Commentary. longing to the final draft, but without it the Master is being attacked for an unpublished work

longing to the final draft, but without it the Master is being attacked for an unpublished work. Later in this chapter (in the version Yanovskaya does use), Margarita is said to be asking the Master's forgiveness for having advised him to publish an excerpt—obviously this section is needed for that remark to make sense. Saakyants leaves it in. It is impossible to know which version Bulgakov would have chosen if he were not worrying about censorship. While it was theoretically possible to be attacked for an unpublished work, Bulgakov's own experience was of being attacked for the partially published White Guard, and the plays which were performed, even if only through the dress-rehearsal stage.

Pilatism—the Russian here has the suffix china, which is hard to convey in English, but is extremely insulting.

Old Believer—see note to Solovki in Chapter One. As the son of a professor of theology, Bulgakov was knowledgeable about those who continued, even under Soviet power, to rebel against the change of liturgy initiated in 1653. The reforms in the religious practices aroused cries of Antichrist and apocalypse among the Old Believers, for whom true failli was ¡ nalterably tied to correct/orraj of worship.

" Completely joyless autumn days... such a chapter will not do" —these three paragraphs are in the Saakyants text, but are not included in the Yanovskaya text Yanovskaya looked at various drafts and decided that this section did not belong in the final one. However, I feel that this description of the treacherous neighbor is essential, and that very likely self-censorship played a role if Bulgakov really planned to leave it out. It is unlike Bulgakov to give so little information about the author of the Master's misfortune. The time of year is meaningful for Russian readers, since autumn and spring were times of increased arrests, as the government tried to distract the populace from the regime's economic and agricultural failures.

À loisy Mogarych—Aloisy is funny to the Russian ear—Aloysius in English—and Mogarych is a fake patronymic which has the meaning of a drink or bribe provided by the receiver of a good deal in business.

started to burn them—Bulgakov himself did this with a number of his manuscripts in 1930, when he was effectively banned from the theaters. Many of the details of the Master's anxiety are autobiographical. In the mid-1930s Bulgakov suffered from agoraphobia and was treated by various methods.

in the middle of January—the Master has clearly been arrested, as the detail of the coat with the buttons torn off shows (Soviet prisons of the time habitually cut off all buttons on the clothes of prisoners), as does the meaningful " knock at the door." The Master appears to have been held only three months, and was then sent to the clinic. Drafts indicate Bulgakov originally intended that the Master be gone a total of one year and two months, part of which was spent in the clinic. It would appear that Bulgakov was trying to elude censors with the three month gap, although there were cases of people being held briefly.