The Master and Margarita

2 Latunsky ... Ariman ... Lavrovich: Russian commentators see the name Latunsky as a fusion of the names of critics O. Litovsky and A. Orlinsky, who led the attack on ’Bulgakovism’ in the mid-twenties, after the first performances of Bulgakov’s play Days of the Turbins. Ariman (Ahriman), name of the principle of evil in the Zoroastrian religion, has also been identified by commentators with L. L. Averbakh, general secretary of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), one of Bulgakov’s fiercest opponents. And Lavrovich is thought to be V. V. Vishnevsky, who forced the withdrawal of two of Bulgakov’s plays from the repertory of the Moscow Art Theatre.

3 an article by the critic Ariman: It was common practice in Soviet literary politics to mount a press campaign against a book after denying it publication. The same happened at the end of the fifties with Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.

4 A Militant Old Believer:

The Old Believers broke with the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century, in protest against the reforms of the patriarch Nikon. The term is thus used rather loosely by Latunsky. In the mid-twenties, Bulgakov was similarly attacked as ‘a militant white guard’.

5 in the same coat but with the buttons torn off: This laconic reference is the only indication of where the master spent those lost three months. It was customary to remove belts, shoelaces and buttons from the apparel of those ‘held for questioning’.

Chapter 15: Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream

1 after first visiting another place: Noteworthy is not only the impersonality of the interrogation that follows, but the combination in the interrogating voice of menace and ‘tenderness’ (a word Bulgakov uses frequently in this context). The same combination will reappear in Nikanor Ivanovich’s dream — an extraordinary rendering of the operation of secret police within society, which also suggests the ’theatre’ of Stalin’s trumped-up ‘show trials’ of the later thirties.

2 Quinquet lamps: A specially designed oil-lamp, named for its French inventor, in which the oil reservoir is higher than the wick. Like carbon arc lamps in apartment hallways, they were a means of saving electricity.

3 All sitting?: Bulgakov plays on the meanings of the Russian verb sidet:

’to sit’ and also ‘to sit in prison’.

4 The Covetous Knight: One of Pushkin’s ‘little tragedies’, written in 1830, about the demonic and destructive fascination of gold.

5 As a young scapegrace ... some sly strumpet: The first two lines of the baron’s opening monologue in scene two of The Covetous Knight.

6 And who’s going to pay the rent — Pushkin?: This household’ way of referring to Pushkin is common in Russia, showing how far the poet has entered into people’s everyday life, though without necessarily bringing a knowledge of his works with him.

7 There great heaps ... of gold are mine: Lines from Hermann’s aria in Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades, based on the story by Pushkin (the lines, however, are by Modest Tchaikovsky).

Chapter

17: An Unquiet Day

1 Glorious sea, sacred Baikal: A pre-revolutionary song about Lake Baikal, sung by convicts at hard labour. It became popular after the revolution and remained so throughout the Soviet period.

2 cisco: A northern variety of whitefish caught in Lake Baikal.

3 Barguzin: A local personification of the north-east wind.

4 Shilka and Nerchinsk: Towns on the Shilka River east of Baikal, known as places of exile.

5 Lermontov studies: Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41), lyric poet and novelist of the generation following Pushkin.

Chapter 18: Hapless Visitors

1 Maximilian Andreevich did not like Kiev: Bulgakov, however, loved Kiev, his birthplace, as the descriptions of the city and of Vladimir’s Hill here and in The White Guard make clear. Prince Vladimir (or St Vladimir), grand prince of Kievan Rus, gave firm foundations to the first Russian state and in ₉88 converted his people to Christianity.

2 Passport!: The internal passport, a feature of Russian life in tsarist times, was abolished after the revolution, but reinstated by Stalin in 1932. It was the only accepted means of identification and had to be carried at all times. The precinct number that the cat gives later (412th) is absurdly high, even for a big city.

3 Everything was confusion... : The second sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, proverbial in Russia.