SOURCE: "The Social and Political Context of Bulgakov's 'The Fatal Eggs'," in Slavic Review, Vol. 51, No. 3, Fall, 1992, pp. 497-510.

[In the essay below, Haber discusses the satirical parallels between the events following the Bolshevik Revolution and the characters and circumstances in the story "The Fatal Eggs. "]

"The Fatal Eggs," written in 1924 and published in early 1925, was the first of Bulgakov's works to attract widespread attention—and a storm of controversy. Recipient of a few positive reviews as well as uniformly enthusiastic praise—privately expressed—from writers and editors, the novella was also the object of virulent attack from a number of (mostly proletarian) critics. Among the attackers were those who saw the work as a thinly veiled allegory and Professor Persikov's discovery of the "revolutionary" red ray as an allusion to the socialist experiments of the bolsheviks.

While a link between the scientific and socio-political levels of the novella indubitably exists, a strict allegorical reading (in which more recent critics have also been known to engage) is too simplistic to accommodate Bulgakov's rich, complex portrayal of Soviet society. The work's resistance to schematic interpretation, moreover, is compounded by two factors. The first is the myriad of referents associated with its main characters and its central images which operate simultaneously on several planes—the scientific, religio-metaphysical and political—and each level contains multiple meanings, not always easily reconcilable. The second fačtor, which especially complicates interpretation of the socio-political level, is the blurring of time: while occurring in the near future (1928), the novella contains an intricate web of allusions to events of the immediate past. This essay will focus on the social and political dimensions of "The Fatal Eggs" and, by examining in detail the topical realia underlying Bulgakov's fantastic world, reach a more precise understanding than heretofore of these relatively neglected aspects. We should thereby arrive at a greater appreciation of the scope and richness of the work as a whole.

When one turns to the descriptions of Moscow in "The Fatal Eggs," one is struck immediately by the absence of the schematism generally associated with futuristic, allegorical works. Bulgakov's city is, in fact, so far from a straightforward communist utopia (or anti-utopia) that little specifically socialist remains. The noise, lights, rushing cars and teeming crowds render Moscow almost indistinguishable from other modern metropolises like New York or London:

It [the city] shone, lights danced, died down and flashed up. On Theater Square the white headlights of buses and the green lights of trolleys revolved; above the former Miur and Meriliz, over the added tenth story, an electrical, multi-colored woman was jumping, emitting multi-colored words letter by letter: "workers' credit." In the public garden opposite the Bolshoi Theater, where a multi-colored fountain gushed at night, a crowd pushed and hummed.

In this dynamic urban world, many distinguishing signs of bolshevism are fast fading: "comrade" has virtually disappeared from the vocabulary and civil war garb is entirely replaced by suit jackets even among the proletariat. This is not a depiction of a rationalized, socialist city of the future; rather, it is the Moscow of 1928 from the vantage point of the mixed system of NEP [New Economic Policy] that prevailed in 1924.

In this regard, "The Fatal Eggs" has particularly close ties to Bulgakov's feuilletons published in 1922-1924 in the Berlin "Change of Landmarks" newspaper, Nakanune. But the construction and return of plenty of NEP portrayed so vividly in the latter is projected into the near future in the former. The housing crisis, the bane of Bulgakov's early Soviet existence, is at an end and nascent technology and construction have advanced. And if in one Nakanune feuilleton a tail coat amazingly materializes among the uniforms and leather jackets of the civil war period, by the time "The Fatal Eggs" takes place the entire audience at Persikov's lecture is dressed in evening clothes. In the Nakanune pieces, Bulgakov's depiction of the glittering hybrid world of NEP, although far from uncritical, is filled with the optimism and vitality of a recovery period; the Moscow of "The Fatal Eggs" in many ways reflects that optimism. Indeed, some reviewers singled out for praise the glowing depiction of Moscow of the future: " . . . the author of a Utopian r-r-revolutionary novel could hardly arouse in his readers the same sense of a powerful, joyous country, a true New World" [L-v, Novyi mir, 6 (1925)]. Even a more negative reviewer [A. Men'shoi, "Moskva v 1928-m godu," in Zhizn' iskusstva 18 (1955)] praised the "beauty" of the contrasts of old and new, the "running, rush, quickness, dynamism of our marvelous days."

