On 11th December 1928, the premier of Bulgakov’s play The Crimson Island took place, which was staged by Alexandr Tairov (the famous Russian and Soviet avant-garde theatre producer and director, founder of the Chamber Theatre). For half a year, the play lay with the Main Repertoire Committee, but was then approved for staging anyway. The show was a great success, but was brought to a close in the summer of 1929.
The approval of the staging of a play after half a year, when the author had already mentally written it off as lost in the bowels of the Main Repertoire Committee, was a real miracle. All the more so since its main theme was the freedom of the writer and the main target for Bulgakov’s satire was the Main Repertoire Committee itself. Behind the character of Savva Lukich was hidden the easily recognisable censor V. Blum, who was enraged to identify himself quickly in the extremely repellent character. The amazed Bulgakov wrote to his friend Evgeny Zamyatin on 27th September 1928, ‘Another feeling has joined the love that I have for you — awe. You congratulated me two weeks before the approval of The Crimson Island. That means you’re a prophet. I don’t know what to say about the approval. I wrote The Run and submitted it, but The Crimson Island was approved… Mystical’.
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.
First address
- Stop 8
- 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.
