The Master and Margarita

Most people will tell you that Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is a scathing critique of Soviet culture. But they’re only half right.

In truth, the book is much deeper, more general, more heretical. It’s a broad defense of chaos, mischief, and violence. Bulgakov wants us to understand that—in the right context—bad things can become good.

The Master and Margarita is an apologia for the Devil.

I. Plot

“But, the Devil isn’t real!” I hear you protest. And that’s precisely how the novel begins—with two prominent Soviet literary figures discussing Jesus and the Devil as nonsensical fictional characters. As they tout their state-approved atheism, fervently trying to out-virtue-signal one another, Satan encroaches on their conversation.

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name!
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game.

—The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil (inspired byThe Master and Margarita)

The Master and Margarita is deeply absurdist. Magical realism drives much of the book’s visceral appeal, but also serves as a sleight-of-hand distraction from the its subversiveness—a potentially life-saving defense for a writer in Soviet Russia.

I’d like to focus on the trick itself, the subversion, so I’ll spare you most of the fantastical details. I’ll spare you the sexy vampire, the fanged hitman, and the talking cat. I’ll spare you the same cat swinging from a chandelier while firing a machine gun. I’ll spare you streets full of naked women and an empty suit clacking away at a typewriter. I’ll spare you Satan’s ball, the parade of condemned souls, and the cognac-filled swimming pool.

But there are three main storylines we need to contend with. Unlike Bulgakov, I’ll relate them in chronological order.

First, we have a creative take on the story of Pontius Pilate, who has been tasked with executing Ha Nozri (a stand-in for Jesus). Pilate is impressed by the prophet and wants to befriend him, but for political reasons [1] is forced to carry out the execution. Pilate is racked with guilt, and secretly orders the assassination of Judas.

Nearly two thousand years later, Pilate’s story is recorded by a writer who goes by “the master” (a stand-in for the author, Bulgakov). Despite his novel’s obvious merit, and despite the undying support of his lover, Margarita, the master is preempted by critics and literary enemies, who torch his book. The master winds up in a mental asylum.

And shortly thereafter, Satan arrives in post-war Moscow, introducing himself as “Woland”. He and his retinue gleefully spread chaos throughout the city, finding increasingly absurd and creative ways to punish the Russian citizenry—with a primary focus on the self-serving literary elite that have been harassing the master.

Eventually, all three threads intertwine. Margarita befriends Satan’s retinue, becomes a witch, and (after a brief detour to unleash her witchy powers on the master’s critics) enlists her new friends to liberate the master. The lot of them fly into the sky, where they witness Pilate’s fate.

II. Context

Every one of us is a product of our culture. Some of us live in open, liberal societies; others in strict theocracies. Some of us are surrounded by intellectuals, and so value intellect; others are surrounded by believers, and value faith. Astrange few have even grown up feral, adopting the attitudes and behaviors of wild wolves or monkeys.

Even so, you’d be one up on Bulgakov, because Bulgakov lived in Stalinist Russia.

It’s hard for many of us to imagine what Stalin’s dictatorship was like, and how its effects percolated out into daily life. Printed media were strictly under state control, and propaganda flourished. Religion wasn’t exactly illegal, but wasn’t exactly encouraged either. There were secret police. Citizens were routinely jailed, tortured, or killed for having the wrong views, being associated with the wrong people, or just because. Emigration was illegal, foreign goods were rare, and housing was tight–most people lived in communal apartments. Anyone could ruin your life with a phone call. Trust was a scarce resource.

Of course, people mostly parroted the state’s talking points (whether they believed them or not). They wrote poems and essays and plays about the greatness of Russia, about the folly of religion, about the beauty of Communism. They did this for personal gain, fame, special privileges, and most of all, to avoid any possible confrontation with the state.

But in all cultures, there are exceptions: misfits, rebels, queers, outcasts; the criminal and the insane. There are people whose wiring is too far out on the edges of the distribution to abide by the dominant worldview.

And every culture has a way of handling these anomalies, pushing them to the margins in order to protect its identity, often–as in Soviet Russia’s case–with violence. But violence can only effect the desired behaviors. It’s much better if you can psychologically induce conformity through thought and emotion.

Now is a good time to mention that Bulgakov wasn’t only a product of Stalinist culture. He grew up before Stalin’s time, in Tsarist Russia, and witnessed the Russian Revolution in his late twenties. More importantly, he was the son of a prominent Orthodox theologian, and the grandson of two Orthodox clergymen. While Bulgakov’s explicit religious beliefs aren’t quite clear (and, I have to assume, not quite orthodox), he was deeply influenced by his father, and maintained a strong inclination toward spirituality throughout his life.