The contemporary reader of "The Fatal Eggs" associated this glittering, speeding city not only—not even primarily—with the new bolshevik order, but with America. Thus our negative critic [Men'shoi] sums up his impression: "Moscow has started living American-style [zazhila poamerikanski]. Moscow has become entirely Americanized [obamerikanilas']" And there are in the text numerous explicit links between this "New World" and America. Persikov's housing problem, for example, has been solved by the efforts of a "united American-Russian company" which in 1926 "built . . . 15 fifteen-story houses in the center of Moscow and 300 workers' cottages, each containing eight apartments, on the outskirts, thus ending once and for all the terrible and ridiculous housing crisis that so tormented Muscovites in the years 1919-1925." And Persikov himself is lured by Americanisms: he agrees to answer the questions of an impudent journalist because " . . . all the same, there is something American in this scoundrel." Bulgakov depicts this Americanized society with considerable élan, but also with implicit reservations. His city is a place, after all, where artificial light replaces the natural, where the increased speed and growth brought about by technology have also increased the level of ruthlessness.

This process, symptomatic of all modern, technological societies, is analogous to the developments among the amoebae which run amok under Professor Persikov's ray. And there are additional parallels between society and Persikov's laboratory, especially apparent in Professor Persikov's relations with journalists where colored rays and magnification also play a role. One evening, for example, when the professor is out on the street, he is accosted by a journalist and blinded by a "violet ray" apparently from a camera. The next day he sees himself, much magnified, "on the roof, on a white screen, shielding himself with his fists from the violet ray." Such importunate journalists (who also figure in the work that inspired "The Fatal Eggs," H. G. Wells's Food of the Gods) are, like the speed, crowds and artificial lights of Moscow, a feature of the modern world as a whole, not just of socialist society: yet another indication that Bulgakov's Moscow cannot be reduced to a schematic vision of the bolshevik future.

At the same time, however, one must avoid the extreme of regarding the city as merely a generalized metropolis. The society of the novella reflects the hybrid system of NEP in which specific features both of the west and of bolshevism play roles. The most salient feature of the latter—and one that emphasizes the parallels between Persikov's laboratory and contemporary society—is central control. If the social Darwinism underlying laissezfaire capitalism in the west is analogous to unfettered natural evolution, the laboratory, with its controlling and manipulating intelligence, is the model for socialism. From the beginning of "The Fatal Eggs," socialist central control, imposed primarily by the GPU [the Russian secret police], co-exists with the elemental urban life typical of all modern cities. When, for example, the journalist Bronskii, "staff member of the Moscow magazines Red Flame, Red Pepper, Red Journal, Red Projector and the Moscow newspaper Red Evening Moscow" calls upon Persikov, the scientist at first summarily orders him thrown out. But when he learns that Bronskii also works for Red Raven, a publication of the GPU, he relents and agrees to see him.

Although the GPU is here and elsewhere a coercive force, relations between the professor and the secret police are not entirely adversarial. Persikov, indeed, summons the GPU when a suspicious character offers him 5,000 rubles to pass his discovery to a foreign government. At that point, parallels between Persikov and the GPU emerge that reinforce the analogies between his control in the laboratory and their control of society as a whole.

