Boris Sokolov
Bulgakov. Encyclopedia.
Lyudmila, Igor and Vadim with love
Preface to the second edition
You are holding the Bulgakov Encyclopedia in your hands. Despite the scientific name - "encyclopedia", it is not too academic and popular as possible (but not to the detriment of the truth and not at the expense of the accuracy of conclusions and estimates). We deliberately set a goal to collect in it the most interesting for the widest public information about the life and work of Bulgakov. At the same time, the encyclopedia does not contain a detailed description of all the feuilletons and reports of the writer, many of which are now of interest only to specialists in Bulgakov studies. There are no articles devoted to all Bulgakov's relatives and friends, all the writers and philosophers who influenced the author of The Master and Margarita (otherwise the volume of the encyclopedia would have to be increased several times). Of the writer's works, we have devoted separate articles to all novels, short stories, plays, dramatizations, screenplays, opera librettos and short stories. Among feuilletons, essays and reports, only the most interesting in terms of content, context, prototypes and allusions were selected. Of Bulgakov's relatives, only parents, wives and siblings received separate articles. Two of the closest friends were singled out, N. N. Lyamin and P. S. Popov. It should be remembered that for any complete presentation of the entire circle of Bulgakov's friends and acquaintances, a separate book would be required, not inferior in volume to this edition.
Bulgakov entered Russian and world literature primarily as the author of The Master and Margarita, which many literary critics and thoughtful readers consider the best novel of the 20th century. Therefore, we devoted separate articles to invented buildings of the novel, such as Griboyedov's House, and to several dozen of the main characters of The Master and Margarita (the main characters of other Bulgakov's works are discussed in articles devoted to the corresponding novel, story, play, etc.). In addition, parallels with the last and most famous Bulgakov's novel, where many of the motives of the writer's work were completed, can be traced in other articles of the encyclopedia. In the selection of articles about writers, philosophers, political and military figures included in the encyclopedia, we were guided by both subjective preferences and the desire to reduce duplication of information. Therefore, in particular, there are no separate articles devoted to Gogol, Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Goethe, Hoffmann, Dostoevsky, Frans, Molière, Cervantes and many others. The listed writers, in connection with their influence on the hero of our encyclopedia, are mentioned in articles about the staging of their works (such as "Dead Souls" and "War and Peace"), about the characters of "The Master and Margarita", the main characters of which are directly related to Goethe's "Faust" ", as well as in a number of others. At the same time, realizing that the reader is eager to see in each article some complete integrity that does not require mandatory reference to other articles of the encyclopedia, we often give the same information from different angles and in contexts, often even repeating individual quotes. In the course of the presentation, the necessary information about the mentioned persons and events is given. Italics in the text are the names of those articles of the encyclopedia, familiarity with which helps to understand the meaning of this one.
In Bulgakov's work, and especially in the novel The Master and Margarita, one can clearly see the writer's interest in the history of Christianity, questions of demonology, and various myths of the past and present. Therefore, the encyclopedia contains general problematic articles: Demonology, Freemasonry and Christianity, where the reflection of the relevant phenomena in Bulgakov's works is considered. And in all the articles that compiled this book, we tried to pay special attention to demonology and mythology, as well as real prototypes and literary sources of Bulgakov's works. Separate articles are devoted to the language and style of Bulgakov and the works of contemporary Russian writers, which are a continuation of The Master and Margarita. True, we have to admit that the successors are far from reaching their great predecessor.
A chronicle of life and work placed at the end of the encyclopedia will help you better navigate Bulgakov's biography, and a detailed bibliography following the chronicle will help you get to know many stories related to Bulgakov better. In addition to the writings of the writer and works dedicated to him, here is the composition of Bulgakov's lifetime collections and a complete list of lifetime publications of his works. In the text of the encyclopedia, given its popular nature, the names of researchers of Bulgakov's life and work are given only in cases of direct quotations from their works.
The encyclopedia does not include articles about several plays ("The Turbine Brothers", "Self-Defence", etc.), known only by name. The texts of these plays have not come down to us.
Let's make a reservation that about Bulgakov's relatives and friends, different sources give conflicting information about many important points in his biography, including dates of birth and death. Metric documents are often either missing or have not yet been published. We will be very grateful to everyone who sends their comments and clarifications to the text of the encyclopedia.
