of the literary organization MASSOLIT, apparently Mikhail Bulgakov’s version of an actual literary headquarters of the 1920’s-1930’s called Herzen House. Bureaucratic inequities, envy, and self-interest dominate the scene. MASSOLIT’s members enjoy such perks as summerhouses and fine meals at the gourmet restaurant.

Dramlit house

Dramlit house. Eight-floor dwelling trimmed with black marble and gold letters in which Margarita destroys the apartment of the unscrupulous critic who ruins the Master, a Soviet writer who has written a novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

Variety Theater

Variety Theater. Theater on Moscow’s Sadovaya Street that is the site of a magic spectacle hosted by the Devil and his crew to probe the audience’s spiritual state. The Devil concludes that modern Muscovites are ordinary humans, weak yet compassionate, whom the housing shortage has “soured.”

Devil’s headquarters

Devil’s headquarters. Apartment number 50 at 302A Sadovaya Street in Moscow that is initially a home shared by the MASSOLIT chairman and the manager of the Variety Theater. It becomes the Devil’s center of operations for tempting and testing Moscow inhabitants. As the site of visits from covetous citizens and of inexplicable disappearances, the apartment is central to Bulgakov’s satire of the Soviet housing shortage as well as of the secret arrests favored by dictator Joseph Stalin. In a crucial chapter, the Devil’s transformation of the apartment into the site for his annual ball (whose extravagance is possibly modeled on a ball given at the American embassy in Moscow in 1935) shows the ordinary dimensions of time and space yielding to cosmic infinity.

Bulgakov modeled the apartment on an actual housing block in Moscow in which he once lived with his wife.

From the roof of another building, described as the most beautiful in Moscow, the Devil surveys the city at sunset. This unnamed building can be identified as an eighteenth century mansion in downtown Moscow called Pashkov House. The Devil’s view includes the city’s “vast panorama of palaces, huge blocks of apartments and condemned slum dwellings.”

Stravinsky’s insane asylum

Stravinsky’s insane asylum. Famous psychiatric clinic in the suburbs, on the bank of the Moscow River, that becomes home to the Master after his breakdown. The asylum takes in the many characters smitten with a “mad” belief in the Devil’s presence.

*Pushkin statue

*Pushkin statue. Metal statue of Russia’s greatest writer, Alexander Pushkin, in Pushkin Square in the center of Moscow. There, Pushkin represents the quintessential artist in his defiance of censorship and his immortality through his work.

*Torgsin store

*Torgsin store. Store in Smolensk Market that is one of many nationwide stores carrying specialty items available only for hard cash (preferably in foreign currency), precious metals, or gems. There, as at Griboyedov’s, the restriction of such “luxury” edibles as chocolates, herring, and tangerines to the moneyed elite indicts communist socialism.

Master’s apartment

Master’s apartment. Humble two-room basement apartment near the Arbat in which the Master takes refuge before his arrest. Located off a square near one of Moscow’s most picturesque and bustling old streets, the lowly apartment with its garden full of lilacs, limes, and maple trees and its simple comforts represents the Master and Margarita’s benign withdrawal from society into art, love, and nature.

*Sparrow Hills

*Sparrow Hills. Site with a splendid view of Moscow from which the Devil and his crew ascend into eternity. As at Patriarch’s Pond and in other scenes, the city’s west windows glitter with fragmented sunset reflections that suggest the Devil’s refraction of God’s powers. This time the rainbow arching over the city further stresses nature’s link to the metaphysical world.

*Jerusalem

*Jerusalem. City in ancient Judaea that appears in the novel as Yershalaim—from the Aramaic language spoken alongside Greek and Latin in the ancient Middle East. Similarly, Judas’s town, Iscariot, becomes Kerioth. Bulgakov further demythologizes the holy city through his evocation of such mundane specifics as a bread store at the Hebron Gate, the Lower City’s labyrinthine streets, the acacia and myrtles trees growing in the Gethsemane fields, and the smell of leather and sweat filling the palace of Herod the Great. Although Bulgakov fantasizes Moscow while evoking Jerusalem realistically, he shows both cities oppressed by totalitarian systems that despise spirituality and thrive on deadly bureaucracy, spies, coercion, and violence.

