Mikhail Bulgakov

Some of his works (Flight, all his works between 1922 and 1926, and others) were banned by the Soviet government, and personally by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins. The Soviet leader reportedly attended the play at least 15 times, even calling a theater to personally demand its production after the playwright's fall from favor. Despite Stalin's intercession in this and other matters Bulgakov was only briefly successful during his lifetime. After his death, especially once the publication of The Master and Margarita had been accomplished in 1966–67, his work was reassessed. He is now widely regarded as one of the great Russian authors of the 20th century.

Life and work

Early life

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was born into a Russian family on 15 May [O.S. 3 May] 1891 at 28 Vozdvishenskaya Street in Kiev in the Russian Empire and baptized on 18 May [O.S. 6 May]. He was the oldest of seven children. His father, Afanasiy Bulgakov (1859–1907), was a state councilor, a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy, as well as a prominent Russian Orthodox essayist, thinker and translator of religious texts. His mother, Varvara Mikhailovna Bulgakova (née Pokrovskaya; 1869–1922), was a former teacher at a women's gymnasium. Bulgakov's godmother was his paternal grandmother, Olympiada, and his godfather was academician Nikolai Petrov.

Afanasiy was born in Oryol, the oldest son of Ivan Avraamovich Bulgakov, a priest, and his wife, Olympiada Ferapontovna. He first studied in a seminary in Oryol, and then studied in Kiev Theological Academy from 1881 to 1885, and was named a docent of the academy in 1886. Varvara was born in Karachev; her father, Mikhail Pokrovsky, was a protoiereus. Afanasiy and Varvara married in 1890. Their other children were Vera (born 1892), Nadezhda (born 1893), Varvara (born 1895), Nikolai (born 1898), Ivan (born 1900), and Yelena (born 1902).

All the children received a good education; they read the classics of Russian and European literature, studied music, and went to concerts. Bulgakov played piano, sang baritone, and enjoyed opera. In particular, he enjoyed Faust by Gounod; according to Nadezhda, he attended showings of Faust at least 40 times. At home, Bulgakov and his siblings acted out plays which they enjoyed. The family also had a dacha in Bucha.

Bulgakov was enrolled in the Second Kiev Gymasium in 1900. The next year, he was enrolled in the First Kiev Gymnasium, where he developed an interest in Russian and European literature (his favourite authors at the time being Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Dickens), theatre and opera. The teachers of the gymnasium exerted a great influence on the formation of his literary taste.

Afanasiy fell ill with malignant nephrosclerosis in 1906 and died of the illness the next year. His death caused Bulgakov to turn away from the Orthodox faith. Nadezhda observed that Bulgakov showed a great interest in the theories of Darwin and had turned to "non-belief".

In the summer of 1908, Bulgakov met Tatyana Lappa. Lappa, who lived in Saratov, had arrived in Kiev to visit her relatives; Lappa's aunt was a friend of his mother and thus introduced her to the young Bulgakov. The next year, he began to study medicine at the Kiev University. In 1912, Lappa arrived in Kiev to study. The two married in April 1913.

Bulgakov was staying with Lappa's parents in Saratov at the outbreak of the First World War. Her mother opened a field hospital for wounded soldiers, where he worked as a doctor. The couple returned to Kiev in the autumn. In 1916, Bulgakov graduated from the university, after which he volunteered for the Red Cross. Lappa volunteered as a nurse. Bulgakov first worked in Kamianets-Podilskyi, then he was transferred to Chernivtsi in the same year. In September of that year, he was transferred to Moscow; and then to the village of Nikolskoye in Smolensk Oblast. The time Bulgakov spent working as a doctor would be the inspiration for his short story cycle, A Young Doctor's Notebook, and his short story, Morphine. Morphine is based on Bulgakov's actual addiction to morphine, which he started taking to alleviate the allergic effects of an anti-diphtheria drug, after accidentally infecting himself with the disease while treating a child with the same condition. While visiting Kiev with Lappa, they received advice from Bulgakov's stepfather on countering his addiction in the form of injecting distilled water instead of morphine, which gradually helped Bulgakov to end his addiction.

