Bulgakov's personal life briefly. An interesting biography of Mikhail Bulgakov: briefly the most important
- playwright, writer (May 14, 1891, Kyiv - March 10, 1940, Moscow). His father was a professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy. In 1909-16 Bulgakov studied medicine at Kiev University, after that he worked as a rural doctor near Smolensk and in Kyiv.
In 1919 he began his literary activity, in 1920-21 he lived in Vladikavkaz. During the years of the Civil War, he was briefly in the ranks of Denikin's army. In 1921 Bulgakov moved to Moscow and began to write for many newspapers and magazines. In particular, in 1922-24 he wrote for the newspaper Nakanune, which was published in Berlin and sympathized with the Soviet Union. Bulgakov was constantly published in the railway newspaper "Gudok", which brought him together with I. Babel, I. Ilfom, V. Kataev, Y. Olesha, K. Paustovsky and E. Petrov. Only after 50 years these feuilletons and notes, very important as material for his later works, were collected and published in Cologne.
Michael Bulgakov. Curse of the Master. video film
In 1936 Bulgakov moved to the Bolshoi Theater where he earned his living as an opera librettist and translator. Everything he wrote remained in manuscript. Already on his deathbed, blind, he dictated corrections to his main prose work The Master and Margarita(1928-40). In 1941, his play was performed for a short time in Leningrad and Moscow. Don Quixote, written in 1938. In 1943-48, Bulgakov's drama about Pushkin was on stage Last days written in 1934-35.
Bulgakov's name was deleted from the plans of publishing houses and textbooks on literature. The creative heritage of the writer was preserved by his widow, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova. Only after the death of Stalin, from 1955, Bulgakov's works began to appear in print and on the theater stage thanks to the active support of V. Kaverina and K. Paustovsky. First, in 1955, plays were published Days of the Turbins and Last days; the 1962 collection contained plays published for the first time Run, The cabal of the saints and Don Quixote. However, Bulgakov's satirical plays were published only in the West at that time. So far, only twelve of the thirty plays supposedly written by the playwright are known.
In 1965, the journal Novy Mir published theatrical romance, written in 1936-37; this publication contributed to the fact that 25 years after the death of the writer, his prose, although not entirely, returned to Russian literature. Novel The Master and Margarita was published in 1966-67 with significant censorship cuts. After the novel was published without cuts in the West, a new Soviet edition (1973) came out, also without cuts. Bulgakov's return to Soviet literature caused a whole wave of research work in the West.
Bulgakov is one of the most significant Russian writers of this century. His significance as a satirist is in constant contradiction with the textbooks of Soviet literature, where he is given an insignificant place. There are four main themes in his work.
In works white guard, Days of the Turbins and Run he depicts, departing from the generally accepted scheme, the patriotic and idealistic motives that led white. This also adjoins his famous story Khan's fire [see. its full text and summary].
Medical practice gave Bulgakov material for such works as Notes of a young doctor(written in 1925-27, first published in 1963), Fatal yay tsa [see full text and summary ], as well as a grotesque story dog's heart[cm. full text and summary ], acutely alienating modernity (written in 1925 and only in 1987 published in the USSR, published in the West in 1968). This story is a skillful fusion of the form of a story in the first and third person, in its structure there were experiments characteristic of Bulgakov's early prose.
His comedies are engaging and poignant satire depicting Russia in the 1920s. In a play Zoya's apartment, where exclusively negative characters are displayed, the reverse side appears NEP in Moscow. Many of the characters in this first Bulgakov comedy are found in his later works.
The central theme of his historical dramas about Moliere and Pushkin is the dependence of a genius on a despotic state and its authorities. The same theme connects in many respects the autobiographical theatrical romance where it is about the fate of the play Days of the Turbins, with a novel The Master and Margarita. This multi-layered and complex work about the appearance of the devil in Moscow in the 1930s and about the writer, whose unpublished book about Pontius Pilate is included in the fabric of the main novel, reveals the author’s extraordinary creative imagination and his critical attitude to his time, as well as the agonizing creativity in conditions of lack of freedom and impotence of the oppressors.
Subject: "Manuscripts don't burn"
(Life, creativity, personality of M.A. Bulgakov)
Goals:
give an idea of the personality of M.A. Bulgakov, to acquaint students with the main facts of biography and creativity;
develop the ability to outline the teacher's lecture (fill in the table), coherent speech of students, deepen the skills of independent work with additional literature;
to form in students an idea of a person’s personal involvement in the evil and good that surrounds him, to educate an active life position, to educate interest in the writer’s work, respect for the personality of M.A. Bulgakov - a man of firm convictions and unshakable decency.
Lesson equipment: portrait of the writer, board, books by M.A. Bulgakov, recording.
Working methods: lecture, students' messages, independent work, conversation.
During the classes
1. Teacher's lecture, during which students complete the task: make a summary (fill in the table).
the date
Events in the writer's life
Artworks
M.A. was born Bulgakov in Kyiv in the family of professors of the Theological Academy Afanasy Ivanovich and Varvara Mikhailovna. A large large family (7 children) will forever remain for him a world of warmth and comfort, an intelligent life with music, reading aloud, home performances.
1907
The father dies of sclerosis of the kidneys. The care of raising children fell entirely on the shoulders of Varvara Mikhailovna, but, no matter how difficult it was, she "managed ... to give a joyful childhood."
From 1911 to 1916
Bulgakov studied at the medical faculty of Kyiv University.
1916-1918
Work as a doctor in rear and frontline hospitals, in a rural hospital in the Smolensk province. The echo of these years - in the book. "Notes of a young doctor"
"Notes of a young doctor"
the date
Events in the writer's life
Artworks
1918-1920
Civil war found in Kyiv. He was a witness to the change of power. He personally survived 14 coups. He was mobilized as a doctor in Denikin's army and sent to the North Caucasus. Due to typhus, he remained in Vladikavkaz when the Whites retreated. He collaborated with the Bolsheviks: he worked in the art department, lectured about Pushkin, Chekhov, wrote plays for the local theater.
The White Guard (1925), Days of the Turbins (1926).
1921
Started to print. He leaves for Moscow, realizing that he is a writer.
Feuilleton "Week of Enlightenment"
1922-1923
Feuilletons and stories are published in newspapers and magazines, fragments of the story "Notes on Cuffs"
"Notes on Cuffs"
1923-1925
Works in the newspaper "Gudok", "On the Eve". Collaborates with many newspapers. Work in the newspaper exhausted his strength. He did his own work at night.
Separate chapters of the novel "The White Guard" were published in the magazine "Russia"
Satirical stories "Fatal Eggs", "Diaboliad", "Heart of a Dog" (published in 1987), the novel "The White Guard" (published in 1966)
1926
The Moscow Art Theater staged the play "Days of the Turbins", based on the "White Guard". The performance was a resounding success, but it also brought a lot of trouble: the performance was either banned or allowed again.
1927
The play "Zoyka's Apartment" was staged at the Vakhtangov Theater. But it was soon removed. The play "Running" was not allowed to be staged. An atmosphere of persecution was created around Bulgakov.
"Zoyka's apartment", "Running"
1929
Plays were filmed everywhere. Bulgakov was not published. He reached deep despair. I was looking for any job, but they did not take it. Thought about suicide. Started work on a new novel "The Master and Margarita"
"The Master and Margarita"
28.03.1930
Addressed with a letter to the Soviet government.
18.04.1930
Stalin called Bulgakov and offered him a job at the Moscow Art Theater.
30s
Bulgakov works as a director. He writes dramatizations (“War and Peace”, “Dead Souls”), opera librettos, a screenplay based on “The Government Inspector”, writes a biography of Molière for the Gorky series “ZhZL”, works on the main work of his life - the novel “Master and Margarita”. Not a single work of Bulgakov is published. He fell ill and began to lose his sight.
Plays "Adam and Eve" (1931), "Ivan Vasilievich" (1935-1936), "The Last Days", "Theatrical Romance", "The Cabal of the Hypocrites"
10.03.1940
M.A. Bulgakov is dead. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
Something like this should look like a student summary, it must be graded for it.
