Biographical note

MIKHAIL AFANASIEVICH bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891, the son of a Russian lecturer in theology, and the grandson of priests on both sides. Medicine, religion, and education were the dominant careers in his family. Despite an early interest in literature and the theater, Bulgakov chose to become a doctor. In 1914, as a medical student, he volunteered with the Red Cross during World War I. After graduating from the University of Kiev in 1916, he served in the White Army during the Civil War, and was briefly forcibly mobilized by the Ukrainian Nationalist Army. These experiences during the chaos of the Civil War in Kiev and the Caucasus had a profound effect on the writer and his work. His two younger brothers disappeared during the fighting around Kiev, and later surfaced in Europe. In 1919, while in the Caucasus, he made the decision to leave medicine for literature; soon after he almost emigrated, but was prevented from doing so by illness, which he took as a sign. By 1921 he was in Moscow where his literary career began in earnest. The Diabotiad collection, published in 1925, was his major publication of this time, since his masterpiece, Heart of a Dog, could not get past the censorship. This same period saw the partial publication of his novel about Kiev during the Civil War, While Guard. Publication ceased when the journal serializing the novel was shut down; however, enough had come out to arouse the interest of the Moscow Art Theater, which commissioned a play based on White Guard. This play. The Days of the Turbins, was the source of Bulgakov's fame for the rest of his life, and was a major sensation both due to its vivid characterizations and its portrayal of a monarchist family in a sympathetic light rather than as monsters, which was the norm at this time. By the late twenties, when he had a number of other plays in production (Zoya's Apartment, Flight and The Crimson Island), Bulgakov had drawn down the wrath of the leftist critics who felt that everything he wrote was essentially anti-SovieL This was a period of extreme polarization, and Bulgakov's career was destroyed by 1929. He would have one more original play, Moliè re, staged in his lifetime (it was quickly withdrawn from production due to the critics), but all publication of his prose ceased after 1927. In 1930, in a time of despair when he burned his works in manuscript, he wrote his famous letter to the Soviet government, defending his right to be a satirist, and asking that his country let him emigrate ¡ fit could not use his abilities. To everyone's astonishment, Stalin, who had seen The Days of the Turbins many times, answered this letter with a phone call, and soon afterward Bulgakov had employment with a small theater. The Moscow Art Theater then found work for him, but most of the projects he worked on came to nothing, and the last eight years of his life were full of stress and disappointment He broke with Stanislavsky and the Art Theater after the Mature debacle, and returned to Theatriral Novel (begun earlier, then resumed) as a way of venting his spleen. He went to work for the Bolshoi Theater as a librettist, which also proved frustrating, as project after project remained unpro-duced. From 1928 on. Bulgakov had worked only sporadically on his major work. The Master and Margarita; in 1937 he dropped Theatrical Novel, which would remain unfinished, and concentrated on the novel about the devil in Moscow. In 1938 under pressure from the Art Theater he wrote a play about the young Stalin, Batum, which was not only a compromise on his part, but adversely affected his failing health when it was rejected. When he died of nephrosclerosis (which had killed his father at the same age) in 1940, he had finished the writing of The Master and Margarita, although