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 Kiev University at the Faculty of Medicine. In his second year, in 1913, Mikhail Afanasyevich married Tatyana Lappa.

Medical practice

After graduating from 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. IN short biography Bulgakov cannot fail 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 into the army of Southern Russia. In 1920, Mikhail Afanasyevich fell ill with typhus, so he could not leave the country with the Volunteer Army.

Moscow. The beginning of a creative journey

In 1921, Bulgakov moved to Moscow. He is actively involved in literary activities, begins to collaborate with many periodicals in Moscow - “Gudok”, “Worker”, etc., and takes part in meetings of literary circles. In 1923, Mikhail Afanasyevich joined the All-Russian Writers Union, which also included A. Volynsky, F. Sologub, Nikolai Gumilev, 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 Diaboliad”, “Heart of a Dog”, “Blizzard”, “Fatal Eggs”, the novel “The White Guard” (1925), “Zoyka’s Apartment”, the play “Days of the Turbins” ( 1926), “Crimson Island” (1927), “Running” (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 his sharp criticism of the revolution in his works (in particular, in the drama “Days of the Turbins”), Mikhail Afanasyevich was summoned several times for interrogation by the OGPU. Bulgakov is no longer published; his plays are prohibited from being staged in theaters.

Last years

In 1930, Mikhail Afanasyevich personally wrote a letter to I. Stalin asking for the right to leave the USSR or to be allowed to earn a living. After this, the writer was able to get a job as an assistant director at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1934 Bulgakov was accepted into Soviet Union writers, whose chairmen at different times were Maxim Gorky, Alexey Tolstoy, A. Fadeev.

In 1931, Bulgakov broke up 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 different nature, last years I was very sick. The writer was diagnosed with hypertensive nephrosclerosis (kidney disease). On March 10, 1940, Mikhail Afanasyevich died. Bulgakov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

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 writer's lifetime, The Master and Margarita was not published due to censorship bans. The novel was first published in 1967.

Other biography options

• There were seven children in the Bulgakov family - 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.
• From an early age, Bulgakov 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 de Paris.”
• Bulgakov’s choice of becoming a doctor was influenced by the fact that most of his relatives were engaged in medicine.
• The prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky from the story “ dog's heart" became Bulgakov's uncle - gynecologist N. M. Pokrovsky.

Biography test

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Mikhail Bulgakov is a Russian writer and playwright, the author of many works that today are considered classics of Russian literature. It is enough to name such novels as “The Master and Margarita”, “The White Guard” and the stories “Diaboliad”, “Heart of a Dog”, “Notes on the Cuffs”. Many of Bulgakov's books and plays have been filmed.

Childhood and youth

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

After graduating from high school, Mikhail Bulgakov entered the university at the Faculty of Medicine. His choice turned out to be connected solely with mercantile desires - both uncles of the future writer were doctors and earned 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 front-line zone as a doctor, after which he practiced medicine in Vyazma, and later in Kyiv, as a venereologist. In the early 20s, he moved to Moscow and began literary activity, 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 Cuffs,” the social drama “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 described it as too loyal to the Soviet regime.

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

By 1930, Mikhail Afanasyevich’s works were no longer published. For example, “The Heart of a Dog” was first published only in 1987, “The Life of Monsieur de Moliere” and “Theatrical Novel” - in 1965. And the most powerful and incredibly large-scale novel, “The Master and Margarita,” which Bulgakov wrote from 1929 until his death, first saw the light only in the late 60s, and then only in an abbreviated form.

In March 1930, the writer, who had lost his footing, sent a letter to the government in which he asked to decide his fate - either to be allowed to emigrate, or to be given the opportunity to work. As a result, he received a personal call and was told that he would be allowed to stage plays. But the publication of Bulgakov’s books never resumed during his lifetime.

Theater

Back in 1925, Mikhail Bulgakov’s plays were staged on the stage of Moscow theaters with great success - “Zoyka’s Apartment”, “Days of the Turbins” based on the novel “The White Guard”, “Running”, “Crimson Island”. A year later, the ministry wanted to ban the production of “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 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 "The Pickwick Club", but his original plays "", "Bliss", "Ivan Vasilyevich" and others were never published during the playwright's lifetime.