The text of the teacher's lecture
The fate of Bulgakov has its own dramatic pattern. In it, as it always seems from a distance and after the lapse of years, there is little accidental and clearly shows through sense of the way, as Block called it. It was as if it was predicted in advance that the boy, born on May 3 (15), 1891 in Kyiv in the family of a teacher of the theological academy, would go through hard trials of the era of wars and revolutions, would starve and be in poverty, become the playwright of the best theater in the country, learn the taste of glory and persecution , a storm of applause and a time of deaf dumbness, and will die before reaching the age of fifty, so that after another quarter of a century he will return to us with his books.
The most attractive place on earth for Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was forever Kyiv, “the mother of Russian cities”, where Ukraine and Russia came together. The city where he spent his childhood and youth.
His roots are in the ecclesiastical class, to which his paternal and maternal grandfathers belonged, and these roots go back to the Oryol land, where there was a fertile layer of national traditions, the consonance of an uncorrupted spring word that shaped the talent of Turgenev, Leskov, Bunin.
Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov, the writer's father, originally from Orel, graduated from a theological seminary there, following in the footsteps of his father, a village priest. Mother, Varvara Mikhailovna Pokrovskaya, was a teacher from Karachev in the same Oryol province, the daughter of a cathedral archpriest.
The large Bulgakov family with many children - there were seven children - will forever remain for Mikhail Afanasyevich a world of warmth, he was intelligent with music, reading aloud in the evenings, a Christmas tree festival and home performances. This atmosphere will be reflected in the novel The White Guard and in the play Days of the Turbins. (A fragment from F. Chopin's waltzes sounds).
In 1907, a misfortune happened in the family. Father died - Afanasy Ivanovich, professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy, church historian. He died of kidney sclerosis, a disease that would overtake his son in 33 years.
The care of raising seven children fell entirely on the shoulders of Varvara Mikhailovna. But, no matter how difficult it was, the mother, a busy and active woman, "managed ... to give a joyful childhood."
From 1911 to 1916, Bulgakov studied at the medical faculty of Kyiv University. After graduating from the university, he was "approved in the degree of physician with honors."
The First World War was on, and Bulgakov had to work in front-line and rear hospitals, gaining difficult medical experience. Then a young doctor worked for a year and a half in a rural hospital in the village of Nikolsky, Sychevsky district, Smolensk province, where he "proved himself a tireless worker in the zemstvo field." The impressions of these years will reverberate in humorous, sad and bright pictures of the "Notes of a Young Doctor", reminiscent of Chekhov's prose.
Returning to Kyiv, Bulgakov tries to go into private practice as a venereologist. Least of all wants to be involved in politics. “Being an intellectual does not mean being an idiot,” he notes later. But the year is 1918, the civil war, the kaleidoscopic change of power in Kyiv. Later, he will write that he personally experienced 14 coups in Kyiv at that time. As a volunteer, he was not at all going to go anywhere, but as a doctor he was constantly mobilized either by the Petliurists or by the Red Army.
Not of his own free will, he ended up in Denikin's army and was sent with a train through Rostov to the North Caucasus. In his moods of that time, as the literary critic V. Lakshin noted, only one thing was loudest - fatigue from the fratricidal war.
Having fallen ill with typhus, he remains in Vladikavkaz when the whites retreat. In order not to die of hunger, he went to cooperate with the Bolsheviks. He worked in the arts department of the city revolutionary committee, arranged literary evenings, gave lectures on Pushkin, Chekhov, talked about music, theater, wrote several plays and himself participated in their productions on the stage of the local theater. He possessed artistry, sensitivity to any theatricality, he was drawn to the stage from his youth. Bulgakov considered his first plays (“Self-Defence”, “Days of the Turbins”, “Clay Suitors”, “Sons of the Mullah”, “Paris Communards”) to be imperfect and subsequently destroyed.
Vladikavkaz 1920-1921. Hunger. Cholera. Poverty. Thousands of homeless orphans who not only have nothing but nothing to feed them. It is necessary to impose on the townspeople "clothes duty" (each employee is obliged to hand over a plate or a metal spoon). And at the same time a decisive attack on illiteracy. And selfless propaganda of classical Russian and world culture.
The arts sub-department arranges "Enlightenment Weeks". These days there are free performances, concerts and lectures for workers and Red Army soldiers. M. Bulgakov took an active part in the "Week of Enlightenment", which took place on March 14-20, 1921. This week inspired him to create a feuilleton of the same name, which was published in the Vladikavkaz newspaper Kommunist on April 1, 1921. This feuilleton is the earliest written by the writer during this period and the only surviving newspaper published in Vladikavkaz. (Trained students read the feuilleton “Week of Enlightenment”. During the performance, the music of D. Verdi from the opera “La Traviata” sounds).
In addition to feuilletons, Bulgakov began to print dramatic scenes, short stories, and satirical poems.
In the autumn of 1921 he left for Moscow, having already finally realized that he was a writer. He leaves medicine forever. Finding himself in Moscow without money, without influential patrons, he runs around the editorial offices, looking for work. After a short stay in the Moscow LITO (Literary Department of the Main Political Education at the People's Commissariat of Education), Bulgakov became an employee of the Nakanune newspaper, published in Berlin, and the Moscow Gudok, where he works together with young writers, who, like himself, still have fame. in front are Yu. Olesha, V. Kataev, I. Ilf, E. Petrov.
He begins to keep a diary, in which he carefully recorded the elusive features of everyday life: the weather in the yard, prices in stores, did not neglect indications of what they ate and drank, how they dressed, what transport his contemporaries rode, the people he met on a visit and at home. Subsequently, as is known, at the end of the 1920s, he was searched, all manuscripts and diaries were seized, which later, after the writer filed an application, where he wrote that if his literary works were not returned to him, he would no longer can consider himself a writer and defiantly leave the All-Russian Union of Writers (there was such a predecessor of the Union of Soviet Writers), were returned to him. Arriving home, Bulgakov threw the diaries into the oven, Mikhail Afanasyevich did not keep diaries, but encouraged his wife to keep at least the most modest notes; sometimes he dictated them himself, standing at the window and looking out into the street. “He felt like a biased chronicler of time and his own destiny” (V. Lakshin).
Those who met Bulgakov in the Moscow editorial offices in the 1920s remember him mostly as a man without talkativeness, as if guarding something in himself, and, despite outbursts of bright humor, alienated in the company of young enthusiastic newspapermen. He caused amazement with his doha, his starched plastron (the tightly starched chest of a man's shirt, worn under an open waistcoat with a tailcoat or tuxedo), a monocle on a lace. Bulgakov's monocle represented, as it were, opposition to the futuristic yellow jacket. Outrageousness was declared there, a break with tradition, here - a demonstrative adherence to it. In part, this was an element of theatricality, never alien to Bulgakov. But more - a position of self-defense, non-admission to one's "I", some kind of mask that hid slight vulnerability.
Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya (wife of M.A. Bulgakov in 1924-1942) recalls her acquaintance with Bulgakov at one of the literary evenings in 1924. “Bulgakov's name was already known. He then published in the Berlin "On the Eve" his "Notes on the Cuffs" and feuilletons. It was impossible not to pay attention to the unusually fresh language of his works, masterful dialogue, unobtrusive subtle humor. I liked his stuff. And here he is in front of me: blond, smoothly parted hair, blue eyes ... He looks like Chaliapin. Dressed in a deaf sweatshirt without a belt. I think he looked a little funny. And his varnished yellow shoes seemed "chicken". I felt funny. When we met, he said bitterly: “If an elegant and perfumed lady knew how hard it was for me to get them ... She would not laugh. I realized that he is very touchy and easily hurt.
Soon Lyubov Evgenievna and Mikhail Afanasevich got married. Their first family hearth was a rickety outbuilding in the courtyard of house number 9 on Obukhov (now Chisty) Lane, which they called the "dovecote". Bulgakov then worked as a feuilletonist in the newspaper Gudok. In the evening, he brought home letters from readers and work correspondents from the editorial office, Lyubov Evgenievna read aloud, and together they selected the most interesting ones for feuilletons. Bulgakov worked quickly, somehow in one gulp. He himself wrote about it this way: “... composing a feuilleton in lines 75-100 took me, including smoking and whistling, from 18 to 20 minutes. His correspondence on a typewriter, including giggling with a typist, is 8 minutes. In short, it was all over in half an hour.”
