The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita
The Devil arrives in Stalin's Moscow and has a considerably better time than anyone expected.
Satan in the Soviet Union
Mikhail Bulgakov's posthumously published 1967 masterpiece interweaves two narratives. In 1930s Moscow, the Devil appears as Professor Woland with a retinue of bizarre companions and exposes the greed, hypocrisy, and cowardice of Soviet society with theatrical glee. In parallel, a reimagined account of Pontius Pilate's interrogation of Yeshua Ha-Notsri in ancient Jerusalem raises questions about cowardice and truth that echo across both timelines. Love, madness, and literature unite both worlds.
Reading The Master and Margarita
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"Cowardice is the greatest sin.
"Mikhail Bulgakov · The Master and Margarita
Bulgakov burned the manuscript of this novel in 1930 out of fear of Stalin's censors, then rewrote it entirely. He worked on it in secret for twelve years and died in 1940 without ever seeing it published.
His wife kept the manuscript hidden for nearly three decades before it was finally published in a censored form in 1966 and 1967. The full unredacted version was published abroad in 1967 and in Russia only in 1973.