In the autumn of 1917, he was transferred to the town of Vyazma, but left for Moscow in either November or December of that year in an unsuccessful attempt to gain a military discharge. After briefly visiting Lappa's parents in Saratov, they returned to Kiev in February 1918. Upon returning, Bulgakov opened a private practice at his home at Andreyevsky Descent, 13. There, he lived through the Civil War and witnessed ten coups. Successive governments drafted him into their service while two of his brothers were serving in the White Army against the Bolsheviks.

In 1919, he was mobilised as an army physician by the White Army. In September 1919, Bulgakov was in Grozny with Lappa. While there, he observed the fighting between the forces of Anton Denikin and Uzun-Hajji in the city of Chechen-Aul; this became part of one of his earliest works, "Unusual Adventures" (Russian: Необыкновенные приключения). There, he became seriously ill with typhus, and was bedridden for several weeks. Around this time, both his brothers Nikolai and Ivan emigrated. The family lost contact with them, and Bulgakov never saw his brothers again.

Career

Bulgakov had expressed his desire to be a writer as early as 1912 or 1913, when he showed his sister Nadezhda his first attempt at a story, called The Fiery Serpent (Russian: Огненный змий), about an alcoholic who dies in a fit of delirium tremens, and stated to her that he planned to be a writer. According to his first wife, he first began to consistently write in Vyazma, where at night he would work on a story called The Green Serpent (Russian: Зеленый змий).

After his illness, Bulgakov abandoned his medical practice to pursue writing. Bulgakov in his autobiography wrote that he abandoned medicine for writing in early 1920; according to his friend Pavel Popov, Bulgakov abandoned medicine for good on 15 February 1920. At this time, he was in Vladikavkaz. His first book was an almanac of feuilletons called Future Perspectives, written and published the same year.

Bulgakov considered emigration to the West; he made his way to the city of Batum in 1921 to attempt to emigrate. After meeting failure, he then decided to move to Moscow and attempt a career as a writer. He arrived in Moscow in September of that year; his wife had arrived three weeks prior. He was appointed secretary to the literary section of Glavpolitprosvet in October, where he worked until November, when the literary section closed. He began work on a novel there, which ultimately turned into his story Morphine. The story was published only once in his lifetime - in 1927. To make a living, he started working as a feuilleton writer for the newspapers Gudok and Nakanune. His work Diaboliad was written in 1923.

The death of Bulgakov's mother from typhus on 1 February 1922 influenced the writing of The White Guard. He completed the novel in 1924. Early in 1924, Bulgakov attended a party hosted by Aleksey Tolstoy, where he met Lyubov Belozerskaya. The same year, Bulgakov divorced Tatyana Lappa. In April of the next year, he married Belozerskaya. The White Guard began serialization in 1925; he dedicated the work to Belozerskaya.

The White Guard caught the attention of the Moscow Art Theatre. Bulgakov was invited in April 1925 to turn his work into a play, to be staged at the theater. The play was staged under the name The Days of the Turbins in October 1926, and met with success. Also in 1925 Bulgakov was approached by the Vakhtangov Theatre to write a play for them based on The White Guard. Bulgakov offered to write them another play. The resulting play, Zoyka's Apartment, was also staged in October 1926, and a third play, The Crimson Island, was staged at the Kamerny Theatre in December 1928. His plays were popular with viewers, but attracted negative reviews from critics.

Bulgakov began work on the play Flight in 1926, and completed it in 1928. He had planned to stage it at the Moscow Art Theatre. Glavrepertkom, the government organ responsible for censoring and approving theatrical works, published a resolution on 9 May, stating that the play had been written to glorify emigration and White Army generals, and therefore, it was banned. Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, wanting to save the play, invited Maxim Gorky, several theater critics and several members of Glaviskusstvo (Central Arts Administration) and Glavrepertkom to a reading of Flight on 9 October. Gorky, as well as most of those attending, was impressed by the play. Nemirovich-Danchenko began rehearsals the next day, with Nikolai Khmelyov, Viktor Stanitsyn, Alla Tarasova and Mark Prudkin in the main roles. However, Glavrepertkom showed Flight to Joseph Stalin, who agreed with the committee that it should be banned. Flight would only be staged again in 1957, 17 years after Bulgakov's death.