Christianity, it must be said, is immensely effective at psychologically enforcing conformity. Not only does itconflate authority with God Himself, it promises an eternity of suffering for disbelief and dissent. And it personifies these things in an archetypal rebel: Satan, who refused to submit to God’s will, and started theWar in Heaven.

So Bulgakov found himself wedged between two competing cultures, both demanding his obedience and threatening him with punishment. The dissonance could easily drive one mad–and several writers in Bulgakov’s novel, including his stand-in, do indeed end up in the madhouse. But Bulgakov’s mind twisted the dissonance into something new: Satan, the original rebel, becomes a hero, a savior. Religious poison becomes a political cure.

Only with the Devil at his side can Bulgakov straddle both cultures at once.

III. Inversion

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

—Sympathy for the Devil

The Master and Margarita portrays Woland (aka Satan) as a sympathetic character. He’s neatly-dressed, well-read, and clever. He begins every interaction politely, but always finds a way to expose the hidden selfishness lurking inside the people he encounters.

His misdeeds are all focused on the greedy, the cowardly, and the hypocritical. Most of all, he goes after liars—one of his victims, we learn, has falsely reported his neighbors to the secret police in hopes of taking their apartment. And it’s Woland who ultimately saves the protagonists.

The theme of inversion is echoed throughout the story. Misfortune is justice, befalling only those who deserve it; chaos brings freshness and excitement to every situation that has settled into a malignant normal; “respectable” people are all shown to be liars, cowards, and thieves, while the only people who understand what’s really happening are locked away in a madhouse.

Repeatedly, Bulgakov shows us the folly of trying to create too much order, of relying on a single authority, of pretending we can know and control the world. Much of the novel’s comedy comes from watching the Russian citizenry try to hold onto their pragmatic worldview, while Woland repeatedly rips the carpet out from under them. They desperately seek rational explanations, and finding none, panic. They cling to order, while he sows chaos.

In one memorable chapter, Woland puts on a show, entitled Black Magic and its Exposure. He makes heaps of designer clothing appear out of thin air, and showers the crowd with ten-rouble bills, resulting in an explosion of chaos and greed. But in steps Arkady Apollonovnich, Chairman of the Acoustics Commission, to uphold his culture’s pragmatic demands:

“…it is desirable, citizen artiste, that you expose the technique of your tricks to the spectators without delay, especially the trick with the paper money…The exposure is absolutely necessary. Without it your brilliant numbers will leave a painful impression. The mass of spectators demands an explanation.”

But instead of exposing his techniques, Woland exposes the Chairman’s ongoing affair with a young actress. And, to triple the entendre, all the women who wrapped themselves in designer clothes soon find themselves exposed on the streets outside the theater. [2]

IV. Complication

Back in reality, did Bulgakov take on Satan’s role and rebel? The answer is complicated. As it turns out, he was one of Stalin’s favorite writers, thanks to a book (and subsequent play) he wrote about the Russian Revolution. Stalin even intervened when the play was canceled due to poor reviews.

And this happened despite the fact that Bulgakov was repeatedly critical of Stalin’s government. It’s a miracle he wasn’t murdered over it. Here’s a taste of a couple of his lesser-known works,via Wikipedia:

The Fatal Eggs tells of the events of a Professor Persikov, who…discovers a red ray that accelerates growth in living organisms…the Soviet government puts the ray into use at a farm…the eggs produce giant monstrosities that wreak havoc in the suburbs of Moscow and kill most of the workers on the farm…This tale of a bungling government earned Bulgakov his label of counter-revolutionary.

Heart of a Dog features a professor who implants human testicles and a pituitary gland into a dog…The dog becomes more and more human as time passes, resulting in all manner of chaos…It contains a few bold hints to the communist leadership; e.g. the name of the drunkard donor of the human organ implants…can be seen as a parody on the name of Stalin

But perhaps “miracle” isn’t quite the right word for Bulgakov’s survival—Stalin himself came to his defense, saying Bulgakov’s genius placed him beyond typical political allegiances. Of course, that didn’t stop Stalin from banning most of his output, culminating in a complete ban on all his writing and his theatrical productions in 1929. Bulgakov was no longer allowed to work.

