of the resounding success of the performance, the magazine "Medical Worker" published a series of stories, which would later be called "Notes of a Young Doctor" (1925-1926). These printed lines were the last that Bulgakov was destined to see during his lifetime. Another consequence of the Moscow Art Theater premiere was the flood of magazine and newspaper articles that finally noticed Bulgakov the prose writer. But official criticism branded the writer's work as reactionary, asserting bourgeois values.

The images of white officers, which Bulgakov fearlessly brought to the stage of the best theater in the country, against the backdrop of a new audience, a new way of life, acquired the expanding meaning of the intelligentsia, whether military or civilian. The play included Chekhov's motifs, the Moscow Art Theater "Turbines" correlated with the "Three Sisters" and fell out of the actual context of the poster, propaganda dramaturgy of the 1920s. The performance, met with hostility by official criticism, was soon removed, but in 1932 it was restored by the will of Stalin, who personally watched it more than a dozen times (until now, his attitude towards Bulgakov himself remains a mystery).

Drama by Mikhail Bulgakov

From that time until the end of his life, M.A. Bulgakov no longer abandoned dramaturgy. In addition to a dozen plays, the experience of intratheatrical life will lead to the birth of the unfinished novel Notes of a Dead Man (it was first published in the USSR in 1965 under the title Theatrical Novel). The protagonist, aspiring writer Maksudov, who works for the Parokhodstvo newspaper and composes a play based on his own novel, is undisguisedly biographical. The play is written by Maksudov for the Independent Theater, which is directed by two legendary figures - Ivan Vasilievich and Aristarkh Platonovich. The reference to the Art Theater and two of the largest Russian theater directors of the 20th century, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, is easily recognizable. The novel is filled with love and admiration for the theater people, but it also satirically describes the complex characters of those who create theatrical magic, and the intra-theatrical ups and downs of the country's leading theater.

"Zoyka's apartment"

Almost simultaneously with The Days of the Turbins, Bulgakov wrote the tragic farce Zoya's Apartment (1926). The plot of the play was very relevant for those years. Enterprising Zoika Peltz is trying to save money to buy foreign visas for herself and her lover by organizing an underground brothel in her own apartment. The play captures a sharp breakdown of social reality, expressed in a change in linguistic forms. Count Obolyaninov refuses to understand what a “former count” is: “Where have I gone? Here I am, standing in front of you." With demonstrative innocence, he does not accept not so much "new words" as new values. The brilliant chameleonism of the charming rogue Ametistov, the administrator in Zoya's "studio", is a striking contrast to the count who does not know how to apply himself to circumstances. In the counterpoint of the two central images, Ametistov and Count Obolyaninov, the deep theme of the play emerges: the theme of historical memory, the impossibility of forgetting the past.

"Crimson Island"

Zoya's apartment was followed by the dramatic pamphlet Crimson Island (1927), directed against censorship. The play was staged by the Russian director, People's Artist of Russia Alexander Yakovlevich Tairov on the stage of the Chamber Theater, but it did not last long. The plot of the "Crimson Island" with the uprising of the natives and the "world revolution" in the final, is nakedly parodic. Bulgakov's pamphlet reproduced typical and characteristic situations: a play about the uprising of the natives is being rehearsed by an opportunistic director, who readily remakes the finale to please the all-powerful Savva Lukich (who in the performance was made to look like the famous censor V. Blum).

It would seem that luck accompanied Bulgakov: it was impossible to get to the "Days of the Turbins" at the Moscow Art Theater, "Zoyka's Apartment" fed the staff of the Vakhtangov Theater, and only for this reason she was forced to endure censorship; the foreign press admiringly wrote about the courage of the Crimson Island. In the theatrical season of 1927-1928, Bulgakov was the most fashionable and successful playwright. But Bulgakov's time as a playwright ends just as abruptly as that of a prose writer. Bulgakov's next play "Running" (1928) did not appear on the stage.

If "Zoyka's apartment" told about those who remained in Russia, then "Running" - about the fate of those who left it. The White General Khludov (he had a real prototype - General Ya. A. Slashchov), in the name of a lofty goal - the salvation of Russia - went to executions in the rear and therefore lost his mind; dashing General Charnota, with equal readiness to attack both at the front and at the card table; soft and lyrical, like Pierrot, university assistant professor Golubkov, who saves his beloved woman Serafima, ex-wife former minister - all of them are outlined by the playwright with psychological depth.

