The Master and Margarita

[1] A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967, after the writer's death on March 10, 1940, by his widow Elena Bulgakova (Russian: Елена Булгакова).

The Master and Margarita combines supernatural elements with satirical dark comedy and Christian philosophy, defying categorization within a single genre.

[8] The original text of all the omitted and changed parts, with indications of the places of modification, was printed and distributed by hand in the Soviet Union (in the dissident practice known as samizdat).

Although Berlioz dismisses his death prophecy as insane raving, he slips on the spilled oil and has his head decapitated by a tram car driven by a Russian woman, dying in the same way that the professor predicted.

His futile attempts to capture the "gang" (Woland and his entourage) and his warnings about their evil nature land Ivan in a lunatic psychiatric clinic, where he is treated by Stravinsky, a local doctor.

Azazello gives her a magical skin ointment, which turns her invisible, and invites her to the Devil's midnight Good Friday ball, where Woland gives her the chance to become a witch.

Natasha, her maid, accompanies her, riding on their neighbor Nikolai Ivanovich who has taken the form of a pig, as they fly over the Soviet Union's deep forests and rivers.

The Master and Margarita die; Azazello brings their souls to Satan and his retinue (awaiting them on horseback on a Moscow rooftop), and they fly away into the unknown, as cupolas and windows burn in the setting sun, leaving Earth behind and traveling into dark cosmic space.

The Master and Margarita will spend eternity together in a shady, pleasant region resembling Dante Alighieri's Limbo, in a house under flowering cherry trees.

There are several interpretations of the novel: Some critics suggest that Bulgakov was responding to poets and writers who he believed were spreading atheist propaganda in the Soviet Union, and denying Jesus Christ as a historical person.

[citation needed] Literary critic and assistant professor at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts Nadezhda Dozhdikova notes that the image of Jesus as a harmless madman presented in ″Master and Margarita″ has its source in the literature of the USSR of the 1920s, which, following the tradition of the demythologization of Jesus in the works of Strauss, Renan, Nietzsche and Binet-Sanglé, put forward two main themes – mental illness and deception.

Whereas Ivan is a celebrated rising star supported by MASSOLIT, the Master is a literary outsider who is at once denounced and cast away after submitting his novel for publishing.

In the middle of the Great Depression and Stalinist repression, Bullitt had instructed his staff to create an event that would surpass every other embassy party in Moscow's history.

The decorations included a forest of ten young birch trees in the chandelier room; a dining room table covered with Finnish tulips; a lawn made of chicory grown on wet felt; a fishnet aviary filled with pheasants, parakeets, and one hundred zebra finches, on loan from the Moscow Zoo; and a menagerie including several mountain goats, a dozen white roosters, and a baby bear.

[13] Although Joseph Stalin didn't attend, the 400 elite guests at the festival included Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, Defense Minister Kliment Voroshilov, Communist Party heavyweights Nikolai Bukharin, Lazar Kaganovich, and Karl Radek, Soviet Marshals Aleksandr Yegorov, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and Semyon Budyonny, and other high-ranking guests.

[15] The novel deals with the interplay of good and evil, innocence and guilt, courage and cowardice, exploring such issues as the responsibility towards truth when authority would deny it, and freedom of the spirit in an unfree world.

The interplay of fire, water, destruction, and other natural forces provides a constant accompaniment to the events of the novel, as do light and darkness, noise and silence, sun and moon, storms and tranquility, and other powerful polarities.

The overlap between the two plot lines is further complicated by the fact that the Jerusalem story is presented as the novel written by the master, raising questions of authorship and muddling the distinction between fiction and reality.

Bulgakov implores a tone of satirical dark comedy when describing neighbors’ random “disappearances”, Stepan’s mysterious teleportation to Yalta, and the magical memory erasure that occurs after state-sanctioned interrogations.

It can be read on many different levels, as slapstick, philosophical allegory, and socio-political satire critical of not just the Soviet system but also the superficiality and vanity of modern life in general.

But the novel is full of modern elements, such as the model asylum, radio, street and shopping lights, cars, lorries, trams, and air travel.

There is little evident nostalgia for any "good old days" – the only figures who mention Tsarist Russia are Satan and the Narrator, who directly addresses characters in the novel and the reader multiple times.

The novel is influenced by the Faust legend, particularly the first part of the Goethe interpretation, The Devil's Pact, which goes back to the 4th century; Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus (where in the last act the hero cannot burn his manuscript or receive forgiveness from a loving God); and the libretto of the opera whose music was composed by Charles Gounod.

Technical progress and the rapid development of mechanized production in the 20th century, combined with the satirical motive of primitivism, characteristic of Russian literature, left an imprint on the nature of Bulgakov's grotesque.

[citation needed] The dialogue between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Notsri is strongly influenced by Fyodor Dostoyevsky's parable "The Grand Inquisitor" from The Brothers Karamazov.

[citation needed] Literary writer Kevin Moss considers the early translations by Ginsburg and Glenny to be hurried, and lacking much critical depth.

the technologist Peter Thiel answered, "If you want something a little more intellectual, it's probably the Bulgakov novel The Master and Margarita where the devil shows up in Stalinist Russia, and succeeds, and gives everybody what they want, and everything goes haywire.

Also this may refer to Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus where the hero, deviating from previous tales of 'The Devil's Pact', is unable to burn his books or repent to a merciful God.

[127] In pop music, more than 15 popular bands and artists, including Igor Nikolayev, Valery Leontiev, Zsuzsa Koncz, Larisa Dolina and Linda, have been inspired by the novel.

In 2009, Portuguese new media artists Video Jack premiered an audiovisual art performance inspired by the novel at Kiasma, Helsinki, as part of the PixelAche Festival.

Poster for a stage adaptation of The Master and Margarita in Perm, Russia