Why Bulgakov wrote a letter to Stalin. Mysticism and Stalin: mysteries of the fate of Mikhail Bulgakov & nbsp
When in 1820 Pushkin easily got off with a service transfer to Chisinau for, frankly, insulting epigrams addressed to the tsar, the poet was not too scared. And when in 1826 Nikolai invited him to talk to him, Alexander Sergeevich was not too shocked. Just think, God's anointed ...
In the Soviet hierarchy, Stalin was no longer considered some kind of anointed, but a god himself already from the late 1920s. Therefore, Stalin's famous telephone calls to Bulgakov and Pasternak are considered out of the ordinary literary events.
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, an openly non-Soviet writer, nevertheless had a high opinion of himself and considered it normal that his plays "Days of the Turbins", "Running", "Zoykina's apartment" were staged in the best theaters of the country. When Bulgakov began to be dragged into the OGPU, the productions were closed, he dared to do something unusual.
Perhaps Bulgakov hoped to improve his social and material situation by entering the highest literary circle of those close to the throne, like Gorky or Sholokhov. Perhaps he hoped for a special treatment of Stalin, because he knew that the leader liked the "Days of the Turbins." At first, he wrote several letters to the highest literary and party authorities with a request to give him the opportunity to work or send him abroad. At the beginning of 1930 - the same thing, only in a letter to Stalin, as chairman of the government. And on April 18, 1930, Stalin called Bulgakov and their short telephone conversation, where Stalin pronounces two sunken into the writer's soul "Are you so tired of us?" and “I think they will agree” (about the writer's desire to work at the Moscow Art Theater).
They did not contact anymore. Bulgakov lived for another 10 years not in chocolate, but also not in disgrace, remaining a recognized, published writer and stage playwright. The most interesting consequence of the conversation was that Bulgakov, a master of oral storytelling, boldly began to tell ironic tales about himself and Stalin in household companies over a glass. They are preserved in the records of his wife E.S. Bulgakova and Konstantin Paustovsky.
For example, the story of how Stalin urgently summoned Bulgakov to the Kremlin to talk. A motorcyclist came for the writer. Bulgakov, out of confusion, forgot to put on his shoes and appeared before the leader and his usual barefoot. Stalin declares: “My writer should not walk with his shoes on. Berry, take off your boots! " Taking off their shoes, Yagoda, Voroshilov, Mikoyan faint from fear. Their shoes are sometimes small and sometimes large. Only Molotov's boots fit Bulgakov.
Or a story about how Stalin is bored, because "the best friend Misha Bulgakov has gone to rest." He gathers those close to him to go to the opera, to listen to Shostakovich's new opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. And then he offers to discuss the piece he listened to, speaks out first and calls the opera a confusion and cacophony. Zhdanov, Voroshilov, Molotov warmly support the expressed opinion, using the terms "confusion" and "cacophony". Only the simpleton Budyonny offers to cut with a sword for such music. The famous 1936 article "Sumyur instead of music" in Pravda was widely discussed then.
Bulgakov knew that there were probably informers in the companies where he told this. He did not offend the leader, as Osip Mandelstam did in the famous poem, but he admitted that the leader might not like it. But nothing happened. Bulgakov himself appropriated the right to "lightly" make fun of the Soviet god and maybe Stalin appreciated this.
On March 10, 1940, Bulgakov's apartment received a second call from Stalin's secretariat.
- What, comrade Bulgakov died?
- Yes, he died.
They hung up at the Kremlin end.
Letter to the Government of the USSR Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Moscow, Pirogovskaya 35-a, apt. 6) I am addressing the Government of the USSR with the following letter:
1
After all my works were banned, voices began to be heard among many of the citizens for whom I was known as a writer, giving me the same advice. To compose a "communist play" (I quote quotes in quotation marks), and in addition, to apply to the Government of the USSR with a letter of repentance, containing a rejection of my previous views expressed by me in literary works, and assurances that from now on I will work as a fellow traveler writer devoted to the idea of \u200b\u200bcommunism. Purpose: to be saved from persecution, poverty and inevitable death in the final. I did not take this advice. It is unlikely that I would have been able to appear before the Government of the USSR in a favorable light by writing a false letter, which is an untidy and, moreover, naive political curbet. I did not even try to compose a communist play, knowing in advance that such a play would not come out. The desire that has matured in me to end my writer's torment makes me turn to the Government of the USSR with a truthful letter.2
After analyzing my scrapbooks, I found 301 reviews about me in the USSR press for ten years of my literary work. Of these: commendable - there were 3, hostile and abusive - 298. The last 298 are a mirror image of my life as a writer. The hero of my play "Days of the Turbins" Alexei Turbin was called "a son of a bitch" in print, and the author of the play was recommended as "obsessed with dog old age." They wrote about me as a "literary janitor" picking up scraps after "a dozen guests vomited." They wrote: "... Mishka Bulgakov, my godfather, too, excuse the expression, writer, fumbles around in the stale garbage ... What is this, I ask, brother, you have a mug ... I am a delicate person, take it and give it to him with a pelvis on the back of the head ... To the man in the street we are without the Turbins, sort of like a bra for a dog needlessly ... Found, son of a bitch. Found Turbin, so that he has no fees, no success ... "(Life of Art, N44-1927) ... They wrote "about Bulgakov, who was what he was, and will remain, a new bourgeois spawn, splashing poisonous but powerless saliva on the working class and its communist ideals" ("Komsomolskaya Pravda", 14 / X-1926). It was reported that I liked the "atmosphere of a dog wedding around some red-haired friend's wife" (A. Lunacharsky, Izvestia, 8 / X-1926) and that my play "Days of the Turbins" was "stinking" (transcript of the meeting at Agitprop May 1927), and so on, and so on ... I hasten to inform you that I am not quoting in order to complain about criticism or engage in any controversy. My goal is much more serious. I do not prove with documents in hand that the entire press of the USSR, and with it all the institutions entrusted with the control of the repertoire, during all the years of my literary work, unanimously and with extraordinary fury proved that the works of Mikhail Bulgakov in the USSR cannot exist. And I declare, that the USSR press is absolutely right.3
