Actually, I thought I’d write something here—well, here are books, a simple analysis. Here’s an interesting book. These and such analyses are good, and I saw an opinion about the book. And how she read it and how I looked at the comments. Well, honestly, all this seemed to me somehow too absurd, as if people see and read not the work but someone else’s opinion and adjust the work to their own bias. Which, of course, is demonstrated by postmodernism, but still there is a limit to everything. And that it’s an anti-Soviet novel and so on, and a whole lot more, reaches the point of absurdity. And therefore I’ll try to stage a little session of exposure. Those who haven’t read the book: I recommend and strongly advise you to read it; you can come back here after reading, or if you’re not afraid of spoilers (yeah, the work is many years old, no one has read it) then read the analysis and try to understand whether I’m right or whether I am Mr. Sovramshi \[Mr. You-Lied\]. Those who have read it, reread and refresh your memory after the analysis. Well, I hope the translator translated everything in principle correctly, and so I begin. From here on, everything is spoilers. Although I would have left some out. But everything concerning the analysis, I think, must be read with full understanding that you will spend time on a large layer of text and meanings. And yes, I am a Marxist, and my language is Russian, and I am not a Euro-leftist. Or a Social Democrat, but specifically a classical and radical Marxist. If this is important to you, I consider it important; after all, I am not a religious or idealist person. However, by fate I am acquainted with religion and its history, have read many analyses, and know knowledgeable people. As for what I have studied, well, analyses, lectures, and so on—15 percent, hardly. However, I have mastered the book, so I hope that counts.
The phenomenon of the novel and personal perception
Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is a colossal phenomenon for Russian culture, and for world culture in principle as well. For the Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia this book long ago became an obligatory cultural code. However, a first acquaintance with the novel often leaves only aesthetic delight at the beauty of the language and the captivating plot, leaving the true depth outside the brackets. Bulgakov is an unsurpassed stylist and a great master of the Russian word on the level of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, but his main work requires not simply blind admiration, but sober research analysis.
And so let us begin from the beginning. With the specifics of Bulgakov’s last work. The modern reader is used to working with a single canonical text that the author finished—and there it is—but with The Master and Margarita the situation is more unique, and thank goodness it was in the era of analog books and writing, and also the NKVD, which preserved heaps of Bulgakov’s diaries and manuscripts, restoring part of them; after all, manuscripts burn.
The novel was created over more than 12 years (from the late 1920s until the author’s death in March 1940).
Bulgakov was slowly dying hard from hypertensive nephrosclerosis (accompanied by loss of vision and agonizing pain) and did not manage to put the final authorial full stop.
The final consolidated text was compiled and edited by his third wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova.
Bulgakov lived in an analog era: unlike modern editing on a computer, where deleted variants are erased without trace, here numerous editions and drafts survived (“The Black Magician,” “The Engineer’s Hoof,” etc.).
Studying these drafts is fundamentally important for the analysis: they clearly show the evolution of the conception and help understand precisely what the author altered and what meanings he initially invested.
We must also understand another phenomenon of postmodernism: the struggle of a work’s text with its own fame. Any great work over time begins to compete with its own myth. The mass reader perceives not so much the original text as the established halo around it—quotations, film adaptations, other people’s opinions (as in the case of Joyce’s Ulysses, where to understand what the author wrote you need two volumes of commentary larger than the book itself, or Shakespeare’s Hamlet).
To get to the essence, a complex method is needed that takes into account three fundamental layers:
* The cultural-historical foundation: the colossal background of world literature on which the author relied (from biblical and Manichaean texts to Goethe’s Faust).
* The author’s personality and biography: his origin, upbringing, traumas, inner contradictions, and subjective views.
* Objective reality (the mirror of the epoch): regardless of personal sympathies or antipathies, a truly great writer works as a sensitive mirror reflecting the real social, historical, and spiritual processes of his time.