The satirical gift of the writer was clearly manifested in the story "Diaboliad" (1923). The content of the “Diaboliad” is the fate of a small man, an ordinary cog in a bureaucratic machine, who at some point fell out of his nest, got lost among the gears and drives and rushed about among them, trying to cling to the general move again, until he went crazy.
The Diaboliad was not appreciated by either friends or Bulgakov's girlfriends. She was noticed and generally praised by one of the greatest masters of literature, E. Zamyatin.
Meanwhile, there is something in it that the reader of today cannot help appreciating to the highest degree. Firstly, the story of the hero, Korotkov, “a gentle, quiet blond, allows you to see and almost physically feel the defenselessness and powerlessness of an ordinary person in the face of the power of a self-born and self-adjusting bureaucratic apparatus. Secondly, it leads to a very important and certainly true idea that it is not so much the existence of this apparatus that is dangerous for society, but the fact that people get used to the system of relations that they enjoy and begin to consider them natural, no matter how fantastically ugly they are. did not accept.
At that time, no one attached significant importance to Bulgakov's warning. The Diaboliad did not cause any unrest in literary circles. But the next two stories made me draw attention to themselves. And what a close one!
In 1924, M. Bulgakov wrote two grotesque fantasy novels: "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog". The fate of these works is not the same. "Fatal Eggs" was published in the same year, M. Gorky liked it very much, but was crushed in Soviet criticism. "Heart of a Dog" came to the Soviet reader in 1988, when Bulgakov's name was surrounded by fame. Soon the story was filmed, and its performances are staged in many theaters of the country.
In each of them, a handsome professor makes a discovery that revolutionizes science. Professor Peisikov ("Fatal Eggs") opens a red ray, under the influence of which all living things acquire the ability to increase to colossal sizes. Most likely, Bulgakov used the plot of "Food of the Gods" by G. Wells. The hero of "The Heart of a Dog" Professor Preobrazhensky, in accordance with his "speaking surname", transforms the mangy dog Sharik into a man. However, both discoveries are of no use. With caustic sarcasm, the writer shows how an enthusiastic practitioner with the gloomy surname Rokk, who took advantage of Peisikov’s discovery, in the conditions of confusion and irresponsibility prevailing in the country, instead of giant chickens, raised a huge number of overseas reptiles (crocodiles, boas) who went on a campaign to Moscow. The capital was saved by a miracle - in the summer it suddenly snowed, and the southern reptiles froze. But in a panic, the inventor-professor died, and his discovery, and Rocca's wife, and many other people.
Mankind, Bulgakov argued with his story, has not morally matured to fulfill the role of the Creator, to make history.
This thought runs even sharper through the story "Heart of a Dog". Citizen Sharikov, who emerged from a dog, turns out to be a boor, a militant ignoramus - one of the inevitable consequences of the synthesis of the slavish psychology of a cur and a lumpen proletariat. Sharikov is much more endearing to the demagogy of the chairman of the house committee, Shvonder, than to the long and hard work of mastering culture. The writer mercilessly and evilly depicts Shvonder and his team as loafers, envious people who propagate hatred for the intelligentsia, culture, and promote egalitarianism. Long before 1937, the satirist guessed those social types who, having unleashed repressions, themselves fell at the hands of the balls they had raised. However, even here, even to a greater extent than in the Fatal Eggs, the ending is quite happy. Preobrazhensky's second operation returns his monster to its former canine state.
In both stories, the writer was perhaps the first in literature to speak about the moral responsibility of a 20th-century scientist for his discoveries. They (and a little later in the play "Adam and Eve") contain a warning that omnipotent science can not destroy the entire globe in unskillful or evil hands.
Almost simultaneously with the named stories, the writer creates the novel The White Guard (1925). He wrote his first novel in Moscow in 1923-1924, at night, after exhausting newspaper work.
The civil war had just ended, its tragic days, months and years were still clearly alive in the memory, and therefore this book about the Russian intelligentsia, “suddenly and menacingly” thrown into the very crucible of history, was so sharply received. A spiritual catastrophe, a military defeat, a sense of hopelessness haunt the Turbin family, dear to the author, whose fate the revolution began to command imperiously. The element itself, akin to that all-sweeping blizzard that rages in Blok's poem "The Twelve", breaks into the peaceful, comfortable life of the Turbins, trying to "inscribe" M. Bulgakov into Soviet literature. Critics focused on the social plane of the novel. In it, they say, the inevitability of the victory of the revolution and the death of the white movement is proved from the opposite.
Even if M. Bulgakov's novel only realistically portrayed the picture of the civil war with all its complexities, tragedies and contradictions, this would be a fundamentally new phenomenon in Russian literature, a phenomenon that anticipated the books of white generals P. Kornilov and A. Denikin, Russian writers abroad, works about the revolution and the war of Soviet authors. The novel “The Defeat” by A. Fadeev had not yet been created by that time, “Russia, Washed with Blood” by A. Vesely had not yet been written, the young M. Sholokhov was just writing the first pages of “The Quiet Don” ... But the whole point is that the theme of the revolution and the civil war, the fate of social movements and the role of the intelligentsia in the revolution in the "White Guard" does not constitute its main content, which is the uniqueness of this novel.
The White Guard is not so much a novel about the revolution as a story about the trials that befell the people of the 20th century, revealing the essence of a person on his earthly path. It is no coincidence that the original title of the works is "Cross".
From the first pages to the last, a hymn to human comfort, warmth of friendship and hearts is heard in the novel. Cream curtains, a tiled stove, porcelain cups, musical notes, clocks ringing in different rooms, a green lampshade on a lamp, roses in a vase create a special atmosphere in the Turbins' house, warming up both officers and civilians. The revival of Alexei Turbin begins in his own home, among the usual things.
At the end of the novel, many characters find peace and happiness: in love. In music, family comfort.
M. Bulgakov created a novel about the triune path of Eternity, where everything is correct; stories where everyone is in a fight, and people who make their own lives.
At the heart of the book is the author's beloved life, that life cannot be stopped. But Bulgakov believes that life should proceed in an evolutionary way: he is not a supporter of the revolution. And about the civil war, he wants to say so that "the sky becomes hot." “Faith in myself was born, and ambitious writing dreams stirred the imagination.”
In his first novel, The White Guard, Bulgakov will take a position above the fight: he will not push the Reds and Whites together. His whites are at war with the Petliurites, the bearers of the nationalist idea.
The novel reveals the writer's humanistic position - fratricidal war is terrible. Let us recall the prophetic dream of Alexei the turbine.
God says to Wahmister Zhilin: “... I have neither profit nor loss from your faith. One believes, the other does not believe, but you all have the same actions - they were killed in the battlefield ... ". And the heroes of the "White Guard", considering themselves involved in everything that happens in the world, are ready to share the blame for the bloodshed.
For the main characters: the Turbins, Myshlaevsky, Shervinsky, Nai-Turs, representing the Russian intelligentsia, honor is a high, eternal concept, it lives with them. Therefore, these heroes are so close to Bulgakov himself.
The first part of The White Guard was published in the Rossiya magazine and attracted the attention of the Moscow Art Theatre. The theater has been looking for a modern play for a long time. Mikhail Afanasyevich was invited for negotiations and then began to work on the staging of the novel. On October 5, 1926, the play "Days of the Turbins" was played for the first time on the stage of the Art Theater. So Turbines found a second life on the stage of the best theater in the country. The play was a huge success. This was the first independent work of the young generation of the Moscow Art Theater. The names of the actors Khmelev, Dobronravov, Sokolova, Tarasova, Yanshin, Trudkin, Stanitsyn sparkled, immediately winning the audience. The roles of the heroes they played remained inextricably linked with their acting fame.
1) The fate of the play was very difficult; 2) With the production at the Moscow Art Theater, real fame came to Bulgakov, but hard days also came; 3) Immediately after the premiere, the author was subjected to severe criticism, or rather, harassment, by a whole group of rapovites who accused Bulgakov of "apologia" for the white movement; 4) After the premiere of the play "Days of the Turbins" in the future Vakhtangov Theater, "Zoyka's apartment" was staged. But soon both plays were taken off the stage.