Faithful to the precepts of classical Russian literature of the 19th century, Bulgakov does not caricature his heroes. Despite the fact that the characters were not at all drawn as ideal people, they aroused sympathy, and in fact there were many recent White Guards among them. None of her heroes rushed back to their homeland in order to “take part in building socialism in the USSR,” as Stalin advised to finish the play. The question of staging "Running" was considered four times at meetings of the Politburo. The authorities did not allow the second appearance of white officers on the stage. Since the writer did not listen to the advice of the leader, the play was first staged only in 1957 and not on the stage in the capital, but in Stalingrad.

1929 - the year of Stalin's "great turning point", broke the fate of not only the peasantry, but also any "individual farmers" still remaining in the country. At this time, all Bulgakov's plays were removed from the stage. In desperation, Bulgakov sent a letter to the government on March 28, 1930, which spoke of "deep skepticism about the revolutionary process" taking place in backward Russia, and admits that "he did not even attempt to compose a communist play." At the end of the letter, filled with genuine civic courage, there was an urgent request: either to be released abroad, or to be given a job, otherwise "poverty, street and death."

His new play was called The Cabal of the Saints (1929). In the center of her conflict: the artist and power. The play about Molière and his unfaithful patron Louis XIV was lived by the writer from the inside. The king, who highly appreciates the art of Moliere, nevertheless deprives the patronage of the playwright, who dared to ridicule the members of the religious organization"Society of the Holy Gifts". The play (under the name "Molière") was rehearsed by the Moscow Art Theater for six years and at the beginning of 1936 went on stage to be removed from the repertoire after seven performances. Bulgakov did not see any more of his plays on the stage of the theater.

The result of the appeal to the government was the transformation of a free writer into an employee of the Moscow Art Theater (the writer was not released abroad, despite the fact that another dissident writer Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was allowed to leave at the same time). Bulgakov was admitted to the Moscow Art Theater as an assistant director, assisted in the production of his own staging of Gogol's "Dead Souls". At night, he composes a “novel about the devil” (this is how Mikhail Bulgakov originally saw the novel about “The Master and Margarita”). At the same time, an inscription appeared on the margins of the manuscript: "Finish before you die." The novel was already recognized by the author as the main work of his life.

In 1931, Bulgakov completed the utopia "Adam and Eve", a play about a future gas war, as a result of which only a handful of people survived in the lost Leningrad: the fanatical communist Adam Krasovsky, whose wife, Eva, goes to the scientist Efrosimov, who managed to create an apparatus , exposure to which saves from death; novelist-opportunist Donut-Nepobeda, creator of the novel "Red Greens"; the charming hooligan of the Marquises, devouring books like Gogol's Petrushka. Biblical reminiscences, Efrosimov's risky assertion that all theories are worth one another, as well as the pacifist motives of the play, led to the fact that "Adam and Eve" was also not staged during the writer's lifetime.

In the mid-1930s, Bulgakov also wrote the drama The Last Days (1935), a play about Pushkin without Pushkin, the comedy Ivan Vasilyevich (1934-1936) about a formidable tsar and a fool house manager, due to an error in the operation of the time machine changed centuries; utopia "Bliss" (1934) about a sterile and sinister future with iron-clad desires of people; finally, a staging of Cervantes' Don Quixote (1938), which, under the pen of Bulgakov, turned into an independent play.

Mikhail Bulgakov chose the most difficult path: the path of a person who firmly outlines the boundaries of his own, individual being, aspirations, plans and does not intend to dutifully follow the rules and canons imposed from outside. In the 1930s, Bulgakov's dramaturgy was just as unacceptable to censorship as his prose was before. In totalitarian Russia, the themes and plots of a playwright, his thoughts and his characters are impossible. “Over the past seven years, I have done 16 things, and they all died, except for one, and that was Gogol’s staging! It would be naive to think that the 17th or 18th will go, ”Bulgakov writes on October 5, 1937 to Vikenty Vikentievich Veresaev.

"The Master and Margarita"

But “there is no such writer that he would shut up. If he was silent, then he was not real, ”these are the words of Bulgakov himself (from a letter to Stalin on May 30, 1931). And the real writer Mikhail Bulgakov continues to work. The crown of his career was the novel "The Master and Margarita", which brought the writer posthumous worldwide fame.

The novel was originally conceived as an apocryphal "gospel of the devil", and future title characters were absent in the first editions of the text. Over the years, the original idea became more complicated, transformed, incorporating the fate of the writer himself. Later, a woman entered the novel, who became his third wife - Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya (their acquaintance took place in 1929, the marriage was formalized in the fall of 1932). The lonely writer (Master) and his faithful friend (Margarita) will become no less important than the central characters in the world history of mankind.

The story of Satan's stay in Moscow in the 1930s echoes the legend of the appearance of Jesus, which took place two millennia ago. Just as they once did not recognize God, Muscovites do not recognize the devil either, although Woland does not hide his well-known signs. Moreover, seemingly enlightened heroes meet Woland: the writer, editor of the anti-religious magazine Berlioz and the poet, author of the poem about Christ Ivan Bezrodny.

