Mikhail Bulgakov State Museum, Moscow

Mikhail Bulgakov State Museum

Photo by Vladimir Chinin, Photobank Lori

Mikhail Bulgakov was one of Soviet Russia’s most high-profile playwrights, novelists, and short-story writers, known for his piercing satire of life in the USSR. The Mikhail Bulgakov State Museum is located in the communal apartment where Bulgakov spent his first years in Moscow, and chronicles the writer’s life, work, and historical context through exhibitions of photographs, literature, personal effects, artwork, and archive materials.

Who was Mikhail Bulgakov?

Mikhail Bulgakov, 1928, by unknown author, Wikimedia Commons

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891. He was a member of the intelligentsia who trained as a doctor, but at the age of nearly 30, Bulgakov gave up his medical career to pursue writing. He moved to Moscow and, initially, was able to find work within state structures, writing for newspapers and magazines, working for the literary department of Glavpolitprosvet (the Main Department for Political Education) and becoming a member of the All-Russian Union of Writers. However, Bulgakov soon trained his sights on the absurdity of life in the USSR, combining elements of real life and fantasy in his writing to satirise Soviet society and highlight ethical dilemmas. His brave artistic desire to reveal the truth cost him his livelihood and, eventually, his life.

Heart of a dog, illustration by Eremenko

Bulgakov produced many famous works throughout the 1920s. One was Heart of a Dog (1925), a short story in which a scientist implants human testicles and pituitary gland into a street mongrel. Although the dog slowly becomes more human-like, he cannot break from his primitive instincts and ruins the life of those around him. This story was a scathing comment on the desire of the Soviets to create a new society, implying that the forceful conversion of the masses into an enlightened ‘New Soviet Man’ would have disastrous consequences.
Another was the novel White Guard (1925), a sympathetic portrayal of Russian intellectuals and the anti-Bolshevik White forces during the Revolution and Civil War. Although not published until 1966, Bulgakov reworked the novel into a play named Day of the Turbins, which achieved considerable success in theatres in 1926. Even though Stalin himself greatly enjoyed the play, reportedly watching it 15 times, it was subsequently banned.

Photo by Nikolay Golitsynsky, Photobank Lori

Bulgakov’s controversial themes, combined with his growing popularity, inevitably landed him in hot water and he was fiercely attacked by critics and other writers. Bulgakov spent the 1930s in a tortuous limbo: he had earned the respect of Stalin and so was not arrested or executed; but in 1929 the Soviet authorities had banned any further publication or staging of his work, leaving him in desperation and destitution. Most of his family had emigrated to Paris during the Civil War and so in 1930 Bulgakov penned an impassioned letter to the authorities, begging to be allowed to leave the USSR and pursue his writing as an émigré. A famous phone call ensued between the writer and Stalin, who forbade him from leaving but permitted him to work in the theatre industry – first at the Moscow Arts Theatre, and later at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Photo by Nikolay Golitsynsky, Photobank Lori

Bulgakov wrote his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, between 1937 and 1939. A damning critique of the Soviet literary establishment, it was published over 25 years after his death and is known as a masterpiece of 20th century literature. In the novel, Satan (disguised as a foreign professor, Woland) descends on Stalinist Moscow and wreaks havoc by illuminating the corrupt and hypocritical Soviet elite. Woven into this is the story of the Master, an author persecuted by the state literary bureaucracy for writing a novel about the interrogation of Jesus Christ, and his lover, Margarita, who helps Woland in his mischief-making. The Master and Margarita contains one of Russian literature’s most famous quotes – ‘manuscripts don’t burn’.

Unable to leave Russia or make a living for himself as a writer, Bulgakov descended into depression and poor health. He died of kidney disease in March 1940. Publication of his works began in the 1960s, when Khrushchev’s Thaw slowly rehabilitated members of the literary milieu, but uncensored versions of many pieces did not emerge until much later – for example, Heart of a Dog was only published in 1987.

Photo by Free Wind, Photobank Lori

The Mikhail Bulgakov State Museum

Bulgakov first moved to Moscow in the unstable early days of the Soviet period. Between 1921 and 1924, he and his wife Tatyana shared a communal apartment with several other families on Bolshaya Sadovaya, in central Moscow. It is here that Bulgakov wrote White Guards and several other early works. In honour of its inhabitants, the Bulgakovs’ apartment in this Art Nouveau building was transformed into the Mikhail Bulgakov State Museum in 2007.

However, devotion to the writer began much earlier. In the 1970s, the house on Bolshaya Sadovaya became one of Moscow’s centres of non-conformist art, and the stairwell was a cultural hangout for Bulgakov enthusiasts. In 1983, an unofficial exposition devoted to Bulgakov was opened in the apartment and, in 1990, the Mikhail Bulgakov Foundation was established in the apartment to commemorate the centenary of the great writer’s birth.

Photo by Tatiana Yuni, Photobank Lori

What can you see at the Mikhail Bulgakov State Museum?

Image by KonRu from Pixabay 

The Bulgakov Museum comprises multimedia and interactive exhibitions spread around different rooms of the apartment. It chronicles the historical and literary context of the writer, and his life in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. The collection of 3,000 exhibits is made up of donations from Bulgakov’s friends and family and from Moscow’s archives and libraries – furniture and home items, personal effects, literature, photographs, audio files, paintings, and excerpts from Bulgakov’s work.

Photo by Tatiana Yuni, Photobank Lori

In the Bulgakovs’ personal room is an exhibition dedicated to those first three years in Moscow, pieced together from the writer’s diary, newspaper clippings, books, and posters. The White Hall exhibition addresses ‘The Housing Question’ – the housing crisis in 1920s Moscow, which made it difficult to find a decent apartment (and decent neighbours) and which was a real sore point in Bulgakov’s writings. Other rooms are dedicated to Bulgakov’s early career, specific works, and the architecture of the house. Many rooms are decorated with period furniture and décor, allowing visitors to experience both the glamour of a pre-revolutionary house and the cramped, cluttered atmosphere of a communal apartment.

What’s nearby?

• Bulgakov House: On the bottom floor of Bolshaya Sadovaya 10 is a private museum dedicated to Mikhail Bulgakov, with an exhibition about his life and work. It is also home to a cultural and educational centre and a theatre.
• Tverskaya Street: One of Moscow’s grandest streets. It runs from Red Square to Bolshaya Sadovaya and is lined with historical buildings, luxury shops, cafes, and restaurants.
• Museum of Contemporary Russian History: An 18th century mansion home to 2 million exhibits chronicling 150 years of Russian political history.