The play “Running”, written in 1927, was promised success not only by Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, the actors of the Art Theater, but also by M. Gorky. However, she did not reach the stage, because the author forgave his hero - the white officer Khludov, who was punished by his own conscience for the spilled blood.
During these years, an atmosphere of persecution was created around Bulgakov himself. Untalented brothers really wanted him to leave the country. And it is no coincidence that among Bulgakov's friends, or at least close acquaintances who were in his house, writers were in the minority. This environment did not become his own. For the last (and creatively most important) ten years, he rarely went to visit. He received guests at his place: it happened both hospitably and cheerfully. But the owner of the house was wary of casual acquaintances, sensitive to possible envy, trickery, and so on. It is characteristic that he was more willing to communicate with the writers of the older generation - V. Veresaev, E. Zamyatin, M. Voloshin. Of the young, F. Faiko and I. Ilf turned out to be closer than others. There was no strong friendship with V. Kaverin, Yu. Olesha, V. Pilnyak. A. Fadeev visited him and met him only in the last months of his illness. Then B. Pasternak and K. Fedin appeared in his house.
In 1929, his plays were filmed everywhere. Bulgakov was not published. It was only at Stalin's inexplicable capricious order that Bulgakov received a "protection certificate" (B. Pasternak's words) for The Days of the Turbins. For Bulgakov, this meant that part of his life was returned to him. They say that Stalin himself visited this performance fifteen times.
By the spring of 1930, deprived, in his words, of "fire and water", the writer reached fatal despair. He was looking for any job, tried to get hired as a worker, a janitor - they did not take him. He began to think about shooting himself.
By this time, all talented, extraordinary writers had already received labels. Bulgakov was relegated to the extreme flank, called "internal emigrant", "an accomplice of the enemy ideology". And it was no longer just about literary reputation, but about the whole fate and life.
In March 1930, his new play about Molière was banned.
He rejected humiliating complaining walks. On March 28, 1930, he wrote a letter to the Soviet government, filled with honor, dignity and despair: “I am asking for a full-time position as an extra. If it’s impossible to be an extra, I ask for the position of a stage worker. If this is also impossible, I ask the Soviet government to approach me as it sees fit, but to do something, because I, a playwright who wrote 5 plays, is known in the USSR and abroad (“White Guard” In the West there was published in its entirety in 1927-1929), there is at the moment - poverty, street, death. He wrote that he was not going to create a communist play on the advice of "well-wishers" and repent. He spoke of his right as a writer to think and see in his own way (quote on the board).
On April 18, his famous telephone conversation with Stalin took place, where Bulgakov uttered the words that later became famous: “I have been thinking a lot lately whether a Russian writer can live outside his homeland, and it seems to me that he cannot.”
After a conversation with Stalin, Bulgakov was hired by the Moscow Art Theater. He worked as a director, wrote dramatizations. Commissioned by the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater in 1931-1932, he wrote a staging of War and Peace, but the performance was never staged. In the Art Theater there was his staging of Gogol's Dead Souls (1930-1932), where he allowed himself great freedom of "creativity" with a genius.
He even played the role of a judge in the performance of the Moscow Art Theater "The Pickwick Club". Based on Gogol's poem "The Government Inspector", he wrote a script for a movie, created a play based on Cervantes' "Don Quixote" and the libretto of Maupassant's opera "Rachel".
“And so, towards the end of my writing work, I was forced to compose dramatizations. What a brilliant ending, right? - wrote Bulgakov with sad self-irony P.S. Popov on May 7, 1932.
Before the author of the future "Theatrical Novel" decided to cast aside, in a lyrical-ironic confession, a glance at the tragic experience of his own writer's fate, he was aware of his position and the mournful inevitability of bearing his cross on the fate of another artist: in the brilliant book "The Life of Monsieur de Molière" ( 1932-1933), written for the Gorky series "The Life of Remarkable People", one of the best to this day, and the drama "Molière" ("The Cabal of the Holy", 1929-1936).
In the last decade of his life, the plays "Adam and Eve" (1931), "Ivan Vasilyevich" (1935-1936), "The Last Days" - about Pushkin were written, work continued on the "sunset novel" "The Master and Margarita" , the beginning of work on which dates back to 1928-1929. Bulgakov dictated the last inserts in the novel to jelly in February 1940, 3 weeks before his death. He wrote the novel for a total of 12 years, corrected and reworked what was written, leaving the manuscript for many years and returning to it again. Simultaneously and side by side, work was going on on other works, but this novel was a book with which he was unable to part, a novel-fate, a novel-testament. She was a synthesis of everything that was rethought and re-felt by Bulgakov.
M.A. Bulgakov's wife, Elena Sergeevna, known to the whole world as Margarita, helped to say with the last novel all the main things in his life. She became her husband's guardian angel. In February 1929, the Master met Elena Sergeevna, and in May he began the novel The Master and Margarita. Elena Sergeevna never doubted the Master, supported his talent with unconditional faith. She recalled: “Mikhail Afanasyevich once told me: “The whole world was against me - and I am alone. Now we are together, and I'm not afraid of anything.
Elena Sergeevna brought love and life into Bulgakov's life. But happiness did not last long. Bulgakov began to go blind and lose his speech. He was dying. He was a doctor and could predict the course of the disease. But he was Bulgakov and that is why he said: “Here I will die soon, they will start publishing me everywhere, theaters will snatch my plays from each other and you will be invited to perform with memories of me. You will go on stage in a black dress with a beautiful neckline on your chest, wring your hands and say: “My angel flew off ...” And they started to laugh ...
The disease progressed, and on March 10, 1940, Bulgakov died. 6 days after the death of Mikhail Afanasyevich, Anna Akhmatova came to the widow, paid her last debt - poems:
This is me instead
grave roses,
Instead of incense smoking;
You lived so hard until the end
denounced
Great contempt...
God and the devil together ordered to give the Master peace without giving light. Unworthy, they say, of the world, he did not live so righteously. And indeed - the black glasses of the last days ...
Everyone who remembered Mikhail Afanasyevich noted the clarity and light of his blue eyes. And then blindness - he prophesied, perhaps, to himself ...
But besides earthly villains, heavenly arbiters and underground rulers, there is something else in life.
“When he died, his eyes opened wide - and light, light poured out of them. He looked straight up in front of him - and saw, saw something, I'm sure (and everyone who was here confirmed this later). This was spectacular". (From the memoirs of E.S. Bulgakova).
To her dying husband, Elena Sergeevna vowed to print the novel. I tried it six or seven times with no success. But the strength of her loyalty overcame all obstacles. In 1967-1968, the Moscow magazine published the novel The Master and Margarita. And in the 80-90s, Bulgakov's archives were opened, almost the first interesting studies were written.
The name of the Master is now known to the whole world.
2. Lesson summary. Conversation with students (summary help)
What did you learn about M.A. at the lesson today? Bulgakov?
What do you think of the personality of the writer?
Conclusion: Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov remained in the memory of his contemporaries as a man whose main personality traits were independence and firmness of judgment, resilience in difficult trials, a highly developed self-esteem, subtle humor, the art of being himself in all cases.
3. Homework:
Read the novel "The Master and Margarita" in brief.
- Zemsky doctor
About his work, Mikhail Bulgakov said this: “Black and mystical colors, which depict the countless deformities of our life, the poison with which my tongue is saturated<...>, and most importantly - the image of the terrible features of my people. During the life of the writer, his plays were forbidden to be staged, and stories and novels were published only in the 1960s. Now the works "Heart of a Dog", "White Guard", "Master and Margarita" are read from school.