The starting point of this letter for me will be my pamphlet "The Crimson Island". All criticism of the USSR, without exception, greeted this play with the statement that it is "mediocre, toothless, wretched" and that it represents "a libel against the revolution." The unanimity was complete, but it was broken suddenly and absolutely amazing. In N22 "Repertoire. Bulletin." (1928) P. Novitsky's review appeared, in which it was reported that "Crimson Island" is "an interesting and witty parody" in which "an ominous shadow of the Grand Inquisitor appears, suppressing artistic creativity, cultivating slavish sycophantic, ridiculous dramatic clichés that erase the personality of an actor and a writer ", which in" Crimson Island "refers to" an ominous dark force that brings up helots, sycophants and panegyrists ... ". It has been said that "if such a dark force exists, the famed playwright's indignation and wicked wit are justified." It is permissible to ask - where is the truth? What is, after all, "The Crimson Island" - "a wretched, mediocre play" or is it a "witty pamphlet"? The truth lies in Novitsky's review. I do not presume to judge how witty my play is, but I confess that there really is an ominous shadow in the play, and this is the shadow of the Main Repertory Committee. It is he who brings up helots, panegyrists, and intimidated "servants." It is he who kills creative thought. He is ruining Soviet drama and will ruin it. I didn’t whisper these thoughts in the corner. I enclosed them in a dramatic pamphlet and put this pamphlet on the stage. The Soviet press, interceding for the Chief Repertoire Committee, wrote that "Crimson Island" was a libel against the revolution. This is frivolous babble. There is no lampoon about revolution in the play for many reasons, of which, due to lack of space, I will point out one: it is impossible to write a lampoon about revolution, due to its extraordinary grandeur. The pamphlet is not a libel, and the Chief Repertoire Committee is not a revolution. But when the German press writes that "Crimson Island" is "the first call for freedom of the press in the USSR" ("Young Guard" No. 1 - 1929 - it writes the truth. I confess it. The fight against censorship, whatever it is no matter what kind of power it existed, it is my duty as a writer, as well as calls for freedom of the press.I am an ardent admirer of this freedom and I believe that if any of the writers were going to prove that he does not need it , he would be like a fish, publicly assuring that it does not need water.4
This is one of the features of my work, and it alone is quite enough for my works not to exist in the USSR. But with the first line in connection with all the others that appear in my satirical stories: black and mystical colors (I am a mystical writer), which depict the innumerable deformities of our life, the poison with which my language is saturated, deep skepticism about the revolutionary process taking place in my backward country, and opposing it to the beloved and Great Evolution, and most importantly - the image of the terrible features of my people, those features that long before the revolution caused the deepest suffering of my teacher M.E.Saltykov-Shchedrin. Needless to say, the USSR press did not even think to seriously note all this, preoccupied with unconvincing reports that M. Bulgakov's satire contains "slander." Only once, at the beginning of my fame, it was noticed with a touch of arrogant surprise: "M. Bulgakov wants to become a satirist of our era" ("Knigosha", No. 6-1925). Alas, the verb "want" is taken in vain in the present tense. It should be transferred to a pluperfectum: M. Bulgakov became a satirist at the very time when no real (penetrating into restricted areas) satire in the USSR is absolutely unthinkable. I was not privileged to express this criminal idea in print. It is expressed with perfect clarity in the article by V. Blum (No. 6 "Lit. Gaz."), And the meaning of this article brilliantly and accurately fits into one formula: every satirist in the USSR encroaches on the Soviet system. Do I think in the USSR?5
And, finally, my last features in the ruined plays - "Days of the Turbins", "Run" and in the novel "The White Guard": a persistent depiction of the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in our country. In particular, the image of an intelligentsia-noble family, by the will of an immutable fate, was thrown into the camp of the White Guard during the civil war, in the tradition of "War and Peace". Such an image is quite natural for a writer who is closely related to the intelligentsia. But such images lead to the fact that their author in the USSR, along with his heroes, receives - despite his great efforts to become dispassionate over the reds and whites - a certificate of a White Guard enemy, and having received it, as everyone understands, he can consider himself finished man in the USSR.6
My literary portrait is complete, and it is also a political portrait. I cannot say what depth of crime can be found in it, but I ask one thing: do not look for anything outside of it. It is performed with utmost conscientiousness.7
Now I am destroyed. This destruction was greeted by the Soviet public with full joy and called an "achievement." R. Pickel, noting my destruction (Izv., 15 / IX-1929), expressed a liberal thought: "We do not want to say that Bulgakov's name has been deleted from the list of Soviet playwrights." And he reassured the stabbed writer with the words that "we are talking about his past dramatic works." However, life, represented by the General Repertoire Committee, has proved that R. Pickel's liberalism is not based on anything. On March 18, 1930, I received a paper from the General Repertoire Committee, laconically informing that my new play "Cabal of the Sanctimonious" ("Moliere") was NOT ALLOWED FOR PRESENTATION. I will say briefly: buried under two lines of government paper - work in book depositories, my fantasy, a play that has received countless reviews from qualified theater specialists - a brilliant play. R. Pickel is mistaken. Perished not only my past works, but also the present, and all future ones. And personally, I, with my own hands, threw into the stove a draft of a novel about the devil, a draft of a comedy and the beginning of the second novel, "Theater". All my things are hopeless.8
I ask the Soviet Government to take into account that I am not a politician, but a writer, and that I gave all my products to the Soviet stage. I ask you to pay attention to the following two reviews about me in the Soviet press. Both of them come from the implacable enemies of my works and are therefore very valuable. In 1925 it was written: "A writer appears who does not even dress in accompanying colors" (L. Averbakh, "Izv.", 20 / IX-1925). And in 1929: "His talent is as obvious as the social reactionary nature of his work" (R. Pickel, "Izv.", 15 / IX-1929). I ask you to take into account that the inability to write for me is tantamount to being buried alive.9
I ASK THE GOVERNMENT OF THE USSR TO ORDER ME IN URGENT ORDER TO LEAVE
THE LIMITS OF THE USSR ACCOMPANIED BY MY WIFE LYUBOVA EVGENIEVNA BULGAKOVA.