The Stalin Era
Bulgakov's writing career, particularly the twelve-year period from 1928 to 1940 when he worked on The Master and Margarita, coincided with Russia's shift from the monarchy under Nicholas II, who was deposed during the Russian Revolution in 1917, to the authoritarian Communist regime that dominated much of the twentieth century. The first leader of post-revolutionary Russia, Vladimir Lenin, focused on defending the country from adversaries and consolidating Soviet power. He led the nation through the civil war from 1918 to 1921 and maintained a mixed economy, partially nationalized and partially privatized.

In 1922, two years before Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin became the secretary general of the Communist Party. He used this role to seize control of the Soviet Union after Lenin's passing. Stalin believed the nation lagged behind the world's more industrialized countries by at least a century. He introduced programs under his "Five Year Plan" to rapidly boost production. One major area of focus was agriculture. During the mid-1920s, the Soviet Union had about twenty-five million farms, most of which barely produced enough to sustain the families working on them. Farmers who were successful and profitable were labeled "kulaks." Stalin proposed state-run agricultural collectives to produce sufficient food for the entire country. The kulaks resisted these changes. In 1929, Stalin called for the "liquidation" of the kulaks, leading to widespread destruction of crops, livestock, and farming tools as they fought to keep their land. Between 1929 and 1933, nearly one-third of Russia's cattle and half of its horses were destroyed. Successful farmers were imprisoned, and soldiers were dispatched to arrest those who owned private land. In 1928, only 1.7 percent of Soviet peasants lived on collective farms, but this number surged due to military intervention: by October 1929, 4.1 percent of peasants were on collective farms, rising to 21 percent just four months later and 58 percent three months after that. By the decade's end, 99 percent of the Soviet Union's cultivated land was under collective farming, with millions of kulaks laboring in prison camps.

Stalin's Five Year Plan also transformed Soviet industry. The government organization "Gosplan," comprising half a million employees, was tasked with setting productivity targets for all industries and monitoring factories to ensure these goals were met. The aim was to boost Russia's annual growth rate by 50 percent. Factory managers and workers deemed to be hindering progress, even for safety or economic reasons, were arrested and sent to labor camps. To avoid punishment, many workers toiled for twelve to fourteen hours daily. Some factories, unable to meet their production quotas, resorted to falsifying records. Between 1928 and 1937, Russian steel production increased from 4 to 17.7 million tons; electricity output surged by 700 percent; and tractor production skyrocketed by 40,000 percent. The national income rose from 24.4 billion rubles to 96.3 billion. However, this progress came at the cost of personal freedom, as readers of Bulgakov can understand the perils of living in a closed, controlling society with limited resources.

The Brezhnev Years
Tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States peaked from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. During this period, these two nations were the world's leading "superpowers," competing for technological dominance in the race to send humans to the moon and for military supremacy in the nuclear arms buildup. In 1964, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader most associated with the Cold War, was ousted in a coup d'etat and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as Communist Party leader and Aleksei Kosygin as Soviet Premier. The early years of their leadership, from 1964 to 1970, marked a period of reform and stabilization. Brezhnev, who had risen through the Communist Party ranks, was not interested in altering the social system but focused on making it function more efficiently within the framework set by the Politburo.

In 1967, when The Master and Margarita was finally published, youth rebellion was sweeping the United States, and a similar spirit of defiance was evident in other countries worldwide. One of the most significant instances of governmental unrest occurred in Czechoslovakia. During the "Prague Spring" of 1968, protesters nearly toppled the country's Communist government. Because Czechoslovakia was an ally of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev sent Soviet troops across the border to quash the protests and maintain Communist control. This event was a pivotal moment in Soviet history, demonstrating to the world the lengths to which the Soviet Union would go to defend Communism.

The publication of Bulgakov's book after nearly thirty years should not be seen as a sign that the government was easing its stance on artistic works deemed critical of the political system. Writers were frequently arrested for disseminating "anti-Soviet propaganda" if their work highlighted any flaws in the system. Those convicted faced sentences in forced labor camps or were confined to mental institutions under diagnoses like "paranoid schizophrenia."

A writer could escape severe punishment only by smuggling their works out of the country to reach an international audience, as the government was concerned with its global reputation. This was the case for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 and was expelled from the country in 1974.