"Throughout an intelligent family": Bulgakov's childhood
Mikhail Bulgakov in childhood. Photo: empire-ross.rf
Mikhail Bulgakov (top left) with his family. 1902. Photo: wikipedia.org
Mikhail Bulgakov in his youth. Photo: wikipedia.org
Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kyiv. His father, Athanasius Bulgakov, was a professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy. He was fluent in Greek, German, French, English, read Old Church Slavonic. Mother, Varvara Bulgakova, worked as a teacher in a gymnasium, but after the wedding she devoted herself to children. The future writer was the eldest child: later, children Vera, Nadezhda, Barbara, Nikolai, Ivan and Elena were born in the Bulgakov family. Salary at the academy was not enough, and in order to feed his family, his father, in addition to his main job, taught history at the Institute for Noble Maidens and served in the office of the Kyiv censor. Konstantin Paustovsky wrote in The Book of Wanderings: “The Bulgakov family was well known in Kyiv - a huge, branched, intelligent family through and through<...>Outside the windows of their apartment, the sounds of the piano, the voices of young people, running around, laughing, arguing and singing were constantly heard..
The Bulgakovs lived in a picturesque place - on Andreevsky Spusk. In the essay "Kyiv-city" the writer later recalled: “In the spring, the gardens bloomed in white, the Tsar’s Garden was dressed in green, the sun broke through all the windows, lit fires in them. And the Dnieper! And the sunsets!. In order for the children to spend more time in nature, the parents bought a dacha. Since 1900, the family moved every summer to the village of Bucha near Kyiv - there they had a one-story five-room house with two verandas.
The Bulgakovs often had music. In the evenings, my mother played the piano pieces by Fryderyk Chopin. Sometimes the father took the violin in his hands, and the parents sang romances together. Children were often taken to summer concerts in the Merchant's Garden over the Dnieper, they tried to get tickets to the opera. The family went to the popular at that time "Faust" with Fyodor Chaliapin in the title role several times. The Bulgakovs also staged charity performances in which household members played. Performances were held either in shelters for the disabled, or in the apartments of friends.
The mother was involved in the education of the children - "bright queen", as Mikhail Bulgakov called it. She instilled in them a love of reading: there was a large library in the house. The writer's sister Elena Bulgakova said: “Parents, by the way, somehow skillfully raised us, they didn’t bother us: “Oh, what are you reading? Oh, what did you take?" We had different books. Mikhail Bulgakov read the works of Alexander Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy, the adventure novels of Fenimore Cooper, and the fairy tales of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. His favorite writer was Nikolai Gogol. Bulgakov began to write early and himself. He composed short stories about city dwellers.
In 1901, Mikhail Bulgakov was enrolled in the most prestigious school in the city - the First Kyiv Men's Gymnasium. Studying was easy for him: the future writer finished the first, second, third and sixth grades with awards. The upbringing in the gymnasium was progressive: the students were addressed as "you" and allowed to express their own opinion. Together with the future writer, Konstantin Paustovsky studied. He recalled: “No one gave such caustic and“ sealing ”nicknames as Bulgakov<...>“You have a poisonous eye and a harmful tongue,” Inspector Bodyansky told him with contrition. - Directly eager for a scandal, although you grew up in a respectable professorial family!. Mikhail Bulgakov sang in the gymnasium church choir, played football and skated.
“Bulgakov was filled with jokes, inventions, hoaxes. All this went freely, easily, arose for any reason. This was an amazing generosity, the power of imagination, the talent of an improviser.<...>There was a world, and in this world existed as one of its links - his creative youthful imagination "
Konstantin Paustovsky, writer
“They laughed terribly under the crown”: marriage and study at the Faculty of Medicine
Mikhail Bulgakov while studying at Kiev University. 1910s Photo: moiarussia.ru
The Bulgakov family in Bucha. Top row from left to right: Mikhail Bulgakov with his mother Varvara Bulgakova and first wife Tatiana Lappa. 1913. Photo: wikipedia.org
Michael Bulgakov. 1910s Photo: Lara Simonova's family archive / russiainphoto.ru
In 1907, Mikhail Bulgakov's father died of an illness. The mother was left alone with six children. The Kyiv Theological Academy paid the family a monthly pension, but it was not enough. Then Varvara Bulgakova began to teach at evening courses for women. As the eldest son, Mikhail Bulgakov began to look for work to help his mother: he was engaged in tutoring, and in the summer he served as a conductor on the railway. Despite financial difficulties, all the children continued to study at the prestigious gymnasiums in Kyiv. Mother said: “I cannot give you a dowry or capital. But I can give you the only capital you will have is education.”.
In 1909, Mikhail Bulgakov graduated from the gymnasium and received a certificate. In July of the same year, he entered the medical faculty of Kyiv University. The graduate quickly decided on a profession: two of his uncles on his mother's side worked as doctors in Moscow and Warsaw, and both earned decent money. This factor has become decisive.
In 1911, Bulgakov met Tatyana Lappa, who came from Saratov to visit relatives for the holidays. Her aunt was friends with Bulgakov's mother, and the future writer was asked to show the girl the city. Tatyana Lappa recalled: “For days on end, not noticing our tiredness, we wandered through Kyiv streets and parks, visited museums. Wherever he took me. Often visited Vladimirskaya Gorka<...>And in the evenings we went to the Opera House.”. They fell in love with each other, but soon Tatyana Lappa had to return home. Bulgakov's sister wrote in her diary: “He always strives to Saratov, where she lives, abandoned classes at the university, did not go to the 3rd year”.
The next time the lovers saw each other only in 1912, when Tatyana Lappa was admitted to the historical and philological department of the Kyiv Higher Women's Courses. In 1913 they got married. There was no money: the couple did not know how to save money and spent what Father Lappa translated on the same day.
“Of course, I didn’t have any veil, I didn’t have a wedding dress either - I somehow did all the money that my father sent. Mom came to the wedding - she was horrified. I had a pleated linen skirt, my mother bought a blouse. For some reason they laughed terribly under the crown. We rode home in a carriage after church. There were few guests at dinner. I remember there were a lot of flowers, most of all - daffodils "
Tatyana Lappa, Bulgakov's first wife
When World War I began, Mikhail Bulgakov was in his fourth year. There were many wounded, and medical students were sent on duty to the Red Cross infirmary. Tatyana Lappa also got a job at the hospital as a nurse. In 1915, during a recruiting campaign at the university, Bulgakov volunteered for the front, but due to chronic kidney disease, he was recognized "unfit for military field service".
Zemsky doctor
Mikhail Bulgakov in his room (medical office). Kyiv. 1913. Photo: Nikolai Bulgakov / nasledie-rus.ru
Michael Bulgakov. Photo: persons-info.com
In 1916, Bulgakov passed his final exams and received a "doctor's degree with honors." The future writer did not even wait for the solemn presentation of diplomas: he left for the Southwestern Front as a volunteer of the Red Cross. In the summer of 1916, there were often battles there - General Brusilov launched the famous Operation Brusilovsky Breakthrough. Mikhail Bulgakov worked in a front-line hospital, first in Kamenetz-Podolsky, then in the liberated city of Chernivtsi. However, in September he was recalled. All experienced doctors went to the front, and there was a catastrophic shortage of people in rural hospitals. Then, recent graduates of medical faculties began to be called from service and distributed to remote villages. Mikhail Bulgakov was appointed to the Smolensk province - he became the head and sole doctor of the Nikolskaya zemstvo hospital in the Sychevsky district.
The work was hard, Bulgakov did everything: he took birth, amputated his arms and legs, treated abscesses. In the report, the council wrote: "He proved himself to be an energetic and tireless worker in the Zemstvo field". During the year, the young doctor received 15361 patients. During this period, Bulgakov began to write stories about what happened to him while working: "Star Rash", "Towel with a Rooster", "Steel Throat". Later they were included in the cycle "Notes of a Young Doctor". In 1917, he contracted diphtheria while treating a sick child. To relieve pain, Bulgakov injected himself with morphine. The substance immediately became addictive.
In September 1917, Mikhail Bulgakov, at his request, was transferred to the Vyazemsky hospital. He became the head of the infectious and venereal department.
“And now I saw them again at last, seductive light bulbs! There was a live policeman at the crossroads<...>in a booth they were selling yesterday's Moscow newspapers containing amazing news, not far away Moscow trains were whistling invitingly. In a word, it was a civilization, Babylon, Nevsky Prospect"
Mikhail Bulgakov, story "Morphine"
In December 1917, Bulgakov went to Moscow for permission to return to Kyiv, but was refused. There were riots in the city - there was a revolution. Bulgakov wrote: “Recently, on a trip to Moscow, I had to see with my own eyes what I would not like to see anymore. I saw crowds smash windows on trains, I saw people being beaten. I saw destroyed and burnt houses in Moscow. I saw hungry tails at the shops, hunted and miserable officers..