Frustrated, Bulgakov wrote to Stalin personally, asking for permission to emigrate to America. The two spoke on the phone: Bulgakov agreed to stay, and Stalin agreed to let him go back to his work in theater.

So Bulgakov was indeed a rebel, but he also relied on and negotiated with the target of his rebellion. His complicated relationship with Stalin even inspired a (deeply fictionalized) play,Collaborators.

After his un-banning, Bulgakov languished, with most of his writing going unpublished. The little that did get out was severely criticized in the Soviet press. He wrote The Master and Margarita during these years, while struggling with sickness and, understandably, depression. At one point—just like the fictional Master—he burned his working manuscript, and later had to rewrite it from memory. When he died in 1940, there were only a few unfinished sentences, nothing a good editor couldn’t polish away.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that anyone dared print it; even then it was censored. But the novel’s most famous line quickly become a rallying cry for free expression:

“Manuscripts don’t burn.”

V. Redemption

It’s not easy for someone steeped in Christian theology to rebel, to take on the role of Satan. And much of The Master and Margarita is concerned with the rebel’s redemption. In the final pages, you can feel Bulgakov’s hope and angst, his desire to be saved, to be relieved of his counter-revolutionary burden after a decade of intellectual isolation. The novel ends happily—and literally ever-after—for the master, for Margarita, for Pontius Pilate, and even for the Devil himself.

In the final chapter—titled Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge—the master and Margarita find Pontius Pilate in the same position he was left at the end of the Master’s story: suffering with guilty conscience next to a broken jug of wine, longing to walk and talk with Ha Nozri, aka Jesus. We learn that he’s been here for “twelve thousand moons”, a sentence Margarita decides is far too much. The Devil exhorts the master to finish his novel, and the master shouts:

“You’re free! You’re free! He’s waiting for you!”

Pilate–a man who literally killed God–is released from his agony.

The Devil then leads the master and Margarita to their eternal refuge, teasing them along the way:

“oh, thrice-romantic master, can it be that you don’t want to go strolling with your friend in the daytime under cherry trees just coming into bloom, and in the evening listen to Schubert’s music? Can it be that you won’t like writing with a goose quill by candlelight? Can it be that you don’t want to sit over a retort like Faust, in hopes that you’ll succeed in forming a new homunculus? There! There! The house and the old servant are already waiting for you, the candles are already burning, and soon they will go out, because you will immediately meet the dawn.”

Much like Goethe’s Faust [3], the master and Margarita make a deal with the Devil. But in the end, it’s only a show, a test—the danger suddenly and irreversibly evaporates. Their salvation, it turns out, is not contingent on some byzantine set of contracts and laws, but simply on their capacity for bravery and kindness and love.

VI. Reflection

The Master and Margarita is a slippery, interconnected web of loosely related events, which extends beyond the novel and into the real world.

There’s the obvious allegory tying reality to fiction: the autobiographical details Bulgakov has mixed into the story. Both he and the master write a book about Pontius Pilate, burn it, and rewrite it. Both have the undying support of a lover (Margarita was inspired by Bulgakov’s third wife—he, too, was “thrice-romantic”). And, though Bulgakov would never know it, through this novel he eventually found immortality, just like the master.

In the Epilogue we learn that, upon Satan’s departure, things in Russia mostly returned to normal. Explanations were concocted involving a gang of hypnotists. A few cats were arrested by overzealous citizens, but it was soon decided that the talking cat must have been nothing more than a ventriloquist’s illusion.

Real-life Russia, too, has mostly returned to normal, despite the success of Bulgakov’s counter-revolutionary novel. A strongman is in power, the cultural narrative is dominated by propaganda, and dissenters are routinely silenced.

Surprisingly, Russia released a film adaptation of The Master and Margarita in early 2024, much to the displeasure of Putin’s government, and to the shock of its dogged creators. Like the novel, it’s proven to be extremely popular, setting box office records. And like Bulgakov, its director—Michael Lockshin—has been harassed by government officials, even threatened with criminal investigation.

It seems that ideas, like manuscripts, don’t burn. Every culture will have its misfits, every government its critics, every religion its heretics, every deity a devil. And Bulgakov’s message here is a clear “thank God”—without resistance we’d drift into authoritarianism, monoculture, total uniformity. We’d crystallize into nothingness.

[1] Surprise: it’s the Jews. Bulgakov, for all his merits, was overtly anti-Semitic.

[2] Did you really expect me to spare you the naked women?

[3] The Master and Margarita is full of allusions to Goethe’s Faust, and it clearly served as an inspiration for the novel.