10
I appeal to the humanity of the Soviet regime and ask me, a writer who cannot be useful in his own country, in his homeland, to generously release me.11
If what I have written is not convincing, and I am doomed to life-like silence in the USSR, I ask the Soviet Government to give me a job in my specialty and send me to the theater to work as a full-time director. It is precisely and precisely and emphatically that I ask for a categorical order of secondment, because all my attempts to find a job in the only area where I can be useful to the USSR as an exceptionally qualified specialist have failed completely. My name was made so odious that job offers from my side met with fright, despite the fact that in Moscow a huge number of actors and directors, and with them theater directors, are well aware of my virtuoso knowledge of the stage. I propose to the USSR a completely honest, without any shadow of sabotage, a specialist director and author who undertakes to stage any play in good faith, from Shakespeare's plays to the present day. I am asking for the appointment of me as a laboratory assistant-director at the 1st Art Theater - in the best school, headed by the masters KS Stanislavsky and VI Nemirovich-Danchenko. If I am not appointed as a director, I apply for a full-time extras position. If you can't be an extra, I'm asking for a job as a stage worker. If this is also impossible, I ask the Soviet Government to do with me as it sees fit, but to do something, because I, a playwright who wrote 5 plays, known in the USSR and abroad, is present at the moment - poverty , street and doom.
Regrettably, the interest in MA Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita is falling.
When the long-suffering film by Yuri Kara "The Master and Margarita" was released in 2012 in Russia, the film passed in Moscow "as if it were slanting rain." But distributors, like bookmakers, are not mistaken - such is the demand.
What's happening?
The mystical, cult novel underlying the script, the scandalous film that has been waiting for release since 1994 due to the intrigue of a quarrel between its creators, great and wonderful actors ... and the result: the cinema "KARO Film Kyrgyzstan", Novogireevo - as many as two sessions!
And how it all began ...
I well remember how in 1988 I was stroking a purchased book of selected works by Mikhail Afanasyevich, not believing my happiness: I have OWN "Master and Margarita" !!!
Today the novel is presented in my library in many variations. And love for him does not rust. The words: “In a white cloak with a bloody lining, a shuffling cavalry gait, early in the morning of the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, went out into the covered colonnade between the two wings of Herod the Great's palace ...” - they still raise my heart rate.
And yet, what happened? Where is the public interest in the cult novel? Where did he go? "Love has passed - tomatoes wilted"?
Okay, let's start over.
What is this novel about?
The question is difficult.
But maybe someone knows why Woland appeared in Moscow?
That's just it, Woland has no reason for this. As there is no reason for him to punish innocent Soviet employees with choral singing and to make fun of the variety show visitors who have been lured into the new-fashioned shop.
It seems that the answers to the questions "why?" and "for what?" not in the novel - only devilry, devilry ...
Let's go from the other side.
Complex personality.
Talent.
And what is the man?
In Moscow he is lonely - one or two friends for a figure of this magnitude and ... Lyamin, Ermolinsky, Topleninov, Popov, Plotnikov.
Do these names tell you anything?
And who is against?
Averbach, Blum, Wax, Goldenberg, Dan, Fadeev, Vs. Vishnevsky, Ermilova, Nick. Nikitin.
Also Meyerhold, Natalia Sats, Yuri Olesha, Mikhail Yanshin.
What did they write?
"Such Bulgakov is not needed by the Soviet theater."
"The staging of the play" The Run "is an attempt ... to show the icon of the White Guard Great Martyrs written by the bogomaz".
"Zoyka's apartment cleaner."
And of course, let's not forget the People's Commissar Lunacharsky: "The atmosphere of a dog's wedding" is his review of "The Days of the Turbins".
Here is the ratio: "The whole world was against me - and I was alone."
Why not ripped?
Stalin did not allow it.
Stalin balanced it.
Bulgakov with sincere pride bore the honorary title: "The only Soviet writer with whom Comrade Stalin spoke on the phone."
Stalin and Bulgakov are an extremely interesting topic.
The plot and facts are known to the reading public: Stalin called Bulgakov, Bulgakov wrote to Stalin many times.
The summary of these communications in the works of researchers of Bulgakov's work, as a rule, boils down to the conclusion: “Stalin, like no one understood that ... he lost the battle with the writer” (V. Losev; Foreword; “The Diary of the Master and Margarita”; M .; “Vagrius "; 2004).
So there was a battle between Bulgakov and Stalin?
First of all, it is interesting: what in general prompted I. Stalin to make personal contact with the writer, even if only by phone? Yes, there was a harsh letter from M. Bulgakov sent to members of the Central Committee on March 28, 1930, in which he asked, demanded and begged to let him go abroad.
But how many such letters did the Central Committee receive?
It is well known that Stalin singled out Bulgakov's play Days of the Turbins. This play was staged in Moscow even in those periods when all of Bulgakov's other works were not staged or published.
But "Running" - an objectively more intense work, clearly unique and super-talented, Stalin did not like. Here he saw only a sentimental justification for the white emigration. Stalin believed that "The Run" was a manifestation of an attempt to arouse pity, if not sympathy, for certain layers of the anti-Soviet "emigre" - hence, an attempt to justify or semi-justify the White Guard cause. "The Run, in the form in which it is, is an anti-Soviet phenomenon."
But Days of the Turbins is a completely different matter.
In Days, Stalin, as he counted, grasped the very essence. “Do not forget,” Stalin wrote, “that the main impression that the viewer has from this play is an impression favorable for the Bolsheviks: even if people like the Turbins are forced to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people, recognizing their cause as completely lost,” it means that the Bolsheviks are invincible, with them, the Bolsheviks, nothing can be done. "
I think that the problem of the legitimacy of the communist regime occupied Stalin quite strongly. And here, with Bulgakov, not in a vulgar and wretched agitation, but in an undoubtedly talented work, he discovered what he was constantly looking for. The enemy wrote, wrote about the enemies, with undisguised sympathy for them, and wrote the TRUTH that others hired by the authorities or voluntarily mobilized "engineers of human souls" could not convey. Although they tried and tried.
And how it is served!
The whole performance seems to be on one note, extremely unpleasant to Stalin's ear - and the finale: everything turns upside down. Stalin said to Gorky: “Here is Bulgakov! .. He takes it great! Takes against the grain! (He showed with his hand - and intonationally.) I like it! " And here Stalin shows a very subtle understanding of the essence: “The Days of the Turbins” is a demonstration of the overwhelming power of Bolshevism. Of course, the author is in no way "guilty" of this demonstration. But what do we care about this? "
And yet, what is the reason for this attention?