Structure
This book employs a sophisticated story-within-a-story format, intertwining the narrative about Pontius Pilate with a tale set in 20th-century Moscow. The chapters focused on Pilate follow a continuous, four-day sequence and maintain a consistent, serious tone throughout. Interestingly, despite their coherence, these chapters originate from the perspectives of various characters. For instance, chapter two is a story narrated by Woland to Berlioz and Ivan, chapter sixteen is depicted as Margarita's dream, and chapters twenty-five and twenty-six are portrayed as excerpts from the Master's novel. Bulgakov uses a singular narrative voice in these chapters to emphasize the similarity in the characters' thought processes.

Mennipean Satire
Critics have observed that this book aligns with the tradition of Mennipean Satire, named after the third-century BC Greek philosopher and Cynic, Menippus. The Cynics, founded by Diogenes of Sinope, believed that civilization was artificial and unnatural, often ridiculing socially "proper" behaviors. Diogenes is famously remembered for carrying a lantern in daylight searching for an "honest man," as well as for mimicking sexual acts in public, urinating openly, and barking at people (the term "cynic" is derived from the Greek word for "doglike"). Cynics are known for their distrust of human nature and motives, a sentiment still encapsulated by the modern use of the term "cynical."

The satires of Menippus, which blended prose and verse, mocked pretentiousness and intellectual pretense. Like in The Master and Margarita, Menippus' works also ridiculed the elite. This style was later adopted by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century BC in his Saturarum Menippea Libri CL (150 Books of Menippean Satires, c. 8167 BC). The Mennipean Satire form has persisted through the ages, characterized by its broad societal critique and sharp mockery. In the 18th century, Alexander Pope's biting Dunciad is considered a Mennipean Satire, as is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World from 1932. During the 1960s and 1970s, when The Master and Margarita was published, Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn utilized this form to voice his dissent against the Soviet regime.

Symbolism
The symbolic elements in this novel not only provide a vivid depiction of the events but also intertwine the different plot lines. Among these symbols, the sun and the moon stand out the most, frequently mentioned throughout the story, almost as if they are the true witnesses to the unfolding drama. The novel opens with Berlioz and Ivan at Patriarch's Ponds "at the sunset hour," and introduces the devil as the sun sets. Pontius Pilate's headache is exacerbated by the glaring sun, mirroring Yeshua's suffering on the cross the next day. In contrast, the Master and Ivan are both haunted by moonlight, which disturbs their sanity. Traditionally, sunlight is linked to logic and reason, while moonlight is often associated with the subconscious. Another significant symbol is the recurring thunderstorms, which appear at crucial moments in the narrative. The storm that gathers as Yeshua is crucified and breaks upon his death is particularly fierce, as is the storm that sweeps over Moscow at the end when Woland and his associates conclude their business and depart. Writers frequently use thunderstorms to symbolize the release of a character's bottled-up emotions. In The Master and Margarita, the storms can be interpreted as the collective outcry of entire cultures, both ancient and modern, as they recognize the corruption within their social systems.

The novel also features numerous events and objects that can be seen as symbolic, prompting readers to consider broader philosophical issues. For example, foreign currency can be seen as representing non-Soviet ideas, with intrinsic value that the government seeks to suppress. The blood-red wine that Pilate spills, which cannot be washed away, symbolizes the indelible sins on his soul. Additionally, the empty suit that conducts business and the Theatrical Commission staff who find themselves unable to stop singing "The Song of the Volga Boatmen" illustrate the mindlessness of the bureaucratic system. These are just a few examples of elements that add deeper meaning to the story when interpreted symbolically as well as literally.

The Master and Margarita, initially considered for the title A Fantastic Novel, is primarily a work of imagination. Bulgakov, in many of his finest stories, masterfully merges the fantastical with the real and the grotesque with the ordinary, creating a style that anticipated the anti-realism of late 20th-century Latin American authors by decades. Throughout the novel, conventional constraints of space, time, and realistic possibilities are continuously breached. The novel features three major parallel narratives: the tales of Pontius Pilate, Woland, and the Master, spanning nearly 2,000 years. Pilate's story unfolds in Yershatayim (Jerusalem) during the era of Jesus Christ, while the Master's story is set in early 20th-century Moscow. Woland's storyline transcends all spatial and temporal boundaries, linking Pilate's and the Master's stories. In the novel's concluding scene, these three narratives converge in a timeless, fantastical domain.