Throughout the novella Persikov is portrayed as a "divinity" who tampers with nature in the "hell" of his laboratory; the three GPU agents who come to him are also a blend of the heavenly and the diabolical. The first is "reminiscent of an angel in patent-leather boots. The second, shortish, . . . [is] terribly gloomy ... " The third, like the professor, is endowed with extraordinary vision and has "amazingly piercing [koliuchie] eyes" which, although covered by smoky glasses, "see the study, illuminated and permeated with streams of tobacco smoke, through and through." They, like Persikov, are amazingly knowledgeable and are able to identify a suspicious visitor from a mere glimpse of a galosh he left behind. Grateful to Persikov for his cooperation, the GPU agents offer to control the pesky journalists, to prevent them from disturbing him. Accustomed to total control in his laboratory, Persikov requests that the reporters be shot, just as he killed his irradiated tadpoles when they got out of hand. The response of one of the agents reveals the congruous methods of the secret police and the scientist: " . . . of course that would be good . . . however, such a project is already being worked out [nazrevaet] at the Council of Labor and Defense . . . "

Persikov's tragedy in "The Fatal Eggs" is that in the course of the novella he himself becomes victim to his belief in scientific control. The GPU not only attempts (and fails) to control forces inimical to him, but they and the government as a whole also repeatedly manipulate the man of genius himself. And so, while Persikov is in one sense a "divinity," a model to his science-worshipping society, at the same time he is but a means to its end: just as a frog is "crucified" by Persikov in a scientific experiment, so in the end is he himself "crucified" in the state's larger social experiment.

The ever-present power of the state, overshadowed at the beginning of the novella by the glitter and dynamism of modern, urban society, emerges only during a national crisis: the chicken plague which first breaks out in a provincial town and soon spreads throughout the country. Not only does the disease show the limitation of scientific control over the forces of nature, as others have noted, it also takes on other levels of meaning, from frivolous to grave. Clearly of the first category are the scabrous associations evoked by the resulting shortage of eggs (eggs in colloquial Russian = balls, testicles); for example, performers at a night club sing: "Oh, mama, what will I do without eggs?" And a feuilleton that lambasts a Mr. Hughes (an allusion to Charles Evans Hughes, American Secretary of State) concludes: "Don't hanker after our eggs, Mr. Hughes—you have your own!"

The ostensibly light-hearted reference to Hughes points to another, non-sexual order of impotence in the Soviet Union and is part of a complex web of political allusion in the novella. The political, indeed international, political significance of the chicken plague is manifest, first of all, by the fact that it ceases immediately at the borders of the Soviet Union. As the narrator comments: "Whether the climate there was different or the defensive-cordoning measures taken by neighboring governments played a role, the fact is that the plague went no farther"; the military terminology (zagraditel'nye kordonnye mery) here alludes to the cordon sanitaire placed around the Soviet Union by western powers to prevent the spread of the "contagion" of revolution. One also recalls that in the satirical allegory "The Crimson Island," written shortly before "The Fatal Eggs," the revolution itself is termed a "plague" against which a quarantine is enforced by nervous imperialist powers. In "The Crimson Island," the plague is declared over six years after the revolution, at which point the French and British decide to invade the island. And in "The Fatal Eggs" (written in the seventh year after the revolution), the plague arouses fear of intervention. A voice from a loudspeaker calls out: "New attempts at intervention! ... in connection with the chicken plague!"; and a newsboy cries: "Poland is preparing for a nightmarish war!"

Bulgakov envisioned a recurrence of intervention and Polish invasion based on the Soviet political situation shortly before "The Crimson Island" and "The Fatal Eggs" were written. The fear of intervention arose with French occupation of the Ruhr in early 1923 and the concomitant threat of invasion by France's eastern ally, Poland. This fear was exacerbated when the fiercely anti-bolshevik Lord Curzon came to power in England and in May 1923 presented the Soviets with a very stiff ultimatum. In the very first published entry in his diary, Bulgakov writes of the events leading up to the ultimatum: "There is the smell of a rupture or even of war in the air.... It's awful that Poland and Rumania have also begun stirring.... In general we are on the eve of [momentous] events." In one of his Nakanune feuilletons, "Benefit Performance for Lord Curzon," Bulgakov describes a mass demonstration against the Curzon ultimatum. Chicherin, the principal orator at the demonstration, imputed Lenin's illness as basis for the current crisis since it had convinced the bolsheviks' enemies that "Soviet power is deprived of its firmness and can be overthrown by pressure from without." He concluded: "We firmly await our enemy before our threshold ... " [quoted in Edward Hallett Carr, A History of Soviet Russia: The Interregnum, 1923-1924, 1954]. Thus the chicken plague symbolizes both the revolutionary contagion with which the Soviet Union was threatening other nations and the weakness of the country itself in 1923-1924 when the death of its powerful leader "emasculated" the country and invited foreign invasion.

