Our Notes & References

“The most popular Russian novel of the 20th century” (Saprykin) and “one of the finest achievements in 20th-century Russian literature” (Thomas, our translation here and elsewhere): an appealing example of the scarce first complete edition.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s (1891-1940) opus magnum about the devil’s adventures in Moscow defies any categorisation and is simultaneously “a caustic feuilleton about Soviet philistines, an apocryphal work about the last days of Christ, and a story of love that brings salvation” (Saprykin). Bulgakov began Master i Margarita in 1928, destroyed the unfinished manuscript in 1930, and resumed his work in 1932-33. From 1937 he worked solely on this novel. Having almost lost his eyesight, he dictated his last edits to his wife Elena on 13 February 1940, less than a month before his death.

Elena Bulgakova retyped the novel with the last changes and tried unsuccessfully to publish it for over 20 years. Finally, in 1966-1967 the magazine Moskva [Moscow], in No. 11 and No. 1 respectively, released the novel with censorship cuts of some 14,000 words (12% of the text), removing any hints of political purges and mysterious disappearances from the “bad flat”, the persecution of the Master after the publication of his text about Pontius Pilate, and the dream of one of the characters about the illegal possession of foreign money.

Despite the omissions, “the novel instantly became the subject of a mass literary cult, unparalleled in its scale in Russian literature of the 20th century” (Saprykin). People queued up for the issues of the formerly little known magazine, and “in a few months these issues were impossible to buy anywhere at any price” (Saprykin). After this publication, Elena Bulgakova sent the full typewritten text abroad, and uncensored versions began circulating in samizdat. In 1967, the now famous first separate edition was published in Paris by YMCA-Press, yet it contained the same abridged text as Moskva.

This first uncensored edition was published by the CIA-backed Posev in Frankfurt am Main. The editors famously printed in italics the parts not included in the earlier versions of the text, and placed in square brackets the Soviet editors’ additions that smoothed out the censored parts. The book was published in two versions: a small format with a burgundy leatherette cover without dust-jacket for smuggling and distribution in the USSR, and this hardback format with a dust jacket designed by ‘R. M.’, most likely the Czech artist Radim Malat (1930-97): this dust-jacket can also be considered the first printed illustration of the novel in Russian. Both versions were subsequently republished multiple times.

By the time when the full version was officially published in the USSR in 1973, three years after Elena Bulgakova’s death, the book had appeared in 26 translations into different languages worldwide and remained extremely popular since then, with wide-ranging influence, from Salman Rushdie to the Rolling Stones (“Sympathy for the Devil” is said to have been inspired by Bulgakov).

Rare on the market, from experience rarer than the YMCA edition. We could trace only three copies passing through the trade over the last two decades, including two in Russia.

Provenance

L. Krylova (Elena Aleksandrovna Krylova, née Pliusninaia, 1914-2010, a prominent social figure of the White-Russian emigration in Brussels, who collected much material linked to Russian history, in particular archives and rare books; pencil inscription at end).

Bibliography

Belobrovtseva I. Kulius S. ‘Roman Mikhaila Bulgakova «Master i Margarita»: opyt kommentariia’. Tallin, 2004; Sokolov B. ‘Rasshifrovannyy Bulgakov. Tainy «Mastera i Margarity»’. Eksmo, 2020; Chudakova, Marietta. O “zakatnom romane” Mikhaila Bulgakova. Istoriia sozdaniia i pervoi publikatsii romana “Master i Margarita”, Muzei Mikhaila Bulgakova, Moskva, Eksmo, 2019; Saprykin, Iurii. “Mikhail Bulgakov. Master i Margarita”. Polka academy, 2018; Thomas, Samuel. “The Master and Margarita, novel by Bulgakov”. Encyclopaedia Britannica.