1929–1940: Last years and The Master and Margarita

In 1929, Bulgakov met Elena Shilovskaya. The two married in October 1932. Elena's younger son from her previous marriage, Sergey, came to live with them.

He began work on The Master and Margarita in either 1928 or 1929. He burnt the first draft in 1930. The first version of the novel was very different from the final version: there was no Master or Margarita, and the novel was called "The Engineer's Hoof" (Russian: Копыто инженера, romanized: Kopyto inzhenera).

On 6 December 1929, Bulgakov completed his play The Cabal of Hypocrites. However, the play was banned by Glavrepertkom on 18 March 1930. In despair, Bulgakov wrote personally to Joseph Stalin, requesting aid. He received a phone call directly from Stalin on 18 April, who asked him whether he really desired to leave the Soviet Union. Bulgakov replied that he did not want to leave his homeland. Stalin told him to apply for work as a director at the Moscow Art Theatre. In May 1930, he became a director at the MAT, and The Cabal of Hypocrites was permitted in October 1931 by Glavrepertkom to be staged, under the title of Molière. However, it was not actually staged for several more years, until February 1936. Molière was staged just seven times; after a harsh review of the play by Osaf Litovsky, head of Glavrepertkom, the play was no longer staged. Embittered by the experience, Bulgakov resigned as a director from the MAT.

After resigning from the MAT, he joined the Bolshoi Theatre as a librettist. During his time there, he wrote four opera librettos: Minin and Pozharsky, Peter the Great, The Black Sea and Rachel. He left after perceiving that none of his works would be produced there. Stalin's favor protected Bulgakov from arrests and execution, but he could not get his writing published. When his last play Batum (1939), a complimentary portrayal of Stalin's early revolutionary days, was banned before rehearsals, Bulgakov requested permission to leave the country but was refused.

In poor health, Bulgakov devoted his last years to what he called his "sunset" novel. Only in 1937 did the novel receive its final title of The Master and Margarita. The years 1937 to 1939 were stressful for Bulgakov, veering from glimpses of optimism, believing the publication of his masterpiece could still be possible, to bouts of depression, when he felt as if there were no hope. On 15 June 1938, when the manuscript was nearly finished, Bulgakov wrote in a letter to his wife:

"In front of me 327 pages of the manuscript (about 22 chapters). The most important remains – editing, and it's going to be hard, I will have to pay close attention to details. Maybe even re-write some things... 'What's its future?' you ask? I don't know. Possibly, you will store the manuscript in one of the drawers, next to my 'killed' plays, and occasionally it will be in your thoughts. Then again, you don't know the future. My own judgement of the book is already made and I think it truly deserves being hidden away in the darkness of some chest..."

In 1939, Bulgakov organized a private reading of The Master and Margarita to his close circle of friends. Elena Bulgakova remembered 30 years later, "When he finally finished reading that night, he said: 'Well, tomorrow I am taking the novel to the publisher!' and everyone was silent", "...Everyone sat paralyzed. Everything scared them. P. (P. A. Markov, in charge of the literature division of MAT) later at the door fearfully tried to explain to me that trying to publish the novel would cause terrible things", she wrote in her diary (14 May 1939).

In the last month of his life, friends and relatives were constantly on duty at his bedside. On 10 March 1940, Bulgakov died from nephrotic syndrome (an inherited kidney disorder). His father had died of the same disease, and from his youth Bulgakov had guessed his future mortal diagnosis. On 11 March, a civil funeral was held in the building of the Union of Soviet Writers. Before the funeral, the Moscow sculptor Sergey Merkurov cast a death mask of his face. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.