Reading just a bit about Bulgakov, makes me wonder how Stalin didn't have him killed.... What was his early life like? And most of all, how does a mind come up with some of the things he came up with? Makes you wonder what he was really like...
Regarding the departure of Communism....Some of Obama's ideas seem to be from Communism, and yet, country after country has not found it to work (except the Eskimos).... Wonder if Obama has read this?
Thanks for the links...
en.wikipedia.org
The novel begins with Satan visiting Moscow in the 1920s or 30s, joining a conversation of a critic and a poet, busily debating the existence of Jesus Christ and the Devil. It then evolves into an all-embracing indictment of the corruption, greed, narrow-mindedness, and widespread paranoia of Soviet Russia. Banned but widely read, the novel firmly secured Bulgakov's place among the pantheon of great Russian writers
en.wikipedia.org
Bulgakov started writing the novel in 1928. The first version of the novel was destroyed (according to Bulgakov, burned in a stove) in March 1930 when he was notified that his play The Cabal of Hypocrites (?????? ??????) was banned. The work was restarted in 1931 and in 1935 Bulgakov attended the Spring Festival at Spaso House, a party said to have inspired the masked ball of the novel.[2] The second draft was completed in 1936 by which point all the major plot lines of the final version were in place. The third draft was finished in 1937. Bulgakov continued to polish the work with the aid of his wife, but was forced to stop work on the fourth version four weeks before his death in 1940. The work was completed by his wife during 1940–1941.
A censored version (12% of the text removed and still more changed) of the book was first published in Moscow magazine (no. 11, 1966 and no. 1, 1967).[3] The text of all the omitted and changed parts, with indications of the places of modification, was published on a samizdat basis. In 1967 the publisher Posev (Frankfurt) printed a version produced with the aid of these inserts.
In Russia, the first complete version, prepared by Anna Saakyants, was published by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura in 1973, based on the version of the beginning of 1940 proofread by the publisher. This version remained the canonical edition until 1989, when the last version was prepared by literature expert Lidiya Yanovskaya based on all available manuscripts.
The Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Moscow was vandalized on December 22, 2006, allegedly by a religious fanatic who denounced The Master and Margarita as being satanic propaganda.[4]
masterandmargarita.eu
The website |