The chapters about Pilate, which are essentially segments of the Master's own novel, create a novel within a novel. However, the distinction between "literature" and "reality" dissolves in the final scene when, through Woland's intervention, the Master "meets" Pilate, the protagonist of his own novel. Bulgakov's intricate fusion of history and fiction, reality and fantasy, renders this work one of the most captivating and delightful novels of the twentieth century.

1968: As the Vietnam War unfolded on television screens, Americans grew increasingly distrustful of their government. Horrific events, such as the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese men, women, and children in the village of My Lai, caused Americans to feel as alienated from their government as the citizens of Moscow felt in The Master and Margarita.

Today: Americans remain wary of the government's honesty and competence, resulting in widespread skepticism toward any military intervention.

1968: Alexander Dubcek, the newly appointed secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, refused to attend conferences in Warsaw and Moscow. To maintain control over the satellite Communist states, the Soviet Union deployed 200,000 troops into Czechoslovakia.

Today: Czechoslovakia no longer exists. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it split into two separate republics: The Czech Republic, with Prague as its capital, and Slovakia, with Bratislava as its capital.

1968: Race riots erupted in many major U.S. cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. Nationwide, a total of 21,270 arrests were made, and 46 people lost their lives during the riots.

Today: Many social scientists regard the persistent racial divisions as America's most significant social failure.

Three major influences on Bulgakov's writing of The Master and Margarita are the Bible, the Faust legend, and the works of Nikolai Gogol. Bulgakov's use of biblical themes stems from his desire to depict scenarios that test human moral courage and resilience. The Master's novel, particularly the Pilate chapters, is a reimagining and restructuring of the Gospels. Beyond the biblical source, his portrayal of Jesus, Yeshua-Ha-Nozri, presents a very human and fallible character, occasionally even cowardly, drawing from the traditional Russian view of Christ as primarily a suffering human being, contrasting with the orthodox emphasis on his divinity. This perspective is also prominent in Fyodor Dostoevsky's major novels.

While the names Margarita and Woland are drawn from Goethe's Faust (1790) — Margaret being Faust's first love and Mephistopheles referring to himself as Junker Voland — the Faustian themes are generally subtler. Some of Woland's physical traits were inspired by a production of Charles Gounod's operatic version of the Faust legend that Bulgakov saw in Moscow as a child. There are also general plot similarities, such as the chapter "Satan's Rout," reminiscent of the "The Witch's Kitchen" scene in Goethe's Faust. However, Bulgakov primarily used the biblical and Faustian sources as springboards for his ideas rather than direct models, often developing the themes in ways that oppose their original treatments.

The novel's phantasmagorical and grotesque elements can be partly attributed to famous short stories by Gogol, such as "The Overcoat" (1835) and "The Nose." Notably, after being seen as a realistic and socially-oriented writer for around seventy years, Gogol was "rediscovered" as a master of the absurd shortly before Bulgakov began work on The Master and Margarita. Gogol often incorporated supernatural elements in his stories.

Another lesser-known influence on the novel was an obscure novella titled Venediktov: or Memorable Events of My Life, written by A. V. Chayanov under the pseudonym "the Botanist X." In this work, Satan comes to Moscow to contend with the hero — whose name, interestingly, is Bulgakov — for the soul of his beloved.

Many of the stylistic elements found in The Master and Margarita—such as grotesque imagery, dark satire, and the fantastic—can also be seen in other works by Bulgakov. Chief among these are Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel (1967), The Heart of a Dog (1968), The Fatal Eggs, and "Diaboliad" (1925). A recurring theme in all of these works is the presentation of the fantastic as a completely natural phenomenon. The devil is depicted as a very real entity, and his powers have tangible effects on the characters' lives in each story.