If the plague imagery in "The Fatal Eggs" parallels that in "The Crimson Island," the depiction in the novella of international relations is far more complex. The Soviet Union has not been "quarantined" after all: with its American housing, German scientific equipment and French electric revolvers, among many other things, it appears to enjoy full economic relations with capitalist countries. And while the chicken plague does bring the risk of foreign intervention, it also results in a massive import of eggs. This rather contradičtory state of affairs actually reflects the international situation by late 1923 and early 1924 when the Soviet Union, in desperate need of foreign aid for its economic recovery, attempted to normalize relations with western powers by establishing active trade and, in some cases, diplomatic relations. The danger of foreign conflict remained, however, due to Soviet unwillingness to abandon revolutionary activities abroad and to pay its foreign debt. This unstable international situation—broad foreign contact co-existing uneasily with foreign threat—is projected into the future in Bulgakov's fiction.

In addition to this complex of political referents, the chicken plague alludes as well to the chronic agricultural problems with which the country was suffering, in particular to the serious drought that threatened the harvest of 1924. The measures taken in "The Fatal Eggs" to combat the chicken plague echo the Soviet government's reactions to the agricultural and international crises of 1923-1924. In July 1924 an "emergency commission for combating the consequences of the deficient harvest" [Carr, A History of Soviet Russia: Socialism in One Country, 1958] was set up, a manifestation of the increasing demand placed upon scientists to redirect their attention toward social problems. As Trotsky wrote in Pravda in late 1923: "... all of us very much need a new orientation on the part of scientists: the adjustment of their attention, their interests, and their efforts to the tasks and demands of the new social structure" ["Science in the Task of Socialist Construction," translated by Frank Manning and George Saunders, in Problems of Everyday Life and Other Writings on Culture and Science, 1973. Originally published in Pravda, November 24, 1923]. Another, more significant result of this demand was the formation, also in 1924, of a chemists' organization, Dohrokhim, whose main task was to find practical uses for chemistry, especially in defense. In "The Fatal Eggs," there are organizations analogous to the "commission for the deficient harvest" and to Dohrokhim: the "emergency commission for combating the chicken plague" and Dobrokur. Persikov becomes a member of both organizations and follows the path that Trotsky envisioned for scientists in which obligation to the state takes precedence over pure research.

Persikov's intellectual autonomy—like that of actual scientists of the time—is ever more eroded by his civic duties. The real test of his autonomy, however, occurs upon the arrival of Alexander Semenovich Rokk, direčtor of the Red Ray sovkhoz. Rokk wants to put the red ray to immediate practical use: to accelerate chicken breeding and thus end the crisis. The professor's confrontation with Rokk is a test that Persikov ultimately fails when, Pilate-like, he declares "I wash my hands" and yields the equipment to the sovkhoz chairman. In the hands of Rokk, the ray, without losing its broader implications in modern technological society as a whole, becomes specifically associated with the socialist experiment; it is he who attempts to apply the laboratory model to the real world.