The only exception was the play “The Cabal of the Holy One,” staged based on Bulgakov’s play “” in 1936 after a five-year series of refusals. The premiere was a huge success, but the troupe managed to give only 7 performances, after which the play was banned. After this, Mikhail Afanasyevich quits the theater and subsequently 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 they then 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 meets Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, née Nuremberg. A man leaves his second wife and leads his third down the aisle. By the way, it was Elena who was 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 to ensure that the works of her loved one were subsequently published. Mikhail 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 Tatyana, Mikhail was the first husband, 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 this, Bulgakov’s health began to deteriorate sharply - he began to lose his vision, and congenital kidney disease also made itself felt.

Mikhail Afanasyevich returned to using morphine to relieve pain symptoms. Since the winter of 1940, the playwright stopped getting out of bed, and on March 10, the great writer passed away. Mikhail Bulgakov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery, and on his grave, at the insistence of his wife, a stone was placed that had previously been 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 - “To a Secret Friend”
• 1929 - “Cabal of the Saint”
• 1929-1940 - “The Master and Margarita”
• 1933 - “The Life of Monsieur de Molière”
• 1936 - “Ivan Vasilyevich”
• 1937 - “Theatrical Romance”

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 his first publication appeared - a newspaper article entitled "Future Prospects."

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

In 1921 he moved to Moscow. Served as secretary of the Main Political and Educational Committee under the People's Commissariat of 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, with the newspapers Gudok and Rabochiy, and the magazines Medical Worker, Rossiya and Vozrozhdenie.

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

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

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

Later, based on 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 among the audience, but not among critics, who launched a devastating campaign against the play, which was "apologetic" in relation to the white movement, and against the "anti-Soviet" author of the play.

During the same period, Bulgakov’s play “Zoyka’s Apartment” (1926) was staged at the Evgeni Vakhtangov Studio Theater, which was banned after the 200th performance. 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.

At the beginning of 1930, his play "The Cabal of the Saint" (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 higher authorities and wrote a “Letter to the Government,” asking either to provide him with work and, therefore, a means of subsistence, or to let him go abroad. The letter was followed by phone call Joseph Stalin to Bulgakov (April 18, 1930). Soon Bulgakov got a job as a director of the Moscow Art Theater and thereby 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 dramatization " Dead souls"According to Nikolai Gogol.

In February 1932, the “Turbin Days” at the Moscow Art Theater were resumed.

In the 1930s, one of the main themes in Bulgakov’s work was the theme of the relationship between the artist and the authorities, which he realized using the material of various historical eras: play "Molière", biographical story "The Life of Monsieur de Molière", play " Last days", novel "The Master and Margarita".

In 1936, due to disagreements with the management during the rehearsal preparation of Molière, 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 librettos for 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 Isaac 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 theater's active interest in the 60th anniversary of the leader, ended in failure. The play was banned from production and was interpreted by the political elite as the writer’s desire to improve relations with the authorities.

In 1929-1940, Bulgakov’s multifaceted philosophical and fantastic novel “The Master and Margarita” was created - Bulgakov’s last work.

Doctors discovered that the writer had hypertensive nephrosclerosis, an incurable kidney disease. he was seriously ill, almost blind, and his wife made changes to the manuscript under 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” were not released; the last of them was filmed by director Leonid Gaidai in the comedy “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession” (1973). Also, after the death of the writer, a “Theatrical Novel” was published, which was based on “Notes of a Dead Man”.

Before publication, the philosophical and fantastic novel “The Master and Margarita” 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 abridged form in 1966 in the Moscow magazine. The full text in Bulgakov's latest edition was published in Russian in 1989.

The novel became 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 writer’s homeland, it 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 the biography of Mikhail Bulgakov. She preserved the writer’s extensive archive, 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 USSR Academy of Sciences (Pushkin House). Bulgakova managed to achieve the publication of “The Theatrical Novel” and “The Master and Margarita”, the re-release of “The White Guard” in its entirety, and the publication of most of the plays.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov - Russian writer.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born on May 15 (May 3, 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 Dnieper steeps, about the comfort of a noisy and warm native nest on Andreevsky Spusk, and the shining prospects for a future free and wonderful life.