From a white military doctor to a revolutionary committee worker
Mikhail Bulgakov with his first wife - Tatyana Lappa among the theater actors. 1919. Vladikavkaz. Photo: wikipedia.org
Michael Bulgakov. Around 1918. Museum of M.A. Bulgakov, Moscow
Bulgakov was released from service only in February 1918. The doctor and his wife immediately returned to Kyiv. Their train was one of the last - soon the German troops captured the city and the occupation began. Mikhail Bulgakov decided to specialize in venereology and opened a private appointment. Overcame addiction to morphine. Now he wrote in the evenings. Bulgakov conceived the cycle "Notes of a Young Doctor", excerpts of which he read at home.
Power in Ukraine is constantly changing. After the German occupation, the country was ruled by Hetman Skoropadsky, then there were Symon Petliura and the Ukrainian People's Republic, who were replaced by the Red Army. Bulgakov wrote: “In 1919, while living in the city of Kyiv, he was consistently called to the service as a doctor by all the authorities that occupied the city”. He had to hide or run away. Tatyana Lappa recalled how her husband avoided being drafted into Petliura's army: “He later said that he somehow lagged behind a little, then a little more, behind a pole, after another, and rushed into the alley to run. So I ran, so my heart was pounding, I thought there would be a heart attack ". However, in September 1919, Bulgakov failed to escape - he was sent as a military doctor to Vladikavkaz. His wife decided to go with him.
In February 1920, the Whites left Vladikavkaz - the Reds were advancing on the city. Bulgakov could not leave with the army: shortly before that, he fell ill with typhus. And when he recovered, a revolutionary committee was already sitting in the city. It was necessary to decide how to earn a living. A doctor's diploma threatened with another mobilization and sending to the places of hostilities, so Mikhail Bulgakov decided to change his specialty and become a writer.
He got a job at the Vladikavkaz Revolutionary Committee, where he was in charge of the literary and theatrical section. Bulgakov took his duties responsibly: almost every day he organized literary evenings, public readings, lectures on the history of culture. At the same time, he staged plays on the theater stage that he wrote himself. In 1920, two premieres took place: a comedy about gangs during the Civil War, Self-Defense, and a drama about the collapse of old ideals, The Turbine Brothers. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote to his cousin Konstantin: "Turbines" four times in a month went with a bang of success<...>How I wish you were here when the Turbines first came on. You can’t imagine what sadness was in my soul that the play was going on in a provincial hole, that I was four years late with what I should have started doing long ago - writing..
First literary works
Michael Bulgakov. Photo: diletant.media
From left to right: writers Valentin Kataev, Mikhail Bulgakov, Yuri Olesha at the funeral of Vladimir Mayakovsky. April 17, 1930. Photo: Ilya Ilf / askbooka.ru
Mikhail Bulgakov's story "The Diaboliad" in the literary and artistic collection "Nedra". Moscow: Mospoligraph Publishing House, 1924
In 1921 Mikhail Bulgakov moved to Moscow. At first he worked as a chronicler in the Commercial and Industrial Bulletin, after its closure he moved to the Rabochy newspaper, and then got a job as a letter processor in the Gudok publication. Money was sorely lacking, and Bulgakov took on any job. In his diary dated January 26, 1922, he wrote: “I entered a wandering group of actors: I will play on the outskirts. Fee 125 per performance. Killer little. Of course, because of these performances, there will be no time to write. vicious circle<...>We eat from hand to mouth with my wife ". Feuilletons and essays for Gudok were then written by famous writers: Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, Valentin Kataev, Yuri Olesha, Isaac Babel. From April 1922, Mikhail Bulgakov also joined them. The writer's texts were published in almost every issue of the newspaper - during this period, humorous stories "The Adventures of Chichikov", "Red Crown", "Cup of Life" were published. Bulgakov ridiculed the philistines, opportunists and liars. Often he drew ideas from notes sent to the editor by work correspondents.
At the same time, the former doctor wrote for the emigrant pro-Soviet publication Nakanune. In the literary supplement, the newspapers published the first chapters of the story "Notes on the Cuffs" - a partly autobiographical work about the hungry life of a modern writer. Six months later, the second part of the text was published, this time in the Rossiya magazine.
Mikhail Bulgakov devoted more and more time to literature. In 1923 he began work on the novel The White Guard. During the day he wrote feuilletons for the "Beep", in the evenings he worked on the work. Tatyana Lappa recalled: “He wrote The White Guard at night and liked me to sit around and sew. His hands and feet were getting cold, he told me: “Hurry, hurry hot water”; I heated water on a kerosene stove, he put his hands into a basin of hot water.. The novel described the events of the Civil War in Ukraine through the life of a large intelligent family. All the heroes had prototypes - relatives or Kyiv friends of Mikhail Bulgakov. The writer even gave the family the maiden name of his grandmother - Turbine. In the essay "I Had a Dream," he wrote: “I remember that I really wanted to convey how good it is when it’s warm at home, the clock that strikes towers in the dining room, sleepy slumber in bed, books and frost”. Bulgakov compared the novel with "War and Peace": the characters involuntarily found themselves in the center of political events and had to make a choice.
In the summer of 1923, Bulgakov wrote The Diaboliad, a story about the clerk Korotkov, who was driven mad by the Soviet bureaucracy. The work was published in 1924 in the Nedra magazine. After the release of the text, the writer Yevgeny Zamyatin noted: “The author, undoubtedly, has the right instinct in choosing a compositional setting: fantasy, rooted in everyday life, fast, like in a movie, changing scenes<...>The absolute value of this thing by Bulgakov - very thoughtless - is not great, but, apparently, one can expect good works from the author.. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote quickly. Already in the autumn of 1923, he completed the story "Khan's Fire". Soon Bulgakov joined the All-Russian Union of Writers.
Moscow Art Theater and the Vakhtangov Theatre: Bulgakov - playwright
Mikhail Bulgakov (second from left) with his second wife Lyubov Belozerskaya. 1926. Moscow. M.A. Museum Bulgakov, Moscow
A scene from Ilya Sudakov's play Days of the Turbins. 1926. Moscow Art Academic Theater named after A.P. Chekhov, Moscow. Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
Playbill of Ilya Sudakov's performance "Days of the Turbins". 1926. Photo: magisteria.ru
In the winter of 1924, at the evening of the Nakanune newspaper, Mikhail Bulgakov met Lyubov Belozerskaya. During the revolution, she emigrated to France with her husband, then divorced and returned to Soviet Russia. Soon Bulgakov broke up with Tatyana Lappa and married Belozerskaya.
“It was impossible not to pay attention to his unusually fresh language, masterful dialogue and such unobtrusive humor. I liked everything that belonged to his pen<...>He was dressed in a deaf black sweatshirt without a belt, "undershirt". I'm not used to such a masculine silhouette; it seemed a little comical to me, as well as patent leather boots with a bright yellow top, which I immediately dubbed "chicken"
Lyubov Belozerskaya, memoirs "Oh, honey of memories"
In 1924, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote the fantastic story The Fatal Eggs. The writer moved the action of the work into the future, in 1928. The story brought fame to Bulgakov: it was published in two magazines at once - Nedra and Krasnaya Panorama, and in 1925 it was included in the first collection of the writer, Diaboliad. Gorky wrote in a letter to Mikhail Slonimsky on May 8, 1925: “I liked Bulgakov very much, very<...>» . In the same year, two parts of the novel The White Guard were published in the Rossiya magazine. Bulgakov dedicated the work to his new wife. However, the entire "White Guard" was not published: the magazine went bankrupt, and the printing of the last part of the work was canceled.
In April 1925, Mikhail Bulgakov received a letter from director Boris Vershilov. He suggested that the writer stage the novel The White Guard on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater Studio. To do this, it was necessary to rework it into a play. A few days later, Bulgakov was also contacted by the Vakhtangov Theater - the request was the same. The writer made a choice in favor of the Moscow Art Theater. All summer Bulgakov adapted the work for the theatre. The teacher and critic Pavel Markov urged Bulgakov on June 6: “The theater is very interested in the play you promised<...>". In September, the writer had already read a draft version to the troupe. The drama had a new name - "Days of the Turbins".
