Mikhail Bulgakov the heir of Gogol

Mikhail Bulgakov 1891-1940






The Heart of a Dog (Russian: Собачье сердце, Sobač'e serdce) is a 1925 story by Mikhail Bulgakov.

It features a professor Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky (his name is derived from the Russian word for "transfiguration") who implants human testicles and a pituitary gland into a stray dog named Sharik. Sharik then proceeds to become more and more human as time passes, picks himself the name Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, makes himself a career with the Soviet bureaucracy the "Moscow Cleansing Department responsible for eliminating vagrant quadrupeds (cats, etc.)", and turns the life in the professor's house (made up of four apartments) into a nightmare until the professor reverses the procedure.

This is an elaborate satire of Soviet life and more specifically the policies meant to deal with the housing shortage where corrupt practices and micromanagement were legion. Something to consider that in the Communist system no one is different than anyone else. We are all equal, being all the same. Yet if everyone is equal the man of talent such as a scientist or writer finds himself in a strange position. Knowing that he is different from everyone else but having to deny this very fact or deal with policies to this effect. This story illustrates how such concepts when consolidated into systems go against what it means to be human. We have the same problem in the US. If this weren't true about Western Society as a whole and only anti-Communist propaganda then it wouldn't be as funny or tragic as it is.
In essence: we can't all be proletariats. Bulgakov never was able to publish this story in the USSR and shortly afterwards he was barred from ever publishing anything again after a few plays he produced which criticized Stalin's purges in the 30's.
But Stalin liked a play he had written so he didn't have him killed but he couldn't leave the country.





The Master and Margarita (Russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel woven about the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union.

The opening sequence of the book presents a direct confrontation between the unbelieving head of the literary bureaucracy, Berlioz (Берлиоз), and an urbane foreign gentleman who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers (Woland).

Telling Berlioz about his eminent death: “It is too late Annushka has already spilled the oil.”

Rushing to a meeting Berlioz slips on some sunflower oil which Annushka, a housekeeper has spilled on a street corner, and falls under an oncoming streetcar. As a result of which he is decapitated.

This is witnessed by a young and enthusiastically modern poet, Ivan Bezdomniy (Иван Бездомный - the name means "Homeless"). His futile attempt to chase and capture the "gang" and warn of their evil and mysterious nature lands Ivan in a lunatic asylum. Here we are introduced to The Master, an embittered author, the petty-minded rejection of whose historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ has led him to such despair that he burns his manuscript and turns his back on the "real" world, including his devoted lover, Margarita (Маргарита). Major episodes in the first part of the novel include Satan's magic show at the Variety Theatre, satirizing the vanity, greed and gullibility of the new rich; and the capture and occupation of Berlioz's apartment by Woland and his gang.

The gang features Woland the visiting foreign professor, Koroviev an ex-choirmaster, and Behemoth a vodka swirling cat who walks on his hind legs.


(Sources Wikipedia and Antonio449)