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Ther and then her two brothers, thereby inheriting everything, but doctors ultimately traced the poison and she was caught.
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Lady Minldna—a famous figure of Russian history, she was the favorite of Count Arakcheev, and was notorious for her sadistic treatment of her servants. She was killed in 1825 under mysterious circumstances.
Emperor Rudolf—Rudolf II (1552-1612), of the German Habsburg dynasty, was more interested in the arts and sciences than in ruling his empire. He was said to be an alchemist, probably due to the fact that his private secretary was the alchemist Michael Maier.
Moscow dressmaker—¡ in inside reference to the prototype for the heroine of Bulgakov's own play, /aya's Apartment.
Mah/uta Skuratov—this was the nickname of Grigorii Skuratov-Belsky, a notorious favorite of Ivan IV of Russia who was involved in the terror instigated by the oprich-nina.
Brocken—a Faustian-magical reference. The Brocken is the highest point in Germany's Harz Mountains. Due to an optical effect which appears when the sun is low and huge shadows are cast on clouds or fog in the area, local folklore considers the place mystical. Magic rites were performed long after the introduction of Christianity on the traditional Witches' Sabbath, Walpurgis Night (April 30). Since the very ball scene itself is an echo of these celebrations, the allusion has many levels.
spray the walls of the man's office with poison—a contemporary reference. Gen-rikh Yagoda, head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin, had been trained as a chemist and pharmacist, with a special knowledge of poisons. After launching the first public purge trials, he fell from grace and was accused of trying to kill his successor Yezhov (under whose rule the Great Terror advanced) by spraying the walls of his office with poison gas; his secretary, P. Bulanov, was also implicated. The trial which featured such startling charges began in March of 1938, and Bulgakov read about it in the newspapers.
on the dish... the severed head—another displaced biblical reference, to the story of Salome and John the Baptist, whose head was served on a platter. This is the culmination of many severed head references. That this head turns into a skull fits with other adumbrations of this theme, specifically the skull on Archibald Archibal-dovich's flag. This may all be related to the part of the apocryphal Gospri o/Niademus's " Legend of the Cross, " in which the story of Adam's skull is given, the huge skull which became Golgotha itself.
Each man il will be given according to his beliefs... —a version of lines found in the Gospel according to Matthew.
Baron Maigel—while the citing of real-life prototypes is usually of limited interest for non-Russian readers, this one is an exception. When Bulgakov began to frequent the American embassy gatherings (and American diplomats began to visit him at home), he ran into a high-level NKVD agent, one B. S. Shteiger, known as Baron Shteiger. Shteiger was used by the secret police to deal especially with American ambassadors, as well as with important foreigners who had contact with the most famous Russian theaters, such as the Art Theater. On at least one occasion, the Bulgakovs were forced to ride home from the American embassy with him, despite the fact that they lived far apan. While Bulgakov wrote one execution scene, history wrote another—Shteiger was arrested in 1937, and was apparently shot.
... where it spilled, clusters of grapes are already growing—a reverse of the Eucharist, in which the wine is transformed into Christ's blood, and possibly another reference to the " Legend of the Cross, " which contains the explanation that Adam's tree (in whose roots the skull was located) became Christ's cross. When He bled from
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