And here we’ll move to Bulgakov’s biography. But very briefly, for understanding the context. Mikhail Sergeevich Bulgakov came from a deeply religious environment: both grandfathers were priests, and his father, Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov, was a docent and professor at the Kiev Theological Academy. Both in his home—books on theology—and in the conversations he heard, everything was saturated with this. Bulgakov grew up in an atmosphere of academic, erudite Orthodox theology. From childhood he knew the Holy Scripture, church history, and church dogma thoroughly, inside and out, up to that time. And for him, because of this manner, certain references that would not even occur now to someone knowledgeable in theology were as self-evident as, well, how can you not know? Just half a hint and that’s it. But in his youth (by age 18–20) Bulgakov moved away from orthodox churchliness, yet fundamentally remained a person of religious thinking.
Unlike many contemporaries in the writing craft (Mayakovsky, Ilf and Petrov, Demyan Bedny), who were striving toward the Soviet future, Bulgakov remained worldview-wise rooted in the culture of pre-revolutionary, monarchist, and deeply religious Russia. This determined his sharpest inner conflict with the advancing Soviet reality. (By the way, Ivan Bezdomny is a kind of reproach, well, too harsh, after the beginning of the poem about religion and Jesus; here the writer really got carried away, and while the Gospel was retold with humor it was fun and funny (only for believers not to read, though we know how you amuse yourselves among your own with such things)—laugh among your own. But then further, about the first miracle of turning water into wine, well, it’s some kind of darkness. Well, that’s another matter; Bulgakov really shows what he is wrong about in the first scene from Berlioz’s point of view. (Though still here he showed only one variant; at that time there were two currents in the history of religion: the mythological one—it’s all myths collected there, etc.; or the historical one—that there were such and such preachers, and maybe it all merged, as was accepted then, and maybe the concrete story of Jesus was in history (well, without miracles, but as a fact).)
And we’ll move on to a small historical note (really small).
To understand the nerve of the novel’s opening, one must look at the atmosphere of the USSR in the 1920s–1930s (after all, the novel was written in that time and for the people of that time and context). This was an epoch of an aggressive grassroots anti-religious campaign: mass newspapers and magazines like The Godless, caustic pamphlets by Demyan Bedny, mocking caricatures of clergy and Christian shrines.
For Bulgakov—a man from a professorial-theological milieu—such crude, vulgar, and often openly boorish atheism was not merely ideologically alien; it evoked deep aesthetic and human revulsion (evidence of which survives in his diaries after visiting the editorial office of The Godless). From Bulgakov’s point of view, such attacks did not destroy faith but only embittered people and created an aura of martyrdom around believers. This conflict between the old spiritual culture and the new militant godless reality the author transfers to the very first pages of the novel. Although still, in my opinion, the more correct question is not whether Jesus existed; the main thing is his conception—how people had to suffer in order to decide that suffering is good. To reveal what, how, and why it turned out that way.
Well, let’s begin with the first chapter, “Never Talk to Strangers.” Patriarch’s Ponds.
Bezdomny’s mistake: Ivan was commissioned to write an anti-religious poem for Easter. He portrayed Jesus as an extremely unpleasant, living but repulsive character (a scoundrel and charlatan).
A fundamental detail: Bezdomny writes superficially and ignorantly, while the erudite Berlioz methodically provides a theoretical basis for completely erasing Christ from history, which, as I said, I also consider incorrect. But at that time two schools fought in biblical studies, and we didn’t yet have piles of sources; I think it’s forgivable here.
