You want to be one of the “in” people that has read Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. You understood it as a fantasy novel written in the middle of red terror—a resistance piece peppered with some religious overtones but ultimately sort of a romance novel. Dmitry Bykov—a prominent Russian writer, poet, and literary critic known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Soviet history and his provocative, structuralist interpretations of classical texts—would tell you, you got it all wrong!
In the critical framework of Dmitry Bykov, the novel is stripped of its status as a populist manifesto and recast as something far more intimate and dangerous: a private letter addressed to a single reader. That reader was the dictator Joseph Stalin. Bykov argues that Bulgakov, acutely aware that “Koba” was his personal censor and sole arbiter of fate, crafted the novel as a sophisticated pedagogical tool—an attempt to explain to the dictator the true nature of power, mercy, and the role of the artist in a totalitarian state.
The Cursed Text and the Private Audience
Bulgakov didn’t think the book would be published during his lifetime, and weird legend has it that he might not have wanted it published at all. In the mystical logic of the Moscow literary underground, the novel is often regarded as “cursed”—a text so potent and dangerous that bad things supposedly happen to those who try to revive it or bring it to the stage or screen.
Bykov suggests this aura of danger isn’t just superstition; it’s a reflection of the book’s true purpose as a specialized, high-stakes communication between one Master and one Tyrant. The premise of this “novel for one” rests on a unique, almost supernatural relationship. In the 1930s, Bulgakov lived in a state of professional paralysis; his plays were banned, and his path to the West was blocked. Bykov suggests that from this point forward, Bulgakov stopped writing for the public or for posterity and began writing for the man who sat in the Kremlin, watching The Days of the Turbins fifteen times.
The Pact: The Call of April 1930
This transition began on April 18, 1930, when the phone rang in Bulgakov’s apartment. Stalin himself was on the line, responding to a desperate letter Bulgakov had written to the government asking for permission to either work or emigrate. “Have we really bored you that much?” Stalin reportedly asked with a chillingly paternal irony.
When Bulgakov confessed that a Russian writer cannot exist outside his homeland, Stalin suggested he apply to the Moscow Art Theatre, where “miraculously” a position immediately opened for him. This wasn’t just a career break; it was a pact. The call established that Bulgakov was now a “special case,” a protected species within the dictator’s personal orbit.
This tradition of a “private audience” with the Tsar had happened all throughout Russian literature. Bulgakov was effectively stepping into a role established by Alexander Pushkin, who entered a similar pact with Nicholas I. Just as Nicholas famously declared himself to be Pushkin’s “personal censor,” bypassing the standard bureaucratic filters, Stalin became Bulgakov’s personal reader. In both cases, the writer accepted a gilded cage, believing that a direct, mystical link to the Sovereign was the only way to protect their work from the mediocrity of the masses and the cruelty of the minor officials.
Woland as a Mirror for Power
Bykov highlights that the figure of Woland is the primary vehicle for this dialogue. Woland is not the biblical Satan, but a representation of “the Power that eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” This, Bykov posits, was Bulgakov’s way of reflecting Stalin back to himself.
By portraying Woland as a force of “just” terror—someone who punishes the greedy, the sycophants, and the mediocre—Bulgakov was attempting to seduce Stalin into a more refined form of tyranny. The message was clear: a truly great ruler does not waste time on the petty persecution of geniuses; he protects them, using his dark power to create a space where the Master can exist.
If you want to understand why to this day, despite all the horrors of Stalinist atrocities, there remains a loyal fan club for “Soso,” this is your key. Bulgakov provided the aesthetic and philosophical justification for the “good” tyrant. By creating a character who executes the bureaucratic “vermin” while sparing the artist, he romanticized the dictator as a dark but necessary judge. This archetype of the “just executioner” continues to fuel the modern cult of Stalin.
Defining the “Master”
The title “The Master” directly mirrors Stalin’s own lexicon and his specific origins. For a shoemaker’s son, the word “Master” (Мастер) was not a vague artistic honorific; it was a technical rank. It denoted the highest level of a craft—someone who possessed the professional secrets of the guild and whose authority was absolute within the workshop.
Stalin inherently distrusted the “intelligentsia”—the “writers,” “poets,” and “philosophers” whom he viewed as fickle, bourgeois parasites. However, a “Master” was a different creature entirely. A Master was a professional who had mastered the tools of his trade. This was evident in Stalin’s 1934 call to Pasternak, where he obsessively asked if Mandelstam was a “Master.” For Stalin, being a Master afforded a unique “immunity” while lesser writers were purged.
By adopting this label, Bulgakov signaled his place in Stalin’s private hierarchy, claiming a status that transcended the mob and demanded the protection of the one who truly held the power of life and death.
Seminary Language: Jerusalem and Pilate
Furthermore, the “Jerusalem chapters” of the novel serve as a historical mirror for the Soviet present, specifically designed to resonate with Stalin’s unique intellectual origins. Stalin was a former seminary student, a fact Bulgakov utilized to frame his argument in familiar biblical terms.
By choosing the story of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua, Bulgakov was not writing a religious treatise, but speaking to Stalin in his “native” theological language. He presented a study of the cowardice of power, showing Pilate as an intellectual who, through the “greatest sin” of cowardice, allows a righteous man to be executed. Bykov argues that this was a direct appeal to Stalin’s ego: history remembers not the efficiency of the state, but whether the ruler had the courage to save the “divine spark” from the mob.
Conclusion: The Final Curse
Bykov categorizes novels into three types: those supporting authority, those fighting it, and those in private dialogue with it. The Master and Margarita belongs to the third. Unlike the logical appeals of Machiavelli’s The Prince or Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Bulgakov’s work is a seductive, mystical performance tailored for a dictator who appreciated theater and dark wit.
However, Bykov views the book’s massive popularity as Bulgakov’s final “curse.” He argues it is a novel of compromise and exhaustion—a work written by a man driven into a corner, which has unfairly eclipsed Bulgakov’s superior and more traditionally “literary” work, like The White Guard. The curse lies in the “interception”: a private letter of seduction, meant for a single set of eyes in the Kremlin, was intercepted and celebrated by the entire world.
The public now consumes as entertainment a text that was originally a matter of life and death, turning a coded, desperate plea into endless inspiration for tawdry screen adaptations, plays, ballets, and even opera.