This side of life is known only to those who smiled at real public success. Many who are not involved at this moment have an ineradicable desire to share it, success. On this, if you dig deeply, all patronage is built. It is obvious that Stalin did not pass this cup either. He singled out Bulgakov. It was highlighted. Now and until the end of his life it was no longer MA Bulgakov, but “Bulgakov, with whom Comrade Stalin himself spoke on the phone”. For Bulgakov, who did not see any equals surrounded by him, it was a unique, completely accepted by him, insignia.
But who is Stalin?
Stalin is a professional bandit. To put it in the language of this sphere, Stalin is a multi-walker: seven times he was imprisoned for robbery. And his patronage was supposed to be just that - urkogan: to bring closer, suppress, educate: so that “Murka” would be performed “at once”.
Who is Bulgakov?
Intellectual. Today they would say "nerd." Narcissistic (not without it), capricious, polished, the monocle from eye to eye with ease tossed.
In Stalin's eyes, Bulgakov is just a goof. Talented, but a goof. In addition, an obvious enemy who does not hesitate to admit it. It's interesting to play with this. And the way to start the game with criminals is monotonously simple: show sympathy, warm up, protect ...
Bulgakov dreams of going abroad?
“Or maybe it’s true - you’ll be allowed abroad? What - are you really tired of us? " - Stalin asks in a telephone conversation.
And Bulgakov no longer wants to leave: “I have been thinking a lot lately - can a Russian writer live outside his homeland. And it seems to me that it cannot. "
Stalin agrees with him: “You are right. I think so too".
"But ... maybe you still need to go?" - as if the "secretary general" ponders (as in Bulgakov). On this optimistic note, their first and only telephone conversation ends.
Here I will cite only one statement of M. Bulgakov, which is worth many volumes of research into his life and work: "... luckily the General Secretary called me ... Believe my taste: he conducted the conversation in a strong, clear, stately and elegant manner."
Today we do not believe, but Bulgakov sincerely believed in Stalin's kindness, as they say in Stalin's native environment: “he was led”: “... I want to tell you, Joseph Vissarionovich, that my writer's dream is to be summoned to you personally. Believe me, not only because I see this as the most profitable opportunity, but because your conversation with me on the phone in April 1930 left a sharp line in my memory. You said, "Maybe you really need to go abroad ..." I'm not spoiled for talk. Moved by this phrase, I worked for a year not for fear as a director in theaters of the USSR. "
In one of the surviving sketches of a letter written by Bulgakov during this period (1931), he asks Stalin "to become my first reader ...". Yes, yes, of course: Pushkin and Nicholas I.
Both Stalin and Bulgakov understood perfectly well that if they left, there would be no refund. Abroad, Bulgakov's relatives, in Berlin, Riga, Prague and Paris, published the works of Mikhail Afanasyevich. The fee was, therefore, there was something to live on. In the USSR, nothing kept him. He wished to go without fail with his wife. Wives have changed over time, but this desire is unchanged.
Bulgakov sorts out the reasons for the trip: just a desire, the need to deal with a certain V., who is stealing fees from him in foreign publishing houses, then - to be treated, to be treated again, and finally: “Now all my impressions are monotonous, my plans are black, I the usual irony. During the years of my work as a writer, all non-party and party citizens inspired and inspired me that from the very moment I wrote and published the first line and until the end of my life, I will never see other countries. If this is so, the horizon is closed to me, the higher school of writing has been taken away from me, I am deprived of the opportunity to solve huge problems for myself. The psychology of the prisoner is instilled. How will I sing of my country - the USSR? "
In conclusion, a promise to write a "benevolent" book upon return.
What are the guarantees that he will return?
Bulgakov cites them many times, as a rule, at the level: "... in the fall you need to be present at the rehearsal ...".
But sometimes something else is created, very strong:
“According to the general opinion of everyone who was seriously interested in my work, I am impossible on any other land except my own - the USSR, because I drew from it for 11 years. I am sensitive to such warnings, and the most weighty of them was from my wife (L.E.Belozerskaya) who had been abroad, who told me when I asked for exile that she did not want to stay abroad, and that I would die there from longing less than a year ”.
When Bulgakov wrote this, he obviously thought: "Will he believe?"
I did not believe it, but Stalin appreciated the attempt to deceive him.
Eh, satirists, satirists ... You should be free not to notice your own comic!
Stalin, who spoke of himself in the third person, did not like very much when someone tried to deceive Comrade Stalin.
This game: "released - not released" ran until May 1934.
They did not take the money, they said with respect: "They (passports) are issued by special order." (How subtle it is - "special order".) Filling out the questionnaires "we had fun, giggled, inventing different answers and questions" - E. Bulgakova recalled. But they didn’t give us a passport - they said it’s too late, come back tomorrow. Tomorrow was a day off. "Tomorrow" ended on June 7 with a public slap in the face, when the courier of the Art Theater brought everyone on the list foreign passports, and Bulgakov was refused.
Bulgakov wrote.
I wrote to Stalin: "... I got into a painful, funny, not for my age position ... the insult inflicted on me ... all the more serious because my four-year service at the Moscow Art Theater does not give her any grounds, why I am asking you for intercession."
Aerobatics - M. Bulgakov does not even have a shadow of understanding who is the true author of his tragedy. This is natural: doubt alone deprives him of the only title available to him: "a writer with whom Comrade Stalin himself spoke on the phone."
As early as March 28, 1930, in a letter to the Government of the USSR, M. Bulgakov wrote that he rejected advice to write a "communist play". He cannot perform this "naive political curbet": "Such a play will not come out for me" ...
But time - not only heals, it also cripples.
In 1939, the playwright is no longer so categorical. And the management of the Moscow Art Theater agrees that the work should proceed in completely different conditions. And "by November-December he will try to arrange a new apartment and, if possible, four rooms." And this work is responsible: M. Bulgakov writes the play "Batum" about Stalin's youth.
The play is ready in July. The reviews are good.
On August 14, 1939, Bulgakov, at the head of the Moscow Art Theater brigade, was sent to Georgia to study materials for a future production, sketches of scenery, and collect songs for the play. But already in Serpukhov a telegram arrived - everything is canceled: there will be no play.