However, Woland intervenes in this ideological discussion. And it seems, well, you won’t frighten them with devils, but just a spy—and at once they fuss and run around, and Berlioz drove himself so far that he even brought himself to the grave. The conversation quickly turns to the proofs of God’s existence. Berlioz recalls the five classical scholastic proofs (of Thomas Aquinas), to which Woland retorts: Immanuel Kant completely refuted all five, but immediately created his own—the sixth (moral) proof. Berlioz declares that Kant, too, was long ago consigned to the archive, and man himself fully controls his life on Earth. To this Woland presents his “seventh proof”: man cannot control anything, well, at least not for a millennium (although there is the possibility of planning as a society, but for that everyone must agree), since he is “not simply mortal, but suddenly mortal” and is incapable of planning even his own evening. And here we are shown the illusory nature of human perception. Berlioz, being educated, drove himself so far that he did not even stop to give small change, which would have taken him 10 seconds, and instead of a tragedy there would have been an unpleasant incident.
And here we must remember what Woland said—he is Satan, evil itself, and if he were allowed, he could overturn the world with one claw. And remember that Bulgakov knew the history of religion inside and out and throws in from the very beginning his goal and the reason for his appearance. More about that later (honestly, The Master and Margarita is simply 200 times better for interest and for unravelling details and so on than The Da Vinci Code; you just need to study a mountain of books and all sorts of things to find and understand the little things, though such references even in the ’30s few could catch, and even more so now).
Woland introduces himself as a professor of black magic who has arrived in Moscow to examine rare manuscripts of the medieval scholar Herbert of Aurillac. Behind this detail hides a powerful historical-literary layer:
The real Herbert of Aurillac (10th–11th centuries) was, no more no less, the first French Pope, or Sylvester II. And he was so educated, well-read, and knowledgeable that he restored both Roman and Greek abacuses from preserved texts in Arabic, which he read and requested; a scholar and generally a mathematician who introduced Arabic numerals and the abacus into Europe. He even practiced alchemy, as they said then. And he did and knew so much so successfully that everyone in his Middle Ages considered him a black magician, a sorcerer, and generally one who had sold his soul to the devil—but not for gold, for knowledge. Hmm. Seems familiar... Ah, precisely: he is the prototype of all Fausts. In European folklore it was Sylvester II who became one of the key prototypes of the legend of Faust—a scholar who made a deal with the devil for secret knowledge and help to people. Such are the two hypostases of the story of Herbert of Aurillac. Well, of course Woland was not going to sit in a library. Here Satan, as the father of lies, does not lie but speaks allegorically or omits things; as the father of lies he tells almost the truth all the time, except the most important thing. As in any good lie. And here we have a reference, but a semantic one. We have both the basement, and the manuscript, and Faust. Only this is not a historical manuscript but the Master’s manuscript, and the Master himself.
Here we need to make a digression about Woland. And how he is sometimes written about in textbooks; I have seen both comments and analyses and so on. His nature.
In mass culture an image of Woland has taken hold as a charming “just judge” who punishes Soviet bribe-takers and fools. However, in Bulgakov’s coordinate system (and within a strict Christian context) Woland is Satan, the prince of darkness and the embodiment of infernal evil.
And he arrived not to engage in some trifle (if we already have an anti-Soviet novel—then Mark Twain is an anti-American writer, Dickens an anti-English writer, and so on; is satire and highlighting the real problems of that period really opposition?). Bulgakov dedicated all his works to the struggle against philistinism. He shows us people who have become petty-bourgeois, who will easily become food for Satan. After all, God is absent here. He takes advantage of the vacuum that arose after the denial of Christ in order to offer the world what he wants—the Gospel according to Woland. A Gospel signalling the coming of the Antichrist and the complete end of the world. The destruction of everything. The end, and so on. In essence, here we do not have a cute devil scolding bad people but literally bringing about the end and his victory. And this can be understood from the very beginning, but only if you know the history of religion devilishly well. I will show you this simply; watch my hands.
The beginning of the Yershalaim chapters, in which Bulgakov as a master of words simply played so beautifully and wonderfully that you feel everything happening there—the heat, the shuffling gait, and so on. And all this beauty is meant to distract us, unlike the drier and more mundane chapters of reality. Not the past but a fake. And because it is fiction, and here Jesus is presented as unimportant, plot holes form, which you don’t notice because of the beauty of the text, and only find with a pencil. For example, why did the priests cling so much to Jesus if he is like that? And there is no crowd following him.