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

When Mikhail was 16 years old, his father died of kidney disease. Nevertheless, the future has not yet been canceled, Bulgakov becomes a student Faculty of Medicine Kyiv University. “The medical profession seemed brilliant to me,” he would say later, explaining his choice. Possible arguments in favor of medicine: independence of future activity (private practice), interest in the “human structure,” as well as the opportunity to help him. Next is the first marriage, which was too early for that time. Mikhail, a second-year student, against the wishes of his mother, marries 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. The world war was going on, in the spring of 1916, Mikhail was released from the university as a “warrior of the second militia” (his 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 blood? No. Nobody,” he wrote a few years later on the pages of The White Guard. In the fall of 1916, Doctor 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 a breakdown in the routine course of life, extreme everyday life, shaped the future writer. It is characterized by a desire for positive, effective knowledge - serious reflection on the atheistic worldview of the “naturalist”, on the one hand, and faith in a higher principle, on the other. One more thing is important: medical practice left no room for deconstructive mindsets. Perhaps this is why Bulgakov was not affected 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, forced to cope alone with numerous and unexpected diseases, saving human lives. The need for acceptance independent decisions, responsibility. Moreover, the rare gift of a brilliant diagnostician. Later, Mikhail Afanasyevich showed himself as a social diagnostician. It is obvious how insightful the writer turned out to be in his 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 would determine its fate for many decades to come. The abdication of the Tsar, the February days, and finally the October Revolution 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 anything more. I saw how gray crowds, whooping and vile swearing, broke windows on trains, I saw people being beaten. I saw destroyed and burnt houses in Moscow... stupid and brutal faces... I saw crowds that besieged the entrances of captured and locked banks, hungry tails at the shops... I saw newspaper sheets where they write, in essence, about one thing: about blood , which flows 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 Bolsheviks again roll through the city. Every government is mobilizing, and doctors are needed by everyone who holds a gun in their hands. Bulgakov was also mobilized. As a military doctor, he goes to the North Caucasus with the retreating Volunteer Army. The fact that Bulgakov remained in Russia was only a consequence of a confluence of circumstances, and not a free choice: he lay in typhoid fever when the White army and its sympathizers left the country. Later, T.N. Lappa testified that Bulgakov more than once blamed her for not taking him, who was sick, out of Russia.

Upon recovery, Mikhail Bulgakov left medicine and began collaborating with newspapers. One of his first journalistic 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 Turbin Brothers” and “Sons of the Mullah”. All of them were performed on the stage of the Vladikavkaz Theater. But the author treated them as steps forced by circumstances. The author will evaluate “Sons of the Mullah” as follows: “they were written by three people: me, the assistant attorney and the hunger. In 1921, at its beginning...” About a more thoughtful piece (“The Turbin Brothers”), he will tell his brother bitterly: “When I was called after the second act, I left with a vague feeling... I looked vaguely at the actors’ made-up faces, at the thundering hall. And I 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, a hastily made, immature thing...”

Bulgakov's move to Moscow

Perhaps the change of profession was dictated by circumstances: a recent military doctor in the White Army lived in a city where Bolshevik power 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, and bookstores operated. In the hungry and cold Moscow of 1921, Bulgakov persistently mastered a new profession: he wrote in Gudka, collaborated with the Berlin editorial office of Nakanune, attended creative circles, and made literary acquaintances. He treats forced work in a newspaper as a hateful and meaningless activity. But you also have to earn a living. “... I have lived a triple life,” wrote Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov in the unfinished story “To a Secret Friend” (1929), born as a letter to the writer’s third wife, Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya. In essays published in Nakanune, Bulgakov sneered at official slogans and newspaper cliches. “I am an ordinary man, born to crawl,” the narrator certified himself in the feuilleton “Forty Forties.” And in the essay “Red Stone Moscow” he described the cockade on the band of his uniform cap: “It’s either a hammer and a shovel, or a sickle and rake, at least not a hammer and sickle.”