Yet to regard Rokk as simply an undifferentiated communist is a mistaken response to this complex tale; one must define more exactly the position that he occupies in the ideological spectrum in the Moscow of 1928. When he enters Persikov's study, the professor is struck by his revolutionary garb, his leather jacket and "immense mauser pistol," an attire that, the narrator explains, makes him look "strangely old-fashioned" in the Moscow of 1928. He adds: "In 1919 this man would have fit in perfectly, he would have been tolerated in 1924, at its beginning, but in 1928 he was strange." Of special importance is "in 1924, at its beginning," for in January of that year two events occurred which may have led Bulgakov to predict a shift in the Communist Party of the future. The first was the death of Lenin; more significant for "The Fatal Eggs," however, was an early indication that Trotsky would fall from power: a newspaper bulletin, announcing his illness and "leave with full freedom from all duties for a period of no less than two months." In his diary, Bulgakov quotes the bulletin, then commenting: "And so on 8 January 1924 they chucked Trotsky out. God only knows what will happen to Russia." The writer no doubt reacted so strongly to news of Trotsky's "leave" because the bitter struggle taking place within the Communist Party pitted supporters of the ruling triumvirate—Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin—against Trotsky and other so-called "deviationists." These latter considered the NEP a retreat from revolutionary socialist principles to be replaced as soon as possible by greater central control of the economy, while the ruling coalition advocated the more popular line of continuing the policy. Thus Bulgakov, having observed the weakening of the more doctrinaire branch of the Party, described the Moscow of "The Fatal Eggs" as having a flourishing NEP with zealous revolutionaries such as Rokk virtually extinct—although, as the novella demonstrates, they may reappear at a time of crisis.

Further evidence of Rokk's link with Trotsky's followers can be found by comparing him to the diabolical Shpolianskii in The White Guard. Like Shpolianskii. Rokk was an artist before the revolution. However, as former flutist at "the cozy Cinema Enchanted Dreams [Volshebnye grezy] in the city of Ekaterinoslav," Rokk parodies the formidable Petersburg poet and critic. The revolution marked a sharp break in Rokk's life, as it did in Shpolianskii's: he replaced his flute with a mauser and began to wander from one end of the country to the other. Himself radically transformed, he set about transforming the nation, both by "enlightening" its populace, as editor of a newspaper in Turkestan, and by altering it physically, as a member of a commission concerned with irrigation there. The image of Rokk at the end of "The Fatal Eggs" is also congruous to that of Trotsky himself toward the end of The White Guard. In "The Fatal Eggs," the diabolical snakes that hatch from "Rokk's eggs" (an alternative translation of the novella's title) threaten to invade Moscow just as the poet Rusakov in the novel envisions Satan-Trotsky's legions coming from the "kingdom of the anti-Christ, Moscow" and invading Kiev.

Rokk's convictions and proclivities, moreover, coincide—in travestied form, of course—with Trotsky's. Rokk's unquestioning faith in Persikov's ray (" . . . your ray is so renowned you could even raise elephants, not just chicks") lampoons Trotsky's belief in the power of science and technology to conquer nature. The latter in 1924 imagined that: "Through the machine, man in Socialist society will command nature in its entirety. .. . He will change the course of rivers, and he will lay down rules for the oceans" [Literature and Revolution, translated by Rose Strunsky, 1960]. He also envisaged physiological transformations (not in chickens, to be sure, but in people): "Even purely physiologic life will become subject to collective experiments. The human species, the coagulated homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training. This is entirely in accord with evolution . . . "

Rokk parodies not only Trotsky's pronouncements on science but also his devotion to high art and his belief that in a socialist society masterpieces of the past could enrich and elevate the ignorant proletariat: "What the worker will take from Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, or Dostoievsky, will be a more complex idea of human personality, of its passions and feelings, a deeper and profounder understanding of its psychic forces and of the role of the subconscious, etc. In the final analysis, the worker will become richer." However, when Rokk tests the civilizing effects of culture and tries to charm by playing Evgenii Onegin on his flute to a product of "revolutionary" change (one of the giants that has hatched from the "fatal eggs"), the creature proves impervious to high art. It jumps past the sovkhoz director and strangles his wife—the first of an untold number of ghastly fatalities that result from his ill-conceived experiment.