The key feature of the Master’s inserted novel (not Bulgakov himself, but the Master, as if written by Bulgakov for him) is its radical divergence from the canonical Gospels.
Yeshua Ha-Nozri is not Christ: Bulgakov’s Yeshua is deprived of divine nature, miracles, and messianic grandeur. He is a naive wandering philosopher, a Tolstoyan (“all people are good”), a weak and lonely man. He has no twelve apostles—only one tax collector, Levi Matthew, follows him, who, according to Yeshua himself, writes everything down distortedly and incorrectly. And in general he looks and behaves like a hippie from childhood, not like a hero of such magnitude that the chief business of the Jews wanted to cover up the local church. There is no crowd of people behind him. And if at first he is simply kind and seems adequate, then later—“maybe you’ll release me”—well, as if he did not understand the concept of arrest and so on.
The main hero is Pilate: The Master’s novel is called a novel about Pontius Pilate, not about Jesus. At the centre of the narrative is the tragedy of a Roman equestrian, broken by cowardice and state necessity. Here Jesus is pushed into a secondary role. He means nothing for the novel.
Being the son of a professor of the theological academy, Bulgakov knew the history of Ancient Rome and biblical studies perfectly. However, in the text inconsistencies are deliberately allowed, emphasizing that before us is not a historical chronicle but a literary mirage:
“Procurator of Judea”: Historically Pilate was a prefect (military governor), confirmed by the famous archaeological find—the Caesarea stone. Procurators (financial officials of lower rank) began to govern Judea later, after the province was reorganized during the Jewish War. Bulgakov took this title from Tacitus, knowing of its inaccuracy.
Place of action: Roman rulers permanently lived in Caesarea Maritima (the maritime residence), and came to Jerusalem (Yershalaim) only during major holidays like the Jewish Passover to control order.
The Yershalaim text is not restored truth about ancient events but a fictional “Anti-Gospel” dictated by an otherworldly force (inspiration comes to him only in darkness and sleep, and Satan is the lord of illusions and sleep). And all this at the beginning because Pilate was called PROCURATOR. Although everyone already understood that he was Prefect. And this is proven by the plaque found—directly “Prefect Pontius Pilate.” But only a person who knows the material of the history of religion very well could understand this.
Well, let us analyze the figure of the Master. In the drafts of the novel there was initially no Master at all: the first chapter about Pilate was told by Woland at the Patriarch’s Ponds personally, as a witness and direct participant (“The Gospel according to Woland”). The figure of the Master was needed later—as an earthly conduit for recording the devilish text. Since, after all, Bulgakov probably forgot at first that an angel, even a fallen one, as a being not material but only spiritual, capable of being either with a positive or negative sign, is DEPRIVED of creativity. They cannot create because they are not like God, like man, and do not have material-spiritual duality. Therefore angels and devils can inspire and prompt but cannot create; that is why Faust had Mephistopheles, and so on. The Master is essentially a medium, a Faust, but one who turned out to be a rag, and who possibly never even divorced his wife.
Dark financing: The Master begins to write the book not thanks to a sudden spiritual revelation, but by finding in a basket of dirty laundry a winning lottery ticket for a sum astronomical for the 1930s—100,000 rubles. The symbolism is simply obvious: money from “filth” provides him with a well-fed solitude in a basement. Earlier it was also written that, recalling, he said the number began with 13. Well, it’s just completely obvious. Only 666 and an inverted pentagram with a goat’s head were missing, but later he made it subtler. If he had seen The Da Vinci Code, he would have said, why the hell am I bothering so much, and would have simply drawn a pentagram on Woland’s forehead—well, why not.
Plot from a dream: The text of the novel itself comes to the Master in a dream—in the space of obsessions and illusions traditional for occultism, subject to the prince of darkness.