“On the Eve” published “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Doctor” (1922) and “Notes on the Cuffs” (1922-1923). In The Doctor's Extraordinary Adventures, the descriptions of successive authorities and armies are given by the author with an undisguised sense of hostility. It comes to the seditious thought about the wisdom 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 (there was a housing crisis in Moscow, 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 privacy), Bulgakov published two satirical stories: “The Devil’s Day” ( 1924) and “Fatal Eggs” (1925), wrote “Heart of a Dog” (1925). His story about the pain points of the modern day takes fantastic forms.

"Fatal Eggs"

IN Soviet republic a chicken pestilence occurred (“Fatal Eggs”). The government needs to restore the “chicken population”, and it turns to Professor Persikov, who discovered the “red ray”, under the influence of which living creatures not only instantly reach colossal sizes, but also become unusually aggressive in the struggle for existence. The hints about what is happening in Soviet Russia are unusually transparent and fearless. The ignorant director of the chicken state farm, Rokk, who mistakenly receives snake and ostrich eggs ordered from abroad for professorial experiments, uses a “red ray” to remove hordes of giant animals from them. The giants are marching on Moscow. The capital is saved only by a happy accident: unprecedented frosts hit it. At the end of the story, brutal crowds destroy the professor's laboratory, and his discovery perishes along with him. The accuracy of the social diagnosis proposed by Bulgakov was appreciated by wary critics, who wrote that from the story it is absolutely clear that “the Bolsheviks are completely unsuitable for creative peaceful work, although they are capable of well organizing military victories and protecting their iron order.”

"Dog's heart"

The next piece, “Heart of a Dog” (1925), was no longer put into print and was published in Russia only during the years of perestroika, in 1987. Her phrases and formulas immediately became part of oral speech intelligent person: “the devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads”, “everyone can occupy seven rooms”, later they will add “sturgeon of the second freshness”, and “whatever you miss, you have nothing”, “it’s easy to tell the truth and Nice".

Main character In the story, Professor Preobrazhensky, conducting a medical experiment, transplants the organ of the “proletarian” Chugunkin, who died in a drunken fight, into 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 the miraculously revived Chugunkin is militantly ignorant, vulgar and arrogant. Having convinced himself of this, the professor carries out the reverse operation, and the good-natured dog appears again in his cozy apartment.

The professor's risky surgical experiment is an allusion to the "daring social experiment" taking place in Russia. Bulgakov is not inclined to see the “people” as an ideal being. He is confident that only a 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"

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov also does not let go of his experiences during the Civil War. In 1925, the first part of “The White Guard” appeared in the magazine “Russia”. 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 confident that the traditions of the great Russian literature of the 19th century are hopelessly outdated and are no longer interesting to anyone.

Bulgakov writes a defiantly “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. At the center of the novel is a broken family living 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 revolution,” Bulgakov introduces two points of reference, two systems of values, as if “looking back” at each other. This allows the writer to more accurately assess the meaning of what is happening, to see modern 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 is disturbing me now is not prophetic. Can't be. I can’t be anything else, I can be one thing - a writer.” Bulgakov’s powerful entry into literature, about which Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (real name Kirienko-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 Rossiya magazine closed, and the novel remained unprinted. However, his heroes continued to disturb the writer’s consciousness. Bulgakov begins to compose 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. In search of new dramaturgy, the Moscow Art Theater 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 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 sold out. The story told by the playwright shocked the audience with its life-like truth of the disastrous events that many of them had recently experienced. In the wake of the resounding success of the play, the magazine “Medical Worker” published a series of stories, which would later be called “Notes of a Young Doctor” (1925-1926). These printed lines turned out to be the last that Bulgakov was destined to see during his lifetime. Another consequence of the Moscow Art Theater premiere was a flood of magazine and newspaper articles that finally noticed Bulgakov the prose writer. But official criticism branded the writer’s work as reactionary, affirming bourgeois values.

The images of white officers that Bulgakov fearlessly brought onto the stage of the best theater in the country, against the backdrop of a new audience, a new way of life, acquired an expanded meaning for the intelligentsia, no matter whether military or civilian. The play included Chekhov's motifs, the Moscow Art Theater's "Turbines" were correlated with "Three Sisters" and fell out of the current context of poster, propaganda drama of the 1920s. The performance, met with hostility by official criticism, was soon filmed, but in 1932 it was restored by the will of Stalin, who personally watched it more than a dozen times (to this day his attitude towards Bulgakov himself remains a mystery).