Themes and early character prototypes from The Master and Margarita appear throughout Bulgakov's body of work. These include poets who seem unworthy of their talent, women willing to make extreme sacrifices for their loved ones, and heroes who fail to understand their own times. Themes of cowardice and weak-heartedness are also present. All these elements can be found in Bulgakov's first novel, The White Guard (1924-1929). Bulgakov's conflicts with the literary establishment, similar to those faced by the Master, are detailed extensively in Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel. Additionally, references to specific locations in Moscow in "Diaboliad" elevate the city to the status of a genuine literary character, much like in The Master and Margarita. The absurdities of the housing shortage in Moscow, as depicted in The Master and Margarita, were foreshadowed in his early short story "A Treatise on Housing." The theme of state terror is a crucial part of The Heart of a Dog. Bulgakov's favorite character, the devil, appears in almost all of his prose works in various forms.

The outstanding quality of The Master and Margarita has made it ideal for adaptation to both stage and screen. There have been two film versions: one directed by Yugoslav filmmaker A. Petrovic in 1973, and another by Polish director Andrzej Wajda in 1974, titled Pilate and Others.

The earliest stage adaptation seems to be a rendition of the Pontius Pilate chapters, performed in Leningrad in the early 1970s by a well-organized amateur troupe that managed to evade censorship.

The first professional and complete staging took place in Moscow at the Taganka Theater, directed by Yuri Liubimov in 1977. While Liubimov stayed quite true to Bulgakov's text, he included only the novel's most dramatic scenes, sometimes rearranging the sequence of events, and emphasizing its political themes. Despite taking three years to gain censor approval and enduring occasional official criticism, the production's public reception was phenomenal.

Shortly after the initial Moscow production, an opera titled Volandt was developed in England. The first American stage performance of The Master and Margarita occurred in New York in 1978, directed by Andrei Serban.

The Master and Margarita was adapted into a video format in 1988. This adaptation was directed by Alexandra Petrovich and distributed by SBS.

The 1992 video Incident in Judea, directed by Paul Bryers and also released by SBS, draws material from Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

A Polish adaptation titled Mistrz i Malgorzata (The Master and Margarita), complete with English subtitles, was released on four video cassettes by Contal International in 1990. This version was both directed and written by Maciej Wojtyszko.

The Master and Margarita was further adapted for audio cassette by IU Liubimov and released by Theater Works in 1991.

In 1995, Russian Discs released an audio compact disc titled Master and Margarita: Eight Scenes from the Ballet.

Sources
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, Vintage Books, 1995.

Donald Fanger, "Rehabilitation Experimentalist," in The Nation, January 22, 1968, pp. 117-18.

Edythe C. Haber, "The Mythic Structure of Bulgakov's 'The Master'," in The Russian Review, October 1975, pp. 382-409.

Pierre S. Hart, "The Master and Margarita as Creative Process," in Modern Fiction Studies, Summer 1973, pp. 169-78.

Vladimir Lakshin, "Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita," in Twentieth-Century Russian Literary Criticism, Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 247-83.

D.G.B. Piper, "An Approach to Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita," in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume VII, No. 2, April 1971, pp. 134-37.

Gleb Struve, Soviet Russian Literature, The University of Oklahoma Press, 1935.

Gleb Struve, "The Re-Emergence of Mikhail Bulgakov," in The Russian Review, July 1968, pp. 338-43.

For Further Study
J.A.E. Curtis, Manuscripts Don't Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a Life in Letters and Diaries, Overlook Press, 1992.
A renowned Bulgakov scholar narrates the author's life through his letters and diaries, filling in gaps where necessary but primarily presenting previously lost personal documents.

Arnold McMillian, "The Devil of a Similarity: The Satanic Verses and Master i Margarita," in Bulgakov: The Novelist-Playwright, edited by Leslie Milne, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995, pp. 232-41.
Compares The Satanic Verses with The Master and Margarita.

Nadine Natov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Twayne Publishers, 1985.
Explores the life of Mikhail Bulgakov.

Ellendea Proffer, Bulgakov, Ardis Press, 1984.
A thorough study of Bulgakov's life and works.

Joel C. Relihan, Ancient Menippean Satire, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Examines the history of Menippean satire.

Kalpana Sahni, A Mind in Ferment: Mikhail Bulgakov's Prose, Humanities Press, Inc., 1986.
Analyzes Bulgakov's writings, including The Master and Margarita.