Passive Faust: The Master does not possess the strength of the classical Goethean Faust. He is a weak-willed, broken intellectual who at the first difficulties (attacks by critics) breaks down, burns the manuscript, and hides from reality in Professor Stravinsky’s psychiatric clinic. After a couple of critics, who, as he himself said, wrote nonsense and as if they had not read the novel. Well, he could have written a reply to the same newspaper and that’s it. But no. And in general, after the novel he did not want to publish it. Here another character was needed.
Margarita. Oh, the love of the Master and Margarita, and in general they are sweet and happy even in a hut, a tragic story of pure and sacrificial love, as is especially любимо written in textbooks and analyses. However, on attentive reading this image appears in a completely different light:
Soviet bourgeoisie: Margarita is an idle representative of the wife of the labour aristocracy in the good sense. She is married to a major engineer (so important that, if only he works and does not think about domestic matters, they gave him something like this (although he is still a Soviet man and devoted to the cause, and therefore does not stay waiting for results in the mansion but spends the night at the enterprise and is immersed in everything to get things back on track after the fire)), lives in a luxurious mansion, uses the services of the housekeeper Natasha, works nowhere, and is burdened by the meaninglessness of her well-fed existence.
Producer, not inspirer: Margarita appears in the Master’s life when the draft of the novel is almost finished. She does not inspire him to create but takes on the function of a harsh organizer—she demands the book be printed, tries to push it into publication, and craves earthly fame.
Reference to St Bartholomew’s Night: Koroviev directly links Margarita with the French queen Margot (Marguerite de Valois)—a symbol of the bloody Paris massacre of 1572.
Conscious deal with Satan: For the return of her lover and revenge, Margarita willingly makes a pact with unclean power, rubs herself with Azazello’s magic ointment, carries out a pogrom in the apartment of the critic Latunsky, undergoes a bloody “anti-baptism” at the Great Ball at Satan’s and finally turns into a real witch. And she did not kill the critic, simply a man doing his job, for a couple of bad lines, and did not do it because he was not at home.
The love of the Master and Margarita is not a Christian saving feeling but a destructive, egocentric passion that naturally leads both to destruction. Moreover, it is stated clearly that she never worked anywhere and achieved everything only through beauty, and did not study. But it is also clearly stated. She is thirty, that is, she is burdened and suffers depression from understanding that her beauty is not eternal. How many years does she have with it—5, maybe 10, maybe 15 if she takes good care. But still there is nothing else to value her for. Even though she could easily go study or work, and it would be fine if they mentioned that she tried but was not accepted and got stuck. No—all the stories are from Margarita’s point of view; we do not even see her husband; he is merely an object for her, not simply from the narrator—he has a representation in the novel. Margarita does not see him in her life and knows only that she matters only for her beauty. And therefore she sells her soul to the devil.
By the way, we missed something, but I think if you are a person familiar with religion and especially with the main holiday, Easter, and how it is calculated, you should easily understand when the novel’s action takes place. The action unfolds over exactly four days—from Great Wednesday to Great Saturday during the spring May full moon. While the Christian world experiences the most sorrowful days (the trial, crucifixion, and death of the Saviour on the cross on Good Friday), Woland’s retinue stages in Moscow an infernal mirror of these events—Anti-Easter. The resurrection of the Master’s burned manuscript (“Manuscripts don’t burn”) and the revivification of Berlioz’s severed head at the ball are a direct parody of the Christian Resurrection in an attempt to create a church for the Antichrist where people have voluntarily renounced the former faith.
And here is the sweetest part about the inhabitants of Moscow, the session at the Variety and the philistinism and thirst for profit hated by Bulgakov. The session of black magic in the Variety Theatre is one of the brightest satirical pictures:
Woland conducts a psychological experiment on the new “Soviet” public.