Drama by Mikhail Bulgakov

From that time until the end of M.A.’s life. Bulgakov no longer abandoned drama. In addition to a dozen plays, the experience of intratheater life will lead to the birth of the unfinished novel “Notes of a Dead Man” (first published in the USSR in 1965 under the title “Theatrical Novel”). The main character, an aspiring writer Maksudov, who works for the Shipping Company newspaper and writes a play based on his own novel, is undisguisedly biographical. The play is written by Maksudov for the Independent Theater, which is led by two legendary personalities - Ivan Vasilyevich and Aristarkh Platonovich. The reference to the Art Theater and two major Russian theater directors of the 20th century, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, is easily recognizable. The novel is full of love and admiration for the people of the theater, but it also satirically describes the complex characters of those who create theatrical magic, and the intra-theater ups and downs of the country's leading theater.

"Zoyka's apartment"

Almost simultaneously with “Days of the Turbins,” Bulgakov wrote the tragic farce “Zoyka’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 the abrupt breakdown of social reality, expressed in a change in linguistic forms. Count Obolyaninov refuses to understand what a “former count” is: “Where did I go? Here I am, standing in front of you.” With demonstrative simplicity, 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 “atelier”, forms a striking contrast to the count, who does not know how to adapt to circumstances. In the counterpoint of the two central images, Amethystov 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 anti-censorship dramatic pamphlet The Crimson Island (1927). 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 "Crimson Island" with the uprising of the natives and the "world revolution" in the finale is nakedly parodic. Bulgakov's pamphlet reproduced typical and characteristic situations: a play about a native uprising is being rehearsed by an opportunistic director, who readily alters the ending to please the all-powerful Savva Lukich (who in the play was made to resemble the famous censor V. Blum).

It would seem that luck was with 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 Yevgeny Vakhtangov Theater, and only for this reason the censorship was forced to endure it; The foreign press wrote admiringly about the courage of the “Crimson Island”. In the theater season of 1927-1928, Bulgakov was the most fashionable and successful playwright. But the time of Bulgakov the playwright ends just as abruptly as that of the prose writer. Bulgakov's next play, “Running” (1928), never appeared on stage.

If “Zoykina’s Apartment” told about those who remained in Russia, then “Running” spoke about the fates of those who left it. White General Khludov (he had a real prototype - General Ya. A. Slashchov), in the name of a high goal - the salvation of Russia - went to execution in the rear and therefore lost his mind; the dashing General Charnota, who rushes into attack with equal readiness both at the front and at the card table; soft and lyrical, like Pierrot, university private assistant professor Golubkov, saving his beloved woman Seraphim, ex-wife former minister - all of them are outlined by the playwright with psychological depth.

True 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 portrayed as ideal people, they evoked sympathy, and among them there were many recent White Guards. None of her characters were eager to return to their homeland to “take part in building socialism in the USSR,” as Stalin advised to end the play. The issue of staging “Running” was considered four times at Politburo meetings. The authorities did not allow the second appearance of white officers on the stage. Since the writer did not listen to the leader’s advice, the play was first staged only in 1957 and not on the capital’s stage, but in Stalingrad.

1929, the year of Stalin’s “great turning point,” broke the fates not only of the peasantry, but also of any “individual peasants” still remaining in the country. At this time, all of 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 regarding the revolutionary process” taking place in backward Russia, and admitted that “he had not even attempted to compose a communist play.” At the end of the letter, filled with genuine civic courage, there was an urgent request: either to be allowed to go abroad, or to be given a job, otherwise “poverty, the street and death.”

His new play was called "The Cabal of the Holy One" (1929). At its center is a collision: the artist and power. The play about Moliere and his unfaithful patron Louis XIV was lived by the writer from the inside. The king, who highly values ​​the art of Molière, nevertheless deprives the patronage of the playwright who dared to ridicule the members of the family in the comedy “Tartuffe.” religious organization"Society of the Holy Gifts". The play (called “Molière”) was rehearsed at the Moscow Art Theater for six years and at the beginning of 1936 it appeared on the stage, only to be removed from the repertoire after seven performances. Bulgakov never saw any of his plays on the theater stage.