Yes, the wolf (as Bulgakov called himself in the early 30s) is already ready to perform Murka “at once”.
But HIM does not need it!
Hard? Not just tough - brutal. Stalinist style.
On September 12, 1939, E. Bulgakova wrote down her husband's words: “I’m bad, Lyusenka. He signed my death warrant. "
And what did we all get as a result of this "game"?
We got The Master and Margarita.
This work is unique because it was created as a medicine taken by its author to heal from the mental wounds inflicted on him and destroy his grievances.
Bulgakov decided to brew such a drug. For yourself.
Yes, it was to them, this remedy for unbearable resentment towards such a life, that the novel-revenge "The Master and Margarita" was.
This clarifies a lot.
And again we ask ourselves: why did Woland appear in Moscow?
For which all negative characters are punished (and there are simply no others in the novel, except for the Master, his girlfriend and Woland and company). In honor of what was Satan's ball given?
And now you can try to find the answers.
If we understand that we have a revenge novel, then it turns out that the author is taking revenge with the power of Woland: the devil appears in order to punish the Master's offenders. With this assumption, everything is built into a clear logical scheme: the injustice of the insults inflicted on the author of the novel about Pontius Pilate (and this is Bulgakov!) Is so grand that otherworldly forces intervene.
They come and punish.
Some for persecution, others for indifference. They, the forces of evil, provide the Master with the velvet peace he deserves.
Was it really so, as I wrote here, only Bulgakov knew.
But the fact that this is how millions of Soviet intellectuals read his novel is for sure. They saw in The Master and Margarita the very medicine they needed so much. The time spent reading the novel about the author of the book about Pontius Pilate was a brief period of immersion in the tale of the triumph of justice.
And we had the pains of the Master - Bulgakov. And we didn’t treat them like that, we jammed them like that.
Today?
Maybe the pains are gone?
On March 10, 1940, at 4:39 pm, Mikhail Bulgakov died. And almost immediately in his apartment there was a call from Stalin's secretariat:
- Is it true that the writer Bulgakov died?
- Yes, he died.
And they hung up on the other end of the line.
They had an amazing relationship, Stalin and Bulgakov ...
During his lifetime, Bulgakov became famous for several forbidden plays and one staged in the country's first theater, the Art Theater. Days of the Turbins was probably Stalin's favorite play: he attended this performance about 20 times. At the same time, no theater, except for the Moscow Art Theater, received permission to stage "Days of the Turbins".
And Stalin and Bulgakov never met in person, although Stalin somehow promised such a meeting. In the early 30s, Bulgakov's material, literary and social situation became critical. And on March 28, 1930, he turned to the Government of the USSR with a letter, in which he asked to determine his fate: to provide either an opportunity to work or emigrate.
From a telephone conversation between the leader and the writer on April 18, 1930:
Stalin: We have received your letter. We read it with comrades. You will have a favorable answer on it ... Or maybe it’s true - are you asking to go abroad? Are you really tired of us?
Bulgakov (confused and not right away): ... I've been thinking a lot lately - can a Russian writer live outside his homeland. And it seems to me that it cannot.
Stalin: You are right. I think so too. Where do you want to work? At the Art Theater?
Bulgakov: Yes, I would like to. But I talked about it, and they turned me down.
Stalin: And you apply there. It seems to me that they will agree. We would need to meet and talk with you.
Bulgakov: Yes, yes! Joseph Vissarionovich, I really need to talk to you.
Stalin: Yes, you need to find time and meet, be sure. And now I wish you all the best.
“All my life Mikhail Afanasyevich asked me the same question: Why did Stalin change his mind (to meet him)?”- Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova will write later.
And literally the next day after this telephone conversation, Bulgakov was enrolled as an assistant director at the Moscow Art Theater, and as a director at TRAM (Theater of Working Youth). The writer's material problems were resolved, and there was hope for the production of plays. There were never many good playwrights in the USSR, their fees exceeded the earnings of writers by an order of magnitude, and Bulgakov loved the joys of life.
But alas, "Running", "Zoykina's apartment", "Crimson Island" were never allowed to be staged. They refused to stage the play "Ivan Vasilievich". The play "Cabal of the Sanctifiers" was banned after seven performances, and in 1936 Bulgakov left the Moscow Art Theater, starting to work at the Bolshoi Theater as a librettist and translator.
And suddenly on September 9, 1938, representatives of the Moscow Art Theater, Markov and Vilenkin, came to Bulgakov, who had resigned from the Art Theater, and asked him to forget old grievances and write a play for their theater for Stalin's anniversary. In those years, the country was seized with fear, and at such a time the non-partisan Bulgakov, the author of several forbidden works, could only decide to order a play for the 60th anniversary of Stalin himself. In return, Bulgakov was promised a good apartment, and the "housing issue" always worried the writer.
Bulgakov agreed, and on July 24, 1939, the play "Batum" was completed. Everyone who got acquainted with it praised it (there were no fools to scold the play about Stalin). The Chief Repertoire Committee and the leadership of the Moscow Art Theater also greeted what was written with a bang, and they began to prepare the play for staging. On August 14, Bulgakov with his wife and colleagues left for Georgia to collect materials about the performance (Georgian folklore, sketches for scenery, etc.), when suddenly a telegram arrived "The need for a trip has disappeared, return to Moscow."
In Moscow, Bulgakov was announced: in Stalin's secretariat they read the play and said that it was impossible to make Stalin a literary hero and put invented words into his mouth. And Stalin himself allegedly said: “All young people are the same. There is no need to stage a play about young Stalin. " The explanation was strange: in those years, works were printed and performances about the young Stalin were staged without any problems, but here "The play can neither be staged nor published." At the same time, ES Bulgakova wrote that Bulgakov was promised that "the theater will fulfill all its promises, that is, about the apartment, and will pay everything according to the agreement."
On September 10, 1939, the Bulgakovs went to Leningrad, where Mikhail Afanasevich felt a sudden loss of vision. Upon returning to Moscow, he was diagnosed with acute hypertensive nephrosclerosis. As a doctor, Bulgakov understood that he was doomed, he took to his bed and never got up. Only morphine saved from unbearable pain, and it was under its influence that the last versions of the novel "The Master and Margarita" were edited.
