Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

This study will examine Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, focusing on the the novel's portrayal of Soviet life in the period from 1929 to 1939 (that is, how citizens were expected to act, think, and express themselves). The study will discuss Bulgakov's critique of this culture, and will discuss the author's alternative to this repressive culture insofar as it is implied in the novel.

Bulgakov is interested in one specific aspect of the relation of the repressive governmental structure to the individual, and that aspect has to do with artistic creation. As the translator writes in the introduction, Bulgakov has a "lasting concern with the relation of the artist, the creative individual, to state authority, and with the fate of the artist's work" (Bulgakov xi-xii). This concern was due in part to the repressive nature of the Stalinist era in general, but was also specifically due to the censorship which Bulgakov's own work---including this novel---suffered in the period in question. Bulgakov was an artist, not a politician, so his description and criticism of the Soviet state and its oppression under Stalin is masked in this novel in myth, metaphor and mystification. At the same time, his book is primarily satirical, which gives a sense of playfulness to issues and themes which are deadly serious.

The Soviet people are expected to act, think, and express themselves in no way which will threaten the authority of the state. In the novel, the artist is represented

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st a fairly decent period of time. . . . . How can man govern if he cannot plan for even so ridiculously short a span as a thousand years or so, if, in fact, he cannot guarantee even his own next day? (Bulgakov 11). The basis of communism and the Soviet state under Stalin in the 1930s was the belief that man is the ruling force in the world, that there is no God, and that whatever order or justice which occurs in the world will occur through the intervention of man as represented on a large scale in the Soviet state. The devil mocks this communist belief, saying that man is lost in the world, does not know what is going on today, and has little or no control over what will happen tomorrow. In fact, the devil himself---in the guise of a "professor"---declares, "And Keep in mind that Jesus existed" (Bulgakov 16). The basic critique of the Soviet communist state set forth by Bulgakov through his novel is that it places man at the center of the universe. The Master and Bulgakov---the devil as well---know that the world is too mysterious and dynamic for man to ever begin to control it as much as he might like. When man places himself at the center of the universe, he becomes paranoid and arrogant---as did Stalin---and begins to act

Category: Literature - M