Bulgakov, Mikhail

Bulgakov, Mikhail (1891-1940), Russian novelist and playwright, born in Kiev, Ukraine. Educated to be a doctor, Bulgakov gave up medicine for writing. His early works are satirical stories, The Diaboliad (1925; trans. 1972), and comedies, Zoe's Apartment (1926). His first major work was the long novel The White Guard (1925; trans. 1971) set in Kiev during the Revolution and dramatized as the Days of the Turbins (1926; trans. 1934). It was met by a barrage of official criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a group of anti-Bolshevik White officers during the civil war and its lack of a communist hero. Although Bulgakov's works enjoyed great popularity he had effectively been banned from publishing by 1930 by the authorities who found his satire of Soviet mores unacceptable. His best novel, The Master and Margarita (publ. in the Soviet Union in 1966; translated into English 1967), was written between 1929 and his death in 1940. It deals with the eternal problems of good and evil, using parallel narratives, one set in contemporary Moscow and the other in Pontius Pilate's Judea, and moves from fantasy and humorous satire to pathos and tragedy.

Bulgakov's reputation was only established posthumously when his novels, plays, and biography of Molière were published after 1962.