Rokk also shares Trotsky's association with the newest, most technological of art forms, the cinema. Such enthusiasm for the medium was, of course, widespread among political and artistic radicals of the time: Lenin himself dubbed film "the most important of all the arts." In "Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema" [in Problems of Everyday Life, originally published in Pravda, July 12, 1923] Trotsky looked to motion pictures to replace both tavern and church in Russian life, and hoped to "make up for the separation of the church from the socialist state by the fusion of the socialist state and the cinema . . . Having no need of a clergy in brocade, etc., the cinema unfolds on the white screen spectacular images of greater grip than are provided by the richest church. . . . " Early in "The Fatal Eggs," as we have seen, magnified representations created by artificial rays are projected onto Moscow buildings and play a prominent part in the new society. Rokk's revolutionary transformation, to be sure, entails severing his former tie to the cinema and abandoning his cozy bourgeois niche in the "dusty starry satin" of the Enchanted Dreams Movie Theater for the "open sea of war and revolution." The narrator ironically adds: "It turned out that this man was positively great, and of course it was not for him to sit in the lobby of Dreams." Rokk, however, merely transfers the cinematic dream world from the stuffy little theater out into the great world of revolution: he now has the "cinematic" task of creating giant beings by means of an artificial ray. This task, moreover, involves usurpation of the divine-religious function, as do motion pictures in Trotsky's view.

The combination of cinematic motif and religious imagery continues: Rokk's "cinematic" effort to play God having failed, he undergoes a reverse transformation to "Biblical prophet" and entreats two skeptical GPU agents: "Listen to me. Listen. Why don't you believe?" When the agents investigate, they find a "strange cinematic light" illuminating a huge number of giant snakes and on the floor three experimental boxes which resemble "immense cameras." The "enchanted dreams" of Rokk's cinematic past become a nightmare when transferred to the world of reality; the blasphemous attempt at creation results in terrible destruction.

Rokk is not a stereotypical communist; rather, he is associated specifically with Trotsky and others who advocated a return to the accelerated revolutionary processes of war communism. This is not to imply, of course, an identification of Rokk with Trotsky: there is little superficial likeness between the brilliant and urbane co-maker of the Russian revolution and the provincial, semi-educated sovkhoz director. Through Rokk, Bulgakov demonstrates instead the untold havoc that could be wrought by Trotsky's grandiose beliefs in the transforming powers of science and art.

The snake incursion itself also has a complex of political referents, domestic and international. The fact that the disaster originates in the countryside—especially at a new Soviet institution, a sovkhoz—suggests an analogy between the horrifying outcome of Rokk's experiments and a peasant uprising resulting from over-precipitous attempts to socialize the rural population. Dissatisfaction is expressed by the peasantry in the novella: in response to the thousand human deaths resulting from the plague, a "prophet" appears in Volokolamsk "who proclaim[s] that the chicken plague was caused by none other than the commissars ... " The peasants then beat "several policemen who were taking chickens away from peasant women" and break windows in the local post office and telegraph station. Another example of peasant dissatisfaction, more closely tied to the basic plot, occurs shortly before the eggs hatch when the housemaid warns Rokk of mortal danger from the peasants: "They say that your eggs are diabolical. . . . They wanted to kill you." The next day, after the appearance of a "well-known troublemaker and sage," the eggs hatch and giant anacondas and ostriches overrun the land.

Bulgakov's concern about disorder in the countryside is confirmed by a diary entry of late 1923 in which he reported that "hooliganism is developing among the young people in the villages" and observed that "We are a savage, dark, unfortunate people." Rural rioting occurred in 1924 and there were murders of sel'kory (village correspondents) whose ardent bolshevism, reminiscent of Rokk's, aroused antagonism among the peasants. That Bulgakov linked these disorders to future catastrophe is attested in a diary entry of late 1924, where he comments on a sel'kor murder, "Either I have no intuition [chut'e] .. . or this is the introduction to a totally unbelievable opera."

