37 Facts About Mikhail Bulgakov

1.

Mikhail Bulgakov is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, which has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.

2.

Mikhail Bulgakov is known for his novel The White Guard; his plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight, and The Days of the Turbins; and other works of the 1920s and 1930s.

3.

Mikhail Bulgakov wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.

4.

Mikhail Bulgakov's mother was Varvara Mikhailovna Bulgakova, a former teacher.

5.

Afanasiy Bulgakov was born in Bryansk Oblast, Russia, where his father was a priest, and he moved to Kiev to study in the academy.

6.

In 1901, Mikhail Bulgakov joined the First Kiev Gymnasium, where he developed an interest in Russian and European literature, theatre and opera.

7.

Mikhail Bulgakov then took a position as a physician at the Kiev Military Hospital.

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8.

In 1916, Mikhail Bulgakov graduated from the Medical Department of Kiev University and after serving as a surgeon at Chernovtsy hospital, was appointed provincial physician to Smolensk province.

9.

Mikhail Bulgakov's life in those days is reflected in his A Country Doctor's Notebook.

10.

In September 1917, Mikhail Bulgakov was moved to the hospital in Vyazma, near Smolensk.

11.

Mikhail Bulgakov's first book was an almanac of feuilletons called Future Perspectives, written and published the same year.

12.

Mikhail Bulgakov wrote and saw his first two plays, Self Defence and The Turbin Brothers, being produced for the city theater stage with great success.

13.

Between 1922 and 1926, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote several plays, none of which were allowed production at the time.

14.

In 1924, Mikhail Bulgakov divorced his first wife and the next year married Lyubov Belozerskaya.

15.

Mikhail Bulgakov's plays Ivan Vasilievich, Don Quixote and Last Days were banned.

16.

The premier of another, Moliere, about the French dramatist in which Mikhail Bulgakov plunged "into fairy Paris of the XVII century", received bad reviews in Pravda and the play was withdrawn from the theater repertoire.

17.

In despair, Mikhail Bulgakov first wrote a personal letter to Joseph Stalin, then on 28 March 1930, a letter to the Soviet government.

18.

Mikhail Bulgakov requested permission to emigrate if the Soviet Union could not find use for him as a writer.

19.

Mikhail Bulgakov received a phone call directly from the Soviet leader, who asked the writer whether he really desired to leave the Soviet Union.

20.

Mikhail Bulgakov replied that a Russian writer cannot live outside of his homeland.

21.

In 1932, Mikhail Bulgakov married for the third time, to Yelena Shilovskaya, who would prove to be inspiration for the character Margarita in his most famous novel, on which he started working in 1928.

22.

Mikhail Bulgakov left after perceiving that none of his works would be produced there.

23.

When his last play Batum, a complimentary portrayal of Stalin's early revolutionary days, was banned before rehearsals, Mikhail Bulgakov requested permission to leave the country but was refused.

24.

In poor health, Mikhail Bulgakov devoted his last years to what he called his "sunset" novel.

25.

The years 1937 to 1939 were stressful for Mikhail Bulgakov, veering from glimpses of optimism, believing the publication of his masterpiece could still be possible, to bouts of depression, when he felt as if there were no hope.

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26.

On 15 June 1938, when the manuscript was nearly finished, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote in a letter to his wife:.

27.

In 1939, Mikhail Bulgakov organized a private reading of The Master and Margarita to his close circle of friends.

28.

Mikhail Bulgakov's father had died of the same disease, and from his youth Bulgakov had guessed his future mortal diagnosis.

29.

Mikhail Bulgakov was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

30.

Mikhail Bulgakov later reflected his experience of being a Soviet playwright in Theatrical Novel.

31.

Mikhail Bulgakov began writing it in 1928, but the novel was finally published by his widow only in 1966, twenty-six years after his death.

32.

Mikhail Bulgakov had to rewrite the novel from memory after he burned the draft manuscript in 1930, as he could not see a future as a writer in the Soviet Union at a time of widespread political repression.

33.

The Mikhail Bulgakov House is situated at the ground floor.

34.

The Mikhail Bulgakov House contains personal belongings, photos, and several exhibitions related to Mikhail Bulgakov's life and his different works.

35.

Various poetic and literary events are often held, and excursions to Mikhail Bulgakov's Moscow are organised, some of which are animated with living characters of The Master and Margarita.

36.

Mikhail Bulgakov contains personal belongings, photos, and several exhibitions related to Mikhail Bulgakov's life and his different works.

37.

Mikhail Bulgakov described the abnormal and concomitant change of the outline of the crests of the shin-bones with a pathological worm-eaten like appearance and creation of abnormal osteophytes in the bones of those suffering from later stages of syphilis.