Instead of The White Guard, which Bulgakov gave to the Moscow Art Theater, the writer promised the Vakhtangov Theater a new play. In December 1925, he finished Zoya's apartment. According to the plot, the main character opened a dating house in her apartment under the guise of a sewing workshop. Bulgakov said: “This is a tragic buffoonery, in which a number of businessmen of the Nepman style are shown in the form of masks these days in Moscow”.
In the autumn of 1926, two premieres of Bulgakov's plays took place at once. On October 5, the Days of the Turbins were played at the Moscow Art Theater, and on the 28th, the premiere of Zoya's Apartment took place at the Vakhtangov Theater. "Days of the Turbins" was shown 13 times in the first month, and all the time there was a full house in the hall. Zoya's apartment was just as popular. However, critics did not accept the play: Bulgakov was scolded for his sympathy for the white movement, "domestic counterrevolution" and "Ideology of a 100% layman".
“Now I am destroyed”: a search, prohibitions and Stalin’s call
Michael Bulgakov. M.A. Museum Bulgakov, Moscow
Mikhail Bulgakov (sitting in the center) with the troupe of the Moscow Art Academic Theater A.P. Chekhov. 1926. Moscow. M.A. Museum Bulgakov, Moscow
Michael Bulgakov. M.A. Museum Bulgakov, Moscow
On May 7, 1926, a search came to the writer's apartment. The Politburo launched a campaign against the Smenovekhites, emigrants who advocated reconciliation with Soviet Russia. A few days earlier, Isaiah Lezhnev, editor of the Rossiya magazine, where Mikhail Bulgakov published, was arrested and deported abroad.
“One fine evening,” this is how all the stories begin, “one fine evening they knocked on the dovecote (we didn’t have a call) and my question “who is there?” the cheerful voice of the tenant replied: "It's me, I brought guests to you!" Two civilians stood on the threshold: a man in pince-nez and just a short man - investigator Slavkin and his assistant with the search.
Lyubov Belozerskaya, Bulgakov's second wife
During the search, Bulgakov's diary and the satirical story "Heart of a Dog" were confiscated. The writer hoped to publish the story of Professor Preobrazhensky, who turned a homeless dog into a rude, illiterate, but successful in Soviet realities Sharikov, in the Nedra almanac. However, in the State Security, the work was described as follows: “... such things read in the most brilliant Moscow literary circle are much more dangerous than the useless harmless speeches of writers of the 101st grade at meetings of the All-Russian Union of Poets”. It was possible to return the manuscript only three years later: Maxim Gorky stood up for the writer. The story was never published during the author's lifetime, but the text was distributed in samizdat.
After a successful debut, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote for the Moscow Art Theater another drama about the civil war - "Running". The events of the play took place in the early 1920s: the white movement had already been defeated, former generals, teachers, bishops lost everything and were forced to emigrate. The lost and defenseless heroes of the play talked about life, duty and family. While working on this work, Bulgakov relied heavily on the memoirs of his wife, Lyubov Belozerova, who herself emigrated during the revolution. In May 1928 Konstantin Stanislavsky wrote: "Running" was enthusiastically received by the theater, but the Glavrepertkom was not allowed to stage it. "Running" is prohibited". The resolution of the main committee for the control of the repertoire was supported by Joseph Stalin: he personally read the play.
"Running" is a manifestation of an attempt to arouse pity, if not sympathy, for certain sections of the anti-Soviet émigré community - therefore, an attempt to justify or semi-justify the White Guard cause. "Running", in the form in which it is, is an anti-Soviet phenomenon"
Joseph Stalin, "Answer to Bill-Belotserkovsky"
In 1929, the Main Repertoire Committee withdrew all Bulgakov's plays from the repertoire. The writer was left without income, the accounting department of the Moscow Art Theater demanded that the advance payment for the unstaged play "Running" be returned. Bulgakov wrote to his brother Nikolai in Paris: “I am already in distress. On March 15, the first payment of the financial inspection will come<...>I believe that if some miracle does not happen, in my pretty little apartment and damp to smithereens<...>there will be no item left. Junk touches me a little. Well, chairs, cups, to hell with them! I'm afraid for the books!. In June 1929, Bulgakov wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Kalinin asking for permission to leave the USSR. He was refused. Then the writer filed an application for withdrawal from the All-Russian Union of Writers.
In the autumn of 1929, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a new play - The Cabal of the Holy. The main character was Molière, an inconvenient writer for the king and the clergy, whom other heroes constantly tried to harm. The work was first allowed to be staged, but on March 18, 1930, the Main Repertoire Committee changed its decision: according to officials, Bulgakov in the play drew an analogy between the powerless position of the writer under the tyranny of the monarch and under the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the same day, returning home, the writer burned the drafts of the novel "Theatre" about the backstage and the outlines of the "Novel about the Devil". Soon Bulgakov wrote to the Government of the USSR: in it he repeated his request to emigrate.
“Now I am destroyed. This destruction was greeted by the Soviet public with complete joy and was called an "achievement". I will say briefly: buried under two lines of official paper - work in book depositories, my fantasy<...>I ask you to take into account that the inability to write for me is tantamount to being buried alive.
Mikhail Bulgakov, letter to the Government of the USSR
On April 18, 1930, a telephone rang in Bulgakov's apartment. Stalin said: “Where do you want to work? At the Art Theatre? - "Yes, I would like to. But I talked about it - they refused me. “And you apply there. I think they agree.". In May 1930, Bulgakov was enrolled as an assistant director at the Moscow Art Theater.
The last years of the writer: work in the theater and the novel "The Master and Margarita"
and War and Peace. The writer told his friend Pavel Popov: “And so, towards the end of my writing work, I was forced to compose dramatizations. What a brilliant ending, right? I look at the shelves and am horrified: who, who else will I have to stage tomorrow? Turgenev, Leskov, Ostrovsky? The latter, fortunately, staged himself, apparently foreseeing what would happen to me in 1929 and 1931..
In 1932, Mikhail Bulgakov divorced Lyubov Belozerskaya and married Elena Shilovskaya. The writer met her at a party with friends. Shilovskaya was married to a high-ranking official. When her relationship with Bulgakov opened, Shilovskaya's husband refused to give a divorce and forbade him to see the writer. However, a year later he gave in and allowed his wife to leave. Shilovskaya helped Bulgakov in everything: she typed works from dictation, and managed all his affairs.
In 1933, Bulgakov returned to The Romance of the Devil. The writer wrote to Veresaev: “Suffocating in my little rooms, I began to dirty page after page again that my novel destroyed three years ago. What for? Don't know. I indulge myself! Let it fall into oblivion!”. Bulgakov chose a title for a long time: the novel was called either "Consultant with a Hoof", then "Engineer's Hoof", then "Tour (Woland)". In the first, burnt version, the Master and Margarita did not exist at all: the heroes appeared already in the second version. The prototype of Margarita was Bulgakov's third wife Elena Shilovskaya. At the same time, the story of Yeshua and Pontius Pilate turned from the main line of the novel into the work of the Master.
While working on The Master and Margarita, the writer made extracts from theological works, encyclopedic dictionaries and philosophical teachings. The notebooks were divided into themes: "About the Devil", "Jesus Christ", "About God". The poet Konstantin Simonov said: “This novel, in my opinion, is Bulgakov’s best work, and if we talk about the history of Christ and Pilate, then this is generally one of the best pages of Russian literature of the 20th century”. By 1938, the novel was ready, but Bulgakov continued to edit it until his death.
At the same time, Mikhail Bulgakov staged works for the theater: he adapted Don Quixote, wrote the drama about Pushkin The Last Days, composed the libretto Rachel based on the stories of Guy de Maupassant.
In the autumn of 1939, the writer became seriously ill. In February 1940, he dictated the final revisions to The Master and Margarita. On March 10 of the same year, the writer died. His body was cremated, and the ashes were buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
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 malaria powders prescribed for a week are swallowed immediately, they 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 Gudok newspaper and wrote the novel The White Guard - about a broken family, about the past years of the "carefree generation", about the 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 - 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 echoer" 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.