What happened? Why did Stalin forbid putting on the Batum? Yes, everything is very simple - when ordering Bulgakov's play, Stalin expected to see a result equal to "Days of the Turbins." And I saw "trash work", like those works about the leader, which were littered with theaters and book counters in the country. But that artistic weakness of works that is forgiven to mediocrity is not forgiven to talent, and Stalin was upset and annoyed. Yes, you yourself read "Batum", if not laziness, and see for yourself that this is a rather low-quality "hack".
Bulgakov died long and painfully, and on March 10, 1940, his torment ended. The urn with Bulgakov's ashes was buried (not immediately, in March, but three months later) in the Old part of the Novodevichy cemetery not far from the graves of Chekhov and famous actors of the Moscow Art Theater.
At the same time, the Art Theater did not have the right, and would never have dared, to bury the ashes of its not very significant (and, moreover, dismissed) employee, in the Mkhatovsky section of the cemetery, intended only for people's artists of the USSR. Moreover, on the grave of Bulgakov it was allowed to put a stone from the grave of Gogol in the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery.
Only Stalin can order this, paying the last tribute to the author of his favorite play. And many people associate the introduction of shoulder straps in the Red Army in 1943 with the impression of the uniform worn by the heroes of the Days of the Turbins. And the Stalinist intonation and even some of the phrases from the monologue of Alexei Turbin, very much remind Stalin's speech in his most uncharacteristic address to the people on July 3, 1941: "Brothers and sisters! ..".
On March 4, 1940, Elena Sergeevna recorded in her diary one of the last statements of Mikhail Afanasyevich: "I wanted to live in my corner ... I did no harm to anyone ...". Let's not blame Bulgakov for this, don't we all want the same thing?
Bulgakov and Stalin
STUDIES
Igor ZOLOTUSSKY
Bulgakov and Stalin
Correspondence relations between Bulgakov and Stalin began at the end of the twenties. This is preceded by a search at the apartment of the author of the "White Guard". In 1926, employees of the OGPU came to him and, after a break in the house, they took with them the manuscript of the story "Heart of a Dog" and Bulgakov's diary.
Later - after repeated requests to return what was taken away - the story and the diary will be returned, but the trauma from direct contact with the authorities will remain.
In February 1928, Stalin, in a letter to F. Cohn, called Bulgakov's play "The Run" an "anti-Soviet phenomenon." All his plays will be immediately removed from the stage and his prose will be banned from publication.
Will break out, as Bulgakov himself will say, "catastrophe".
In July of the same year, he sent a letter to Stalin, where he asked to petition the government of the USSR to "expel" him from the country. Argumentation: “not being able to exist any longer, persecuted, knowing that I can neither be published nor put on the USSR, brought to a nervous breakdown”.
Stalin does not answer him.
In March 1930 Bulgakov appeals to the government. He talks about the impossibility of living in a country where he is not printed, not promoted, and even denied a job. "I ask you to order me," he finishes, "to urgently leave the USSR."
I must say that Bulgakov is playing openly with the authorities. He's not pretending to be a communist sympathizer. He does not even want to recognize himself as a “fellow traveler,” as non-proletarian writers who were ready to cooperate with the regime were then called.
He is advised to compose a "communist play", advised to accept and submit - he does not listen to this advice. The curse of intelligence (which is, above all, internal independence) prevents him from performing this, as he puts it, "political curbet".
The letter contains a list of distributions of his works in print. Newspapers and magazines claim that what Bulgakov created "cannot exist in the USSR." "And I declare," he comments on these lines, "that the USSR press is absolutely right."
There is not the slightest hint of readiness to justify himself for his intransigence in his letters “upstairs”. He admits:
a) that he cannot create anything “communist”, b) that satire is satire because the author does not accept what is portrayed, c) that he does not intend to present himself “in a favorable light before the government”.
On April 18, 1930, a bell rings in Bulgakov's apartment. They call from Stalin's secretariat. The leader himself picks up the phone. And then he aimed at the conscience: "Do you want to leave?" Then, apologetically, hypocritically asks: "What, are you really tired of us?"
Bulgakov replies (and this is his conviction) that a Russian writer should live in Russia.
Bulgakov says that he would like to work at the Art Theater, but he is not hired. “And you apply there,” Stalin replies. "It seems to me that they will agree."
And - the final of the dialogue on the phone. Stalin: "We would need to meet, talk with you." Bulgakov: “Yes, yes! Joseph Vissarionovich, I really need to talk to you. " Stalin: “Yes, you need to find the time and meet, be sure.”
The dictator throws at Bulgakov the idea that it is possible to conduct a civilized dialogue with him, the dictator, that he is finally able to understand the creator.
False thought. False suggestion. But Bulgakov will seek a meeting with Stalin until the end of his days. It will become an obsession with his life.
Stalin, in essence, gives him a job at the Moscow Art Theater. Bulgakov is an assistant director, he is not published, but he writes - including a novel about the devil. And at the same time he constantly returns to a conversation with Stalin, in which, it seems to him, he did not say what needed to be said. But Stalin no longer calls, and in early 1931 Bulgakov drafts a new letter. "I would like," he turns to Stalin, "to ask you to become my first reader."
As you know, after 1826 Nikolai the First became the “first reader” (and censor) of Pushkin. Bulgakov invites Stalin to repeat this scheme of the poet's relationship with the tsar. Stalin also did not agree to this - honorable for him - role. Bulgakov's plays, if staged, are removed from the repertoire after two or three performances. On May 30, 1931, he wrote to Stalin again: “Since the end of 1930, I have been ill with a severe form of neurosthenia with fits of fear and atrial anguish, and now I am finished.
In the wide field of Russian literature in the USSR, I was the only literary wolf. I was advised to dye the skin. Ridiculous advice. Whether a dyed wolf, a shorn wolf, he still does not look like a poodle.
They treated me like a wolf. And for several years they drove me according to the rules of a literary cage in a fenced yard.
I have no malice, but I am very tired. After all, the beast can get tired.
The beast declared that he was no longer a wolf, not a writer. Refuses his profession. Falls silent. This is, frankly, cowardice.
There is no such writer that he was silent. If he fell silent, it means he was not real.