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 at the same time another dissident writer Evgeniy Ivanovich Zamyatin was allowed to leave). Bulgakov was accepted into the Moscow Art Theater as an assistant director, assisting in the production of his own adaptation of Gogol’s “Dead Souls.” At night he writes a “novel about the devil” (this is how Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel about “The Master and Margarita” was originally seen). At the same time, an inscription appeared in 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 remained alive in the fallen Leningrad: the fanatical communist Adam Krasovsky, whose wife, Eve, goes to the scientist Efrosimov, who managed to create the apparatus , exposure to which saves from death; fiction writer Donut-Nepobeda, creator of the novel “Red Greens”; the charming hooligan Marquisov, 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, and the comedy “Ivan Vasilyevich” (1934-1936) about the formidable tsar and the foolish house manager, due to an error in the operation of the time machine changed centuries; the utopia "Bliss" (1934) about a sterile and ominous future with ironically planned desires of people; finally, a dramatization 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 delineates the boundaries of his own, individual existence, aspirations, plans and does not intend to obediently follow the rules and canons imposed from outside. In the 1930s, Bulgakov's dramaturgy was just as unacceptable for censorship as his prose had been before. In totalitarian Russia, the themes and plots of the playwright, his thoughts and his characters are impossible. “Over the last seven years I have made 16 things, and all of them died, except one, and that was a dramatization of Gogol! It would be naive to think that the 17th or 18th will go,” Bulgakov writes on October 5, 1937 to Vikenty Vikentievich Veresaev.

"Master and Margarita"

But “there is no such writer that he should shut up. If he fell 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 crowning achievement of his creative career was the novel “The Master and Margarita,” which brought the writer posthumous world fame.

The novel was originally conceived as an apocryphal “gospel of the devil,” and the future title characters were absent from the first editions of the text. Over the years, the original plan became more complex and transformed, incorporating the fate of the writer himself. Later, the woman who became his third wife entered the novel - Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya (they met in 1929, the marriage was formalized in the fall of 1932). A lonely writer (Master) and his faithful girlfriend (Margarita) will become no less important than the central characters in the world history of mankind.

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

The events took place in front of many people and yet remained misunderstood. And only the Master, in the novel he created, is given the opportunity to restore the meaningfulness and unity of the flow of history. With the creative gift of experience, the Master “guesses” the truth in the past. The accuracy of the penetration into historical reality, witnessed by Woland, thereby confirms the accuracy and adequacy of the Master’s description of the present. Following Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin", Bulgakov's novel can be called, by well-known definition, an encyclopedia of Soviet life. Life and customs new Russia, human types and characteristic actions, clothing and food, methods of communication and occupations of people - all this is unfolded before the reader with deadly irony and at the same time piercing lyricism in the panorama of several May days.

Mikhail Bulgakov builds 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 throw a traditional spring full moon ball, and in ancient city 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 national point of view on what was happening was asserted as “the only correct one,” Bulgakov came out with a distinctly subjective view of the events of world history, contrasting the members of the “writing collective” (MASSOLIT) with 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 revealed the writer’s deep interest in issues of faith, religious or atheistic worldview. Connected by origin with a family of clergy, albeit in its “scientific” book version (Mikhail’s father is not a “father”, but a learned cleric), throughout his life Bulgakov seriously reflected on the problem of attitude towards 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, affirming, following Pushkin, the independence of man, his historical responsibility.

Bulgakov the artist

To be developed by the reader own attitude All the artistic features of Bulgakov’s work are directed towards what is happening. Almost every writer's work begins with a riddle, which is designed to destroy the previous clarity. Thus, in “The Master and Margarita” Bulgakov deliberately gives the characters unconventional 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 what is generally known, penetrate into the essence of what is happening and seem to relive in his mind 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 technique is deployed throughout the entire space of the text. Thus, the current momentary values ​​of the Soviet era are called into question and reveal their obvious transience and dubiousness.

