Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov - Master and Margarita

PENGUIN BOOKS

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in May 1891. He studied and briefly practised medicine and, after indigent wanderings through revolutionary Russia and the Caucasus, he settled in Moscow in 1921. His sympathetic portrayal of White characters in his stories, in the plays The Days of the Turbins (The White Guard), which enjoyed great success at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1926, and Flight (1927), and his satirical treatment of the officials of the New Economic Plan, led to growing criticism, which became violent after the play The Purple Island . His later works treat the subject of the artist and the tyrant under the guise of historical characters, with plays such as Molire, staged in 1936, Don Quixote, staged in 1940, and Pushkin, staged in 1943. He also wrote a brilliant biography, highly original in form, of his literary hero, Molire, but The Master and Margarita, a fantasy novel about the devil and his henchmen set in modern Moscow, is generally considered his masterpiece. Fame, at home and abroad, was not to come until a quarter of a century after his death at Moscow in 1940.

Richard Pevear was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1943. He has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy and Alberto Savinio, as well as two books of poetry. He and his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, who was born in Leningrad, have translated works by Pavel Florensky, Samuel Marshak, Daniil Kharms, Henri Volohonsky, Alexei Khvostenko, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Nikolai Gogol. Their translation of The Brothers Karamazov received the PEN translation award in 1991, and they translated Tolstoys What is Art? for Penguin Classics. They live in France.

MIKHAIL BULGAKOV

TRANSLATED AND WITH NOTES BY
RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD PEVEAR

PENGUIN CLASSICS

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First published as Master i Margarita in serial form in Moskva, 19667

This translation published in Penguin Books 1997

Reprinted in Penguin Classics 2000

Reprinted with a new Chronology 2007

Text copyright Mikhail Bulgakov, 1966, 1967

Translation, Further Reading and Notes copyright Richard Pevear and

Larissa Volokhonsky, 1997

Introduction copyright Richard Pevear, 1997

Chronology copyright Andrew Bromfield, 2007

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author and translators has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

9780140455465

18718 Russo-Turkish war.

1881 Alexander II assassinated. Alexander III ascends the throne.

1891 Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov born on 15 May to the family of a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy.

1894 Nicholas II ascends the throne.

1898 The Moscow Art Theatre stages Chekhovs Seagull . First Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party (RSDP).

1901 The Moscow Art Theatre stages Chekhovs Three Sisters .

1903 At its Second Congress, the RSDP splits into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

19045 Russo-Japanese War.

1905 The 1905 Revolution.

1906 The first Duma (Russian Parliament).

April: Russias first Constitution enacted.

1907 Bulgakovs family moves to 13 Andreevsky Spusk, which later inspires the setting for his novel The White Guard and his play The Days of the Turbins .

1909 Bulgakov graduates from the First Alexandrov Gymnasium (i.e. grammar school) and begins his medical studies at Kiev University.

1910 Leo Tolstoy dies.

1913 Bulgakov marries Tatyana Nikolaevna Lappa.

1914 The First World War begins. St Petersburg renamed Petrograd. Bulgakov and his wife work in front-line hospitals.

1916 Bulgakov graduates from the university and works in rural hospitals in Nikolsk and Vyazma in Smolensk Province.

1917 Bulgakov starts writing A Country Doctors Notebook, based on his own experience.

The February Revolution (23 February8 March). The State Duma is convened in Petrograd.

March: Nicholas II abdicates the throne in favour of Grand Prince Mikhail. Mikhail transfers power to the Provisional Government. Lenin returns from abroad.

June: The election of the Constituent Assembly is set for September.

August: The election is postponed to November.

25 October7 November: The October Revolution.

December: The Constituent Assembly elections begin. The Cheka (Soviet secret police) is established.

1918 Bulgakov returns to Kiev and establishes his own private medical practice.

January: The Constituent Assembly is dissolved.

March: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed with Germany.

April: The British land at Murmansk, heralding numerous other attempts at foreign intervention in Russia.

June: Russian industry is nationalized.

November: The First World War ends. Russia repudiates the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

1919 Bulgakov moves to Vladikavkaz, where he gives up medicine and devotes himself to journalism and literature.

March: The Comintern is founded. Admiral Kolchak launches his campaign against the Bolsheviks.

October: Allied forces withdraw from Murmansk and Archangel.

1920 March: The Allied blockade is lifted.

November: The civil war ends in Russia.

1921 The Bulgakovs move to Moscow, where they live for several years in the apartment which is the model for the evil apartment in The Master and Margarita .

March: The New Economic Policy (NEP) is introduced to replace the rigours of War Communism.

1922 February: The Cheka is replaced by the OGPU.

April: Stalin becomes Secretary General of the Communist Party.

1923 Bulgakov works on the novel The White Guard and stories for the cycle