And if the real one is silent, he will die. "
This letter opens with a quote from Gogol: "... to serve my motherland, I will have to be brought up somewhere far from her." "<...> finishing the letter, - adds Bulgakov, - I want to tell you, Iosif Vissarionovich, that my writer's dream is to be summoned to you personally ... Your conversation with me on the phone in April 1930 left a sharp line in my memory ”.
Apparently, on a call from above, the play "Dead Souls" staged by Bulgakov is allowed to be staged and the play "Days of the Turbins" is resumed on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater.
Not receiving a personal response from Stalin, and above all a response to a request for a meeting, Bulgakov focuses on the thought of leaving the USSR.
In 1933, he burns a part of the novel about the devil (the future "The Master and Margarita"), and in 1934 a performance with foreign passports is performed. Bulgakov and his wife are asked to appear at the foreign department of the city executive committee and fill in the necessary papers. Happy Mikhail Afanasevich and Elena Sergeevna hurry to the Moscow City Council. Throwing funny remarks, they fill out the questionnaires. The official, in front of whom their passports are on the table, says that the working day is over and he is expecting them tomorrow. The next day, history repeats itself: everything will be ready in a day. When they come every other day, they are promised: tomorrow you will receive your passports. But tomorrow and tomorrow will pass, and the official, as if he was a habit, utters the same word: tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Bulgakov, who, upon the news that they were being released, exclaimed: “So I am not a prisoner! So, I will see the light! ”, Understands that this is another game of a cat with a mouse. After keeping him in a state of ignorance for several days, the authorities send an official refusal. “MA,” writes Elena Sergeevna, “feels terrible - fear of death, loneliness”.
Passports are received by the artists of the Moscow Art Theater traveling abroad, the writer Pilnyak and his wife are receiving them. A barrier is lowered in front of Bulgakov. "I am a prisoner," he whispers at night, "I was artificially blinded."
As soon as he got up, he again worries, now his personal tyrant, with a letter. He tells the story of passports and asks for intercession.
Nobody even thinks to answer him.
In the summer of 1934, the first congress of Soviet writers opened. Bulgakov is not visible on it. The playwright Afinogenov called him: "Mikhail Afanasyevich, why don't you attend the congress?" Bulgakov: "I'm afraid of the crowd."
And in the country, arrests and reprisals begin. How did Bulgakov live during these years? What did you think? What did you transfer? “We are completely alone,” Elena Sergeevna writes in her diary, “our situation is terrible.” Bulgakov doomedly says: "I will never see Europe." He is afraid to walk the streets. And again the "painful search for a way out" begins, and again an absurd, it seems, hope emerges: "a letter upward."
One of the family's friends, a man who sincerely loves Bulgakov, advises him: “Write a propaganda play ... Enough. You are a state within a state. How long can this go on? We must surrender, everyone surrendered. You are the only one left. This is silly".
But a wolf cannot become a poodle. Only if this poodle is not Mephistopheles or the hero of Bulgakov's new novel Woland, who was called to Moscow in the thirties in order to settle accounts with Soviet evil spirits.
The year is 1938. Bulgakov, in his next letter to Stalin, stands up for the playwright N. Erdman. Himself crippled, “finished off”, he asks for his colleague, who spent three years in exile in Siberia and cannot return to Moscow.
The potential “first reader” of Bulgakov is silent. True, the author of the letter is given an indulgence: they are given a place for a librettist at the Bolshoi Theater. Here in the spring of 1939 at the play "Ivan Susanin" Bulgakov sees Stalin in the tsar's box.
By that time, he was already thinking of "Batum" - a play about the young Joseph Dzhugashvili. Desperate to stage anything that is dear to him, Bulgakov makes this step towards Stalin as an attempt to still challenge him.
The attempt fails.
At first, all theaters are eager to stage a play about Stalin. The Moscow Art Theater is ready to conclude a contract, they are calling from Voronezh, Leningrad, Rostov. 1939 - the year of the sixtieth birthday of the leader, and everyone wants to "be noted", and even with what - a play by Bulgakov!
The telephone in his apartment never stops.
In August, a group of directors and actors involved in the production of Batum leaves for Georgia to get acquainted with the places where the play takes place. Bulgakov and his wife also went there.
At the Serpukhov station, a woman postman appears in the carriage and, entering the Bulgakovs compartment, asks: "Who is the Accountant here?" So, due to illegibility on the telegraph letterhead, she pronounces the name of Bulgakov. He reads: "The need for a trip has disappeared, return to Moscow."
Stalin delivers the final blow to him. "Lucy," Bulgakov will tell his wife, "he signed my death warrant."
What was the reason for the banning of the play? There is no direct evidence on this score. Except for Stalin's phrase, said to Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko: the play is good, but it's not worth staging. Did he not feel lust, first forcing Bulgakov to write about him (that is, to submit), and then not taking this “surrender” into account?
In Tula, the Bulgakovs get into the car and return to Moscow. The ZIS hired by them is racing at great speed. “Towards what are we rushing? - Bulgakov asks. - Maybe towards death?
After three hours, they enter their apartment. Bulgakov asks to draw the curtains. The light irritates him. He says, "It smells like a dead man in here."
The silence is dead. The phone doesn't ring.
Irritation from light is a symptom of a rapidly developing disease. Bulgakov begins to go blind. The shock he experienced in Serpukhov is the beginning of its end.
In October, he writes a will. He meets the year 1940 not with a glass of wine, but with a beaker of potion in his hand. On January 17, a titmouse flies into the open window in their kitchen. Bad sign.
A group of actors from the Moscow Art Theater writes a letter "upward" with a request to allow the patient to leave for treatment in Italy. Only a sharp twist of fate, they argue, a twist to joy, can save him.
Bulgakov, to forget himself, learns Italian.
On the eve of his death, A. Fadeev, Secretary General of the Writers' Union, visits him. Bulgakov, when he leaves, says to his wife: "Don't let him come to me anymore."
He himself is already wearing black glasses. Doesn't see anything. Doesn't get up.
On the same day, a bell rings in his apartment. They call from Stalin's secretariat.
- What, comrade Bulgakov died?
- Yes, he died.
And on the other end of the wire they hang up.