Mikhail Bulgakov is characterized by another feature: his hero, whether in prose or drama, is returned by the author to the origins of fate. And Moliere still does not know the scale of his genius (“The Cabal of the Holy One”), and Pushkin’s poetry (“The Last Days”) is generally considered weaker than Benedict’s, and even Yeshua wanders, afraid of 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 precisely this feature of Bulgakov’s poetics that made it impossible to stage “Batum” (1939), written as a drama not about an omnipotent ruler, but about one of many whose fate had not yet taken final shape. Finally, in Bulgakov’s works there are only two options for endings: either the thing ends with the death of the main character, or the ending remains open. The writer offers a model of the world in which there are countless possibilities. And the right to choose an action remains with the actor. Thus, the author helps the reader to feel like the creator of his own destiny. And the life of a country is made up of many individual destinies. The idea of ​​a free and historically responsible person, “sculpting” the present and 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 Stalin's 60th birthday. Considering the months needed to get a particularly important thing through censorship, as well as for rehearsals, the search for authors for the anniversary began back in 1937. After urgent requests from the Moscow Art Theater directorate, Bulgakov began working on a play about the leader. Refusing a flattering order was dangerous. But Bulgakov takes an unconventional path here too: he does not write about the all-powerful leader, like the authors of other anniversary works, but talks about Dzhugashvili’s youth, starting the play with his expulsion from the seminary. Then he takes the hero through humiliation, prison and exile, that is, he turns the dictator into an ordinary dramatic character, treating the biography of the leader 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 fall of 1939, Bulgakov suffered from sudden blindness: a symptom of the same kidney disease from which his father died. The will of a terminally ill writer only postpones death, which occurs six months later. Almost everything the writer did was still waiting in the wings on his desk for more than a quarter of a century: the novel “The Master and Margarita,” the stories “The Heart of a Dog” and “The Life of Monsieur de Molière” (1933), as well as 16 that were never published during the writer’s lifetime. plays. After the publication of the “sunset novel,” Bulgakov will become one of the artists who defined the face of the 20th century with their creativity. This is how 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 M. Bulgakov’s bedside. On March 10, 1940, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died. On March 11, a civil memorial service took place in the building of the Union of Soviet Writers. Before the funeral service, Moscow sculptor S. D. Merkurov removed the death mask from M. Bulgakov’s face.

M. Bulgakov is buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. At his grave, at the request of his wife E. S. Bulgakova, a stone was installed, nicknamed “Golgotha,” which previously lay on the grave of N. V. Gogol.

In 1966, the magazine “Moscow” began publishing the novel “The Master and Margarita” for the first time in banknotes. This happened thanks to the titanic efforts of the writer’s widow E. S. Bulgakova and the effective support of Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov. And from then on the triumphant march 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 was published abroad, where it was published 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 on May 15, 1891 in Kyiv in a large and friendly family of a professor, teacher at 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 “second-class militia warrior” 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 fall 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 malaria powders prescribed for a week are swallowed immediately, births are given under a bush, and mustard plasters are placed on top of a sheepskin coat... While yesterday’s student was turning into an experienced and determined zemstvo doctor, events began in the Russian capital that would determine 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, and Hetman P. P. Skoropadsky rolled 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 following year he moved to Moscow.

Here, one after another, three satirical stories with fantastic plots appear: “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 "The White Guard" - about a broken family, about the past years of the "carefree generation", about civil war in Ukraine, about human suffering 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 was destined to remain unprinted for almost 40 years.

In 1926, Bulgakov staged The White Guard. “Days of the Turbins” (that’s the name of the play) 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 play was destroyed by bombing.

“Proletarian” playwrights and critics jealously followed the successes of the talented “bourgeois echo” and took all measures to ensure that already staged plays (“Zoyka’s Apartment,” 1926, and “Crimson Island,” 1927) were filmed and the newly written “Running” (1928) and “The Cabal of the Holy One” (1929) did not see the light of the stage. (It was only in 1936 that the play “The Cabal of the Holy One” under the title “Molière” appeared on the stage of the Art Theater.)

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

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