Events took place in front of many people and yet remained not understood. And only the Master in the novel he created is given to restore the meaningfulness and unity of the course of history. With the creative gift of getting used to, the Master "guesses" the truth in the past. The fidelity of penetration into historical reality, witnessed by Woland, thus confirms the fidelity, the adequacy of the description by the Master and the present. Following Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin", Bulgakov's novel can be called, by the well-known definition, an encyclopedia of Soviet life. Life and customs new Russia, human types and characteristic actions, clothes and food, ways of communication and occupation of people - all this is deployed before the reader with deadly irony and at the same time piercing lyricism in the panorama of several May days.

Mikhail Bulgakov constructs The Master and Margarita as a "novel within a novel". Its action takes place in two times: in Moscow in the 1930s, where Satan appears to arrange a traditional full moon spring ball, and in the ancient city of Yershalaim, in which the trial of the Roman procurator Pilate over the "wandering philosopher" Yeshua takes place. The modern and historical author of the novel about Pontius Pilate, the Master, connects both plots.

In the years when the nationwide point of view on what was happening was affirmed as "the only true one", Bulgakov spoke with an emphatically subjective view of the events of world history, opposing the members of the "writing team" (MASSOLIT) to a lonely creator. It is no coincidence that the cast “ancient chapters” of the novel, telling the story of the death of Yeshua, are introduced by the writer as a truth revealed to an individual, as a personal comprehension of the Master.

The novel showed a deep interest characteristic of the writer in matters of faith, religious or atheistic worldview. Connected by origin with a family of clergymen, although in its “scientific”, bookish version (Mikhail’s father is not a “father”, but a learned clergyman), throughout his life Bulgakov seriously reflected on the problem of attitude to religion, which in the thirties became closed to public discussion. In The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov brings to the fore the creative personality in the tragic 20th century, asserting, following Pushkin, the self-reliance of man, his historical responsibility.

Bulgakov the artist

For the development of the reader own attitude all the artistic features of Bulgakov's work are directed towards what is happening. Almost every thing of the writer begins with a riddle, which is designed to destroy the former clarity. So, in The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov deliberately gives the characters non-traditional names: Satan - Woland, Jerusalem - Yershalaim, he calls the eternal enemy of the devil not Jesus, but Yeshua Ha-Nozri. The reader must independently, without relying on the well-known, penetrate into the essence of what is happening and, as it were, re-experience in the minds of the central episodes of the world history of mankind: the trial of Pilate, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In Bulgakov's works, the time of the present, the momentary, is necessarily correlated with the time of the "big" history of mankind, the "blue corridor of millennia". In The Master and Margarita, the device is deployed throughout the entire space of the text. Thus, the current momentary values ​​of the Soviet era are being questioned, revealing their obvious transience and dubiousness.

Mikhail Bulgakov is characterized by another feature: his hero, whether in prose or in drama, the author returns to the origins of fate. And Moliere still does not know the scale of his genius (“The Cabal of the Holy Ones”), and Pushkin’s poetry (“The Last Days”) is considered to be weaker than Benedict’s, and even Yeshua wanders, fearing pain, does not feel omnipotent and immortal. The judgment of history has not yet been completed. Time unfolds, bringing with it opportunities for change. Probably, it was this feature of Bulgakov's poetics that made it impossible to stage Batum (1939), written as a drama not about an all-powerful ruler, but about one of many whose fate has not yet taken its final shape. Finally, in Bulgakov's works there are only two variants of endings: either the thing ends with the death of the protagonist, or the ending remains open. The writer offers a model of the world in which there are countless possibilities. And the right to choose the act remains with the actor. Thus, the author helps the reader to feel himself the creator of his own destiny. And the life of the country is made up of many individual destinies. The idea of ​​a free and historically responsible person, "sculpting" the present and the future in his own image and likeness, proposed by the writer Bulgakov, is a precious testament to his entire creative life.

"Batum"

"Batum" was the last play by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (originally it was called "The Shepherd"). Theaters were preparing for the 60th anniversary of Stalin. Taking into account the months required to pass a particularly important thing through censorship, as well as for rehearsals, the search for authors for the anniversary began as early as 1937. After urgent requests from the directorate of the Moscow Art Theater, Bulgakov began to work on the play about the leader. Refusing a flattering order was dangerous. But Bulgakov also takes an unconventional path here: he does not write about the omnipotent leader, as the authors of other commemorative works, but talks about Dzhugashvili's youth, starting the play with his expulsion from the seminary. Then he leads the hero through humiliation, prison and exile, that is, he turns the dictator into an ordinary dramatic character, treats the leader's biography as material subject to free creative implementation. After reviewing the play, Stalin banned its production.