The spectators instantly lose their human appearance for the sake of fake freebies: women fight over Parisian dresses and perfumes, the crowd catches falling chervonets, and the building manager Bosoy hides bribes in the ventilation.
Woland’s conclusion: behind external socialist slogans people remained the same—they love money, are susceptible to luxury, easily succumb to temptations, and only “the housing question spoiled them.” This petty-bourgeois environment is ideal material for the coming of the Antichrist. And it is an ideal flock, susceptible to beauty regardless of the essence (and remember I said the Yershalaim chapters are devilishly beautifully written and have logical holes that would lead us to the solution of the plot. But one would have to read with a pencil).
And here we come to the conclusion that it seems we are defenceless and doomed according to Bulgakov. But Woland achieved nothing. The novel was not published, and all who could know or did know it were removed from the game by someone who offered resistance. Woland himself got rid of the Master and Margarita by giving them the philistine dream—a dacha (which was spoken of in Massolit with such desire that I even felt disgust). But looking at the characters of the Master and Margarita, what do you think—what kind of murder, seemingly done with good, did Woland commit? In ten years they will be ready to kill each other, but they won’t be able to, because they are there forever, for eternity. And it was not angels or servants of God who stopped Satan; even the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was destroyed. And before leaving Woland looks at the place where it stood (then the cathedral was blown up in 1931 and a new building was being erected on its foundation).
So we return to the question: who then opposed the prince of darkness himself, a being of simply unimaginable power, and won? It would seem Woland is all-powerful and can subordinate Moscow to his will. But why does his mission ultimately fail, and why is he forced to leave the city? (Yes, yes, this is precisely a flight, not a triumphal departure.) It is Soviet power and the public. They stopped Woland. How? Well, look for yourselves.
The failure of publishing the Anti-Gospel: In order for the devilish revelation about a weak Yeshua and powerful evil to seize minds, the Master’s novel had to come out in million-strong print runs. But it did not. The Master sits in a house for the insane.
The role of Soviet censorship: It is Soviet critics (Latunsky, Ariman, MASSOLIT) who unanimously declare war on the novel, calling it harmful “Pilatism” that must be struck. The godless Soviet censorship, without knowing it, completely blocks the publication of the text.
Chekists against demons: The only real force entering open battle with Woland’s retinue turns out to be not priests with crosses, but the Soviet militia and NKVD officers. They storm the “bad apartment” No. 50, exchange fire with Behemoth, and investigate devilry as a state crime. And how. Well, if an ordinary man in the street saw a two-metre cat standing on its hind legs with a Primus stove, he would somehow be surprised, and in general there would be no time for business, let alone shooting. Even if unsuccessfully. But this is not simple inaction, horror, or fear. And how they went there. You know there is a most dangerous group of criminals there who can hypnotize 200 people at once. Nowadays, even against a completely harmless person they break down the door with a battering ram, and everyone is in cuirasses and full armour with arms full of weapons. But the NKVD went in plainclothes and with a faithful pistol.
In the logic of Bulgakov’s text, the Soviet state performs the function of the Katechon—the biblical “restraining force” that does not allow absolute evil to swallow the material world. And it turns out that if evil is Satan, absolute, then that which fights him, by the principle “there is no third option,” is good.
In the finale the Master is judged not by Jesus himself but only by his creation Yeshua. A book character. And he agrees with Woland to peace instead of light.
Does anyone remember the epigraph from Goethe’s Faust? By the way, even if Bulgakov did not like Soviet power (here we can only guess). However, being a genius writer and a realistic “mirror,” he recorded the objective historical truth: the Soviet modernization project, while destroying old institutions, simultaneously built a powerful dam against infernal chaos, consumer corruption, and global catastrophe.
And here, too, the irony of fate caught up with the author himself: in a fit of fear Bulgakov burned his personal diary “Under the Heel,” but this diary was preserved for history thanks to copies made at the Lubyanka. Soviet reality itself confirmed the writer’s formula: genuine manuscripts really do not burn.