In 1946, Bulgakov's widow addressed a letter to Stalin and asked to apply for the publication of at least a small collection of her husband's prose. But if the “first reader” of Pushkin, after the poet's death, who took upon himself the care of his family, commits a human act, then the one with whom one of the best writers of the 20th century sought an audience unsuccessfully, will not forgive the Master until the last day of his life - which, we ask we, talent, disobedience, nobility? All together, and therefore Bulgakov's books will begin their movement towards the reader only after the departure of the “Kremlin highlander” to the next world.
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Stalin is a Shakespearean hero. The scale of the personality of this politician did not leave indifferent artists of the 20th century. They watched as bewitched, and yet surrendered themselves into his hands. Vertinsky and Bulgakov, what do they have in common? - Country and Stalin.
Stalin is a reader
Joseph Stalin can rightfully be considered the most educated leader of the country of the Soviets. He knew German and was fluent in English. Stalin was well acquainted with classical literature and was fond of philosophy. In his official speeches he gladly inserted quotes from Chekhov, Gogol, Griboyedov, Pushkin and Tolstoy. But he did not like Dostoevsky.After the death of the leader, 10 thousand volumes remained at Blizhnyaya Dacha. His personal library. Nikita Khrushchev will order all books to be disposed of. Only those on the covers of which Stalin made many notes with his own hand will survive. There is no doubt that this head of the party apparatus had a keen taste for art. And in his youth, Joseph Dzhugashvili himself wrote poetic lines. This is how his earlier poem ends:
But people who have forgotten God
Keeping darkness in the heart
Instead of wine, poison
They poured it into his bowl.
They told him: “Damn you!
Drink a cup to the bottom! ..
And your song is alien to us,
And your truth is not needed! " (from.)
So how did his relationship with the artists of the twentieth century develop? The dictator created difficult conditions for the life of creative people. Censorship, Harassment, Restrictions. Fear served as a pedestal for his authority. But is it only fear? The bourgeois who read Shakespeare often drew parallels with Shakespeare's heroes. Isn't it Richard III? The scale and mystery in this man fascinated the thinking class.
Bulgakov. Dumbfounded
Bulgakov ... In recent years, suffering from neurasthenia, afraid to cross the street unaccompanied by his wife, hunted and sick, it seemed, should have hated Stalin, and instead painted his portrait on the pages of his works.
In the 1920s, Mikhail Bulgakov made attempts to immigrate, but the move did not take place due to serious health problems. The writer remains under Soviet yoke. Ahead are years of hardships, fears, and lack of demand. According to one version, Bulgakov will write the image of Stalin in the novel The Master and Margarita. And Bulgakov himself perceived the leader as a complex hero, his assessment will appear in the play "Batum". Stalin will be dissatisfied with the description of his youth and will ban this play.
However, Bulgakov wants to show that the devil is already among us. Even though he is not yet absolute evil. The scope of Bulgakov's writer's misfortune is as follows: the premiere of Days of the Turbins at the Moscow Art Theater was a stunning success. The spectators have hysteria, fainting. People just can't deal with emotions. There is evidence that Joseph Vissarionovich himself watched the performance 10 times. And at the same time, monstrous reviews in the press.
Lunacharsky ordered to trample and crush the petty-bourgeois author. This will be followed by a search in the apartment, confiscation of the manuscript "Heart of a Dog" and the diary. The play "Running" is strictly prohibited. Bulgakov tore up and burned the first edition of The Master and Margarita. And then he wrote about it to the Soviet government. On March 28, 1930, Bulgakov will ask the "powerful of the world" to leave the country: "I appeal to the humanity of the Soviet regime and ask me, a writer who cannot be useful in his own country, in his homeland, to generously release me."
On April 18 of the same year, the telephone will ring in the writer's apartment. It is impossible not to recognize the voice. On the other end of the line, Joseph Stalin: “We have received your letter. We read it with comrades. You will have a favorable answer on it ... Or maybe it’s true - are you asking to go abroad? What, are you really tired of us? "
And Bulgakov was at a loss, passed. She will regret her answer all my life. The power of the interlocutor forced him to retreat. He will answer that a Russian writer cannot live without his Motherland, and by this he will decide his fate. He will remain in the Union, will be respected and afraid.
Vertinsky. Personal nightingale
Another artist, or more precisely the poet, singer and artist Alexander Vertinsky, Stalin will return to the country. Just because he loves his songs. At that time, the artist lived in exile for 25 years. He periodically sent letters of request to return, and in 1943 it was decided to grant his request. The singer, who is very popular abroad, is happy to return with his young wife and daughter to his homeland. But the reception will surprise him. Stalin will give him housing and will not interfere with giving concerts, only the radio and newspapers will be silent. Recording new records is out of the question. This means that the artist's family is deprived of royalties. Bread has to be obtained in kind. Vertinsky gave 24 concerts a month and went to the farthest corners of the country.
Vertinsky plaintively spoke of himself as follows: "I exist on the basis of a brothel: everyone walks, but in society it is not proper to talk about it."
The paradox is that he has the most influential admirer in the country, and perhaps in the world. The fact that Joseph Stalin was very fond of listening to Vertinsky is a well-known fact.
Only once in the Soviet Union did Vertinsky visit a recording studio. The order is to sing. And there are imperturbable armed guards nearby. The only disc with the singer's compositions was recorded specifically for the management team. A car was often sent for. The route lay directly to the Kremlin. The singer recalled that he was brought into a spacious office. The table was set for one. HE silently stepped out from behind the curtain. Vertinsky sang, he chose the repertoire on his own. It seemed to the artist that Stalin listened especially favorably to his exotic songs. And in the mysterious office it often sounded:
When the ocean sings and cries
And drives in a dazzling azure
A distant caravan of birds ...
In banana and lemon Singapore, in the storm
When you have silence in your heart,
You, dark blue frowning eyebrows,
You yearn alone.(from.)
Then the listener silently got up and hid from sight - this meant that the concert was over. Vertinsky was not paid for such performances, but once a year the same black car brought expensive gifts, for example, a Chinese service. Stalin enjoyed the talent of the artist alone. And he was not going to share his pleasure with the country. In turn, Vertinsky was proud of himself, but he kept quiet about these meetings. Respected and feared.
Continuing the theme of Stalin's relationship with cultural figures, the story about.