A few weeks after the news of the ban on Batum, in the autumn of 1939, Bulgakov developed sudden blindness: a symptom of the same kidney disease from which his father died. The will of the terminally ill writer only postpones the death that occurred six months later. Almost everything created by the writer was waiting in the wings for more than a quarter of a century on the desktop: the novel "The Master and Margarita", the novels "Heart of a Dog" and "The Life of Monsieur de Molière" (1933), as well as those never published during the life of the writer 16 plays. After the publication of the “sunset novel”, Bulgakov will be among the artists who determined the face of the 20th century with their work. Thus, Woland's prophecy addressed to the Master will come true: "Your novel will bring you more surprises."

Since February 1940, friends and relatives were constantly on duty at the bedside of M. Bulgakov. On March 10, 1940, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died. On March 11, a civil memorial service was held in the building of the Union of Soviet Writers. Before the memorial service, the Moscow sculptor S. D. Merkurov removed the death mask from the face of M. Bulgakov.

M. Bulgakov is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. On his grave, at the request of his wife E. S. Bulgakova, a stone was installed, nicknamed "calvary", which previously lay on the grave of N. V. Gogol.

In 1966, the magazine Moskva for the first time began to publish the novel The Master and Margarita with cuts. This happened thanks to the titanic efforts of the widow of the writer E. S. Bulgakova and the effective support of Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov. And since then, the triumphal procession of the novel began. In 1973, the first complete edition of the novel appeared in the writer's homeland; in the mid-1980s, the novel saw the light of day abroad, where it was released by the American publishing house Ardis. And only in the 1980s, the works of the outstanding Russian writer finally began to appear in Russia one after another.

Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich (1891-1940), writer, playwright.

Born May 15, 1891 in Kyiv in a large and friendly family of a professor, teacher of the Kyiv Theological Academy. After graduating from high school, at the age of 16, Bulgakov entered the university at the Faculty of Medicine.

In the spring of 1916, he was released from the university as a "militia warrior of the second category" and went to work in one of the Kyiv hospitals. In the summer of the same year, the future writer received his first appointment and in the autumn he arrived at a small zemstvo hospital in the Smolensk province, in the village of Nikolskoye. Here he began to write the book "Notes of a Young Doctor" - about a remote Russian province, where powders for malaria, prescribed for a week, are swallowed immediately, give birth under a bush, and mustard plasters are put on top of a sheepskin coat ... While yesterday's student turned into an experienced and determined zemstvo doctor, in events began in the Russian capital that determined the fate of the country for many decades. “The present is such that I try to live without noticing it,” Bulgakov wrote on December 31, 1917 to his sister.

In 1918 he returned to Kyiv. Waves of Petliurists, White Guards, Bolsheviks, Hetman P. P. Skoropadsky swept through the city. At the end of August 1919, the Bolsheviks, leaving Kyiv, shot hundreds of hostages. Bulgakov, who had previously avoided mobilization by hook or by crook, retreated with the Whites. In February 1920, when the evacuation of the Volunteer Army began, he was struck down by typhus. Bulgakov woke up in Vladikavkaz, occupied by the Bolsheviks. The next year he moved to Moscow.

Here, one after another, three satirical novels with fantastic plots appear: "The Diaboliad", "Fatal Eggs" (both 1924), "Heart of a Dog" (1925).

During these years, Bulgakov worked in the editorial office of the newspaper "Gudok" and wrote the novel "White Guard" - about a broken family, about the past years of the "carefree generation", about civil war in Ukraine, about the suffering of man on earth. The first part of the novel was published in the Rossiya magazine in 1925, but the magazine was soon closed, and the novel - for almost 40 years - was destined to remain underprinted.

In 1926, Bulgakov staged The White Guard. "Days of the Turbins" (as the play is called) was staged with great success at the Moscow Art Theater and left the stage only with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War when the scenery of the performance was destroyed under the bombing.

"Proletarian" playwrights and critics jealously followed the successes of the talented "bourgeois echo" and took all measures to ensure that the plays already staged ("Zoyka's Apartment", 1926, and "Crimson Island", 1927) were removed, and the newly written "Running" (1928) and "The Cabal of the Saints" (1929) did not see the limelight. (It was only in 1936 that the play The Cabal of the Saints, called Molière, appeared on the stage of the Art Theatre.)

Since 1928, Bulgakov worked on the novel The Master and Margarita, which brought him worldwide fame posthumously.

He died on March 10, 1940 in Moscow from a severe hereditary kidney disease, before reaching the age of 49. Few knew how many unpublished manuscripts he had.