The international aspects of the snake incursion are also numerous: within "The Fatal Eggs" itself there are references to the threat of intervention; the eggs are of foreign origin and the beasts that hatch from them are exotic; the snakes follow the "Napoleonic" route through burning Smolensk to the threshold of Moscow; Budennyi's cavalry is mobilized as it was during the Polish campaign of the civil war. In Bulgakov's diary entries for 1923 and early 1924, moreover, he expressed numerous times the premonition of impending war or other disaster and occasionally echoed almost verbatim his reaction to the Curzon ultimatum, "we are on the eve of events." These premonitions were linked with particular frequency to the failed German revolution of fall 1923 in whose planning the Russian communists were centrally involved. That Bulgakov was aware of the Soviets' revolutionary activities in Germany is also apparent in his diary: "The Communist Party is bending over backwards [iz kozhi von lezet] to incite a revolution in Germany and create havoc." And he speculated on a possible struggle between fascism and communism (which would seem prophetic were it not such a frequent topic in Pravda and Izvestiia at the time): " . . . who knows, perhaps the world really is splitting into two parts—communism and fascism . . . It is possible that the world really is on the eve of a general skirmish between communism and fascism." It is tempting to draw a connection between the snake invasion and the fascist danger: the giant snakes and ostriches, after all, result from Rokk's attempt to speed up natural processes, and the growth of fascism, in Bulgakov's view, was furthered by the communists' misguided attempts to accelerate revolutionary processes abroad. As he noted in his diary in October 1923: "In Germany, instead of the expected communist revolution, evident and widespread fascism has resulted." But the disaster in "The Fatal Eggs" should not be associated only with fascism. That it refers to a broader foreign threat is indicated by a later entry in Bulgakov's diary which comments on the breakdown of an Anglo-Soviet conference: "It would be interesting to know how long the 'Union of Socialist Republics' will last in such a position."

The snake invasion and its ensuing destruction may thus be linked to the more extreme bolshevik policies of 1923-1924, both domestic and foreign. Here, as with the red ray and the chicken plague, Bulgakov has created a capacious symbol which accommodates disparate sociopolitical referents. It is precisely these broad symbols that make "The Fatal Eggs" such an extraordinarily dense work, one which conjures up from beneath its bright and witty surface the entire tangled complex of political events and issues of its tumultuous time. The political dimension, moreover, by no means negates other levels of symbolism—whether scientific or metaphysical—that have been discussed by other critics.

"The Fatal Eggs" also provides a vivid illustration of the relations of Bulgakov's art to politics during the NEP. He, together with Zamyatin and a number of others, occupied a middle ground far from those ideologically committed writers (whether of the proletarian or futurist stripe) who placed their art at the service of the state. Nor did he side with those, most notably the Serapion Brothers, who emphasized the autonomy of art in contemporary reality and insisted that a literary work should "live its own life. . . . Not be a copy of nature, but live on an equal footing with nature" [Lev Lunts, "Pochemu my Serapionovy Brat'ia," in Rodina i drugie proizvedeniia, 1981]. Especially in his three novellas, "The Diaboliad" (1923), "The Fatal Eggs" (1924) and Heart of a Dog (1925), Bulgakov employed the fantasy typical of the Serapions but transplanted it from some imagined "other" world to everyday Soviet life. By introducing incredible factors into the contemporary socio-political equation (the discovery of the ray of life, the transformation of dog to man), he engaged his art in current issues, only at an ironic, hypothetical remove; entered a dialogue, both complex and playful, with the prevailing verities; and probed some of the basic assumptions of the new society.

This dialogic stance was a precarious one, at the very limit of the permissible even in the relatively tolerant atmosphere of the mid-1920s. With Heart of a Dog, written just a few months after "The Fatal Eggs," Bulgakov fell over the edge; no less than the bolshevik leader Lev Kamenev judged the work "a sharp lampoon on contemporary life, [which] under no circumstance can be published." Heart of a Dog was the first of Bulgakov's works to be banned entirely, a harbinger of the writer's total exclusion from print.

Despite the official disfavor his satirical fantasies aroused, however, Bulgakov continued along the path broken by them, a path that led finally to The Master and Margarita. In that novel the fantastic is once again grounded in everyday Soviet reality and the many-layered and at times opaque allusiveness of "The Fatal Eggs" achieves its fullest artistic realization.