Bulgakov's father, Afanasy Ivanovich, was an assistant professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy. He himself baptized his son, naming him in honor of the guardian of the city of Kyiv.
The writer's mother's name was Varvara Mikhailovna (in her maiden name she bore the surname Pokrovskaya). Mikhail was the eldest of her seven children.
Until the autumn of 1900 he studied at home, then he entered the first class of the Alexander Gymnasium, where the best teachers of Kyiv were concentrated. Already in the gymnasium, Bulgakov showed his various abilities: he wrote poetry, drew caricatures, played the piano, sang, composed oral stories and told them beautifully.
After graduating from the gymnasium, Mikhail Bulgakov did not particularly hesitate in choosing a profession: the influence of relatives-doctors, the brothers Vasily, Nikolai and Mikhail Pokrovsky; the close presence of a friend of their home, pediatrician I.P. Voskresensky, outweighed the hereditary roots of the ancestors - the clergy, and the time and upbringing were already completely different. On August 21, 1909, he was enrolled in the medical faculty of the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kyiv. The study took place in the conditions of the war that began then in 1914-1918.
April 1915 - the wedding of Mikhail Bulgakov and Tatyana Nikolaevna Lappa (1892-1982) in the Kiev-Podolsk Church of St. Nicholas the Good.
Back in the summer of 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War on July 19, Bulgakov took part in organizing an infirmary for the wounded at the Treasury Chamber in Saratov and worked there as a doctor. In April-May 1915, he applied to serve as a doctor in the naval department, but was declared unfit for military service for health reasons. After receiving permission from the rector of the university, on May 18, Bulgakov went to work at the Kyiv military hospital in Pechersk. In May-September 1916 he worked as a doctor in the front-line hospitals in Kamenetz-Podolsk and Chernivtsi. On July 16, he was enrolled as a "reserve doctor of the Moscow Military Sanitary Administration" for secondment at the disposal of the Smolensk governor in order to work in the zemstvos. October 31, 1916 at the University of Kiev, Mikhail Bulgakov received a diploma of approval "in the degree of a doctor with honors with all the rights and benefits assigned by the laws of the Russian Empire to this degree."
Since 1917, he began to regularly use morphine, fearing blood poisoning after the operation. Rescuing a sick child, Mikhail uses an ordinary tube to suck out diphtheria films from his throat that prevent him from breathing. There is a fairly common complication of such an operation - the doctor becomes infected himself. Bulgakov injects himself with a very imperfect serum against diphtheria and gets allergic reactions - a rash, itching and unbearable pain. In order not to interrupt the reception of patients and improve his own condition, Bulgakov decides to administer morphine to himself within a few days. The result of this was a rapid addiction to morphine, which Mikhail struggled with until 1919.
In December 1917, he first came to Moscow, staying with his uncle, the famous Moscow doctor N. M. Pokrovsky, who became the prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky from the story “Heart of a Dog”. In the spring of 1918, Bulgakov returned to Kyiv, where he began private practice as a venereologist.
The beginning of 1919 - Mikhail Bulgakov was mobilized into the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, but a few days later he deserted during the retreat of troops from Kyiv. Autumn 1919 - according to various versions, Bulgakov either goes over to the side of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, or is captured by them during street fighting. One way or another, he becomes a doctor of the 3rd Terek Cossack Regiment. Together with the regiment, he goes to the Caucasus, to pacify the rebels in Chechen-aul and Shali-aul Chechens. In Vladikavkaz, Bulgakov works in a military hospital.
1920. End of January - retired from the hospital, worked as a journalist. February - collaborates in the newspaper "Kavkaz". February-March - fell ill with relapsing fever. Beginning of April - worked as the head of the literary section of the sub-department of arts in the Vladikavkaz Revolutionary Committee (since the end of May he has been in charge of the theater section). In Vladikavkaz, he began to write for the theater - the comedy "Self-Defense" was staged and was a success. Inspired by success, Bulgakov writes two more plays - Clay Grooms and Paris Communards, with the staging of the latter in Vladikavkaz celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The play was recommended by the Glavpolitprosvet for staging in Moscow theaters.
In 1921 he moved to Moscow. During the NEP, literary life in Russia began to revive, private publishing houses were created, and new magazines were opened. In 1922, Bulgakov published not only feuilletons and correspondence, but also the stories "The Extraordinary Adventures of the Doctor" and "Séance" (in the magazine Rupor). In the newspaper "Nakanune" and its literary supplement, many works by M. Bulgakov were published: "Notes on the Cuffs", "The Adventures of Chichikov", "Forty Magpies", "Travel Notes", "Crimson Island" and others (1922 - 24) . M. Bulgakov's popularity began with publications in "On the Eve".
1922-1926 works as an employee of the newspaper "Gudok". The stories "Devil's Game", "Fatal Eggs", "Heart of a Dog", the plays "Zoyka's Apartment", "Crimson Island", "Running", "Adam and Eve", "Bliss", "Ivan Vasilyevich", "Alexander Pushkin" were written and others. None of the plays was allowed to be staged.
In 1923, Bulgakov joined the All-Russian Union of Writers. Since 1926, the play "Days of the Turbins" has been staged at the Moscow Art Theater with great success. Its production was allowed for a year, but later it was extended several times, since Stalin liked the play.
In 1925, Mikhail Bulgakov files for a divorce and officially registers his marriage with Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya. Despite the changes in his personal life, Bulgakov's performance remained at the same level.
The main work of Bulgakov and one of the artistic achievements of Russian and world literature of the 20th century, the multifaceted philosophical-fiction novel "The Master and Margarita", was created in 1929-40. and before publication was known only to a narrow circle of people close to the author; the uncopied manuscript was miraculously preserved (as if proving the validity of Bulgakov's: "Manuscripts do not burn!"). The novel intertwines two storylines: the visit of the devil with his retinue to Moscow in the 1930s. and the tragic, perceived as autobiographical, story of the writer, the author of the novel about Jesus Christ. The novel "Master and Margarita" brought the writer world fame, but became the property of a wide Soviet reader with a delay of almost three decades (the first publication in an abbreviated form occurred in 1966). Bulgakov consciously wrote his novel as a final work that absorbed many of the motives of his previous work, as well as the artistic and philosophical experience of Russian classical and world literature.
In 1930, Bulgakov's works ceased to be published, the plays were withdrawn from the theater repertoire. Prohibited from staging the play "Running", "Zoyka's apartment", "Crimson Island", the play "Days of the Turbins" was withdrawn from the repertoire. In 1930, Bulgakov wrote to his brother Nikolai in Paris about the unfavorable literary and theatrical situation and difficult financial situation. At the same time, he writes a letter to the Government of the USSR with a request to determine his fate - either to give the right to emigrate, or to provide the opportunity to work at the Moscow Art Theater. Stalin calls Bulgakov, who recommends the playwright to ask to enroll him in the Moscow Art Theater. He got a job as an assistant director of the Moscow Art Theater (1930 - 36).
1932 The Moscow Art Theater resumed the production of The Days of the Turbins. In the same year he married for the third time to Elena Shilovskaya.
Since 1936 - at the Bolshoi Theater as a librettist and translator.
In 1938, the leadership of the Moscow Art Theater asked Bulgakov to write a jubilee play about Stalin, he agreed. However, the play "Batum" was also banned. The news about the ban on staging the play may have provoked the rapid development of a hereditary disease - hypertensive nephrosclerosis. The first symptom was a sharp deterioration in vision. The last corrections to the text of The Master and Margarita under Bulgakov's dictation are made by Elena Sergeevna.
1940. January 6 - made notes for the play "The Swallow's Nest". January 22 - signed an agreement with the Moscow Art Theater for the production of the play "Alexander Pushkin" ("The Last Days"). February 13 - Dictated amendments to The Master and Margarita. March 10 - at 4:39 pm Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died. March 11 - a civil memorial service was held (in the building of the Union of Writers of the USSR). March 12 - the cremation of the body of M. A. Bulgakov took place; the urn with the ashes was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.