After the revolution, the main literary organisations of Moscow were located in the house in which A. I. Herzen was born — the All-Russian Union of Writers, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers and others. This house is depicted in The Master and Margarita as the Griboyedov House in which the fictitious organisation MASSOLIT is based.
In Bulgakov’s era, the Union of Writers and other literary organisations played an enormous role in the lives of literary people, significantly regulating their publications and therefore their livelihoods, not to mention their access to the public. Exclusion from the Union was a form of dealing with unwanted authors and voluntary exit was a strong form of protest, which few dared to carry out. In 1929, a great campaign against Evgeny Zamyatin and Boris Pilnyak was lauched after the publishing of their novels We and The Red Tree abroad. Zamyatin was excluded from the Union of Writers, his plays were taken out of theatre repertoires and he was forbidden from publishing. His name, if mentioned at all, only appeared in negative contexts. As a protest against the witch-hunt against his friend, M. Bulgakov submitted his notice on leaving the Union of Writers on 2nd October 1929. On 8th October, A. Yakovlev told Zamyatin in a letter, ‘Veresaev recommended that I leave the administration under the pretext of illness. I don’t think this is a way out. If one is to leave, then it’s as a protest. The exits from the Union — yours, Akhmatova’s, Bulgakov’s — are a moral blow to everyone’.
Point on the map
This map shows where the address sits and how it is tied into the project routes.
Routes
This point belongs to one or more routes. Open them as sequential walks rather than isolated cards.
In the footsteps of the characters of The Master and Margarita
- Stop 6
- 5,52 km
- 4,5 h
Daily life in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s plays an important role in the multi-layered novel, The Master and Margarita — it is not simply a background for the fantastical events and the characters’ unusual adventures. The novel, addressed to Bulgakov’s contemporaries, describes the lives of Muscovites in detail, with the arguments arising in communal flats, the issue of flats, the spy scare, the invisible but tangible atmosphere of the Great Terror and so on. The events of the novel take over the entire centre of Moscow, and Bulgakov was almost always very precise in the details – the exceptions include only a few addresses (Margarita’s house, the Dramlit house, Stravinsky’s clinic etc.). Bulgakov’s contemporaries would easily recognize their city in the other details, had the novel been printed at that time. Since then, the city has changed a lot – some houses have been demolished, some have been rebuilt unrecognizably, but through the layers, it is possible to glimpse Bulgakov’s Moscow. Following in the footsteps of Bulgakov’s characters, you can feel Ivan Bezdomny’s horror after the death of Berlioz at Patriarch’s Ponds, his desperation in Herzen’s house, the scale of Satan’s ball in Spaso House, the eccentricity of Behemoth’s antics in the Torgsin on Arbat, and much more. The route begins at the Aquarium Garden, not far from Woland’s ‘unpleasant flat’, runs across Tverskoy Boulevard, takes in the lanes around Arbat and ends at the Alexandrovsky Garden, where Azazello and Margarita met.
First address
- Stop 9
- 2,1 km
- 1 h
The route encompasses sites of literary and biographical significance in the life of Bulgakov, centred around the environs of Patriarch’s Ponds. \tAt the end of September 1921, Bulgakov arrived in Moscow with the intention of becoming a writer – his first address was flat 50 in house 10 on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street. Bulgakov’s first three years in Moscow were closely connected with the region around the Patriarch’s Ponds. The Patriarch’s Ponds are not only important in Bulgakov’s biography, but also in his works – this is where the events of The Master and Margarita begin. In the novel, Woland and his retinue live on Bolshaya Sadovaya, the characters in the tale The Spiritual Séance inhabit 32 Malaya Bronnaya, and so on.