Bulgakov's unique feature, thanks to which the novel "The Master and Margartita" became one of the most popular novels of the 20th century in our country and is loved by readers all over the world, is the ability to speak about complex philosophical problems with the greatest possible simplicity for a literary text. The writer accumulated the experience of both Russian and Western literary, philosophical and demonological traditions in the original images of his works. In the main of them, thanks to a simple but aesthetically impeccable language, several levels of perception easily coexist for different categories of readers. First of all, Bulgakov's writing can be read as entertaining fiction. With some familiarity with the "Aesopian language" of the Soviet era, one can also easily identify the author's ideological position in relation to the communist government and to events in contemporary Russia and in the world. And a much more difficult task is to comprehend Bulgakov's philosophy, regarding the essence of which fierce disputes continue among researchers and readers.
This encyclopedia, like any author's work of this kind, is largely subjective. First of all, we tried to give that interpretation of Bulgakov's works and the events of his biography, which seems to us closest to the truth. By truth, we understand the actual intentions of the writer when working on a work. Naturally, other researchers and readers often prefer alternative readings of the events of Bulgakov's life and work, the images of his works. Such alternative interpretations will always exist. And the author's intentions themselves change in the course of the creative process and turn out to be very elusive. Sometimes the writer cannot unambiguously realize them, not to mention the individual perception of the same images by different readers. The point here is the following. Each truly great literary work has not even hundreds, but thousands and tens of thousands of literary and real sources. If one day it were possible, for example, by some miracle to reveal all the sources of the novel The Master and Margarita, then even the most brilliant mind would not be able to compare them all, since such a task goes far beyond the limits of the possibilities of human thinking. And it is almost impossible to unambiguously prove whether this or that person was the prototype of a literary hero, and this or that book was the source of the image. The same is true of any writer's biography. Many of the facts from it cannot be firmly proven or refuted, since they are not supported by documents or several independent testimonies of contemporaries. Even in the case when the hypotheses do not contradict all the known facts of the writer's biography and the creative history of the work, as a rule, several such interpretation hypotheses compete with each other. Probably, here, other things being equal, it is worth applying the principle of "Occam's razor", named after the famous English philosopher and theologian of the XIV century. William of Ockham, He urged not to unnecessarily increase the number of grounds for conclusions and give preference to those theories that provide the simplest explanation for the maximum of facts. In the same way, one should approach the interpretation of artistic images and facts related to the history of the work and the biography of the writer. However, this principle can by no means be made imperative (mandatory) for all readers. Therefore, for everyone there is and always will be, no matter how many volumes of scientific research appear, their own Pushkin, their own Gogol, their own Bulgakov. .. "Bulgakov's Encyclopedia" is by no means intended to affirm the ultimate truth. Such a truth is hardly entirely comprehensible in relation to artistic creativity and true authorial intentions. We have tried to give all Bulgakov's admirers new food for thought and, at the same time, with the help of some firmly established facts, to dispel a number of myths associated with the name and works of this most popular writer.
I will talk about the differences between the two editions in more detail below, and now about the encyclopedia itself. It is clear that it is entirely devoted to one thing - the talent of Mikhail Afanasyevich. But it is impossible to put into it all the information that is currently known about the writer (even in the "most complete edition"), so encyclopedic articles tell us about the most significant, in the opinion of its author and compiler, events, materials, people and characters related to to Bulgakov. There are separate articles about the thinkers who influenced the writer (Kant, Nietzsche, Berdyaev, Shestov, Florensky) and writers (Meyrink, Senkevich), about his family members (wives, parents, brothers) and friends, about the prototypes of some characters (Slashchev, Petliura) , about the political figures of that time (Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin). Almost every literary work of the writer is devoted to a separate article in the encyclopedia, and these are not only novels, short stories, stories, plays; feuilletons, reports and even the libretto of the welcoming performance of the Moscow Art Theater troupe at the fortieth anniversary of the Art Theater were also included here (by the way, this article was not in the first edition of the encyclopedia).
Most of the materials, of course, are devoted to the main and most famous work of Bulgakov - the novel "The Master and Margarita": this is the title article, articles about the main and secondary characters (from Likhodeev to Magarych), about the places of action ("Griboedov's House", "Variety Theater ”, “Bad apartment”) and events (The Great Ball of Satan). In addition, "BE" contains "general problematic articles", as Boris Sokolov indicated them in the preface, devoted to demonology, Freemasonry and Christianity. The appendix gives the actual chronology of the life of the writer "Mikhail Bulgakov: deeds and days, 1891 - 1940", a bibliography (in three parts: 1. Lifetime editions 2. Separate editions of works 3. Literature about life and work) and a name index appearing in " BE "personalities (both real-life and fictional ones). If this is not all that can be learned about Bulgakov today, then there is a lot. Admirers of the writer's talent, even those whose knowledge about him is limited exclusively to the novel The Master and Margarita, will not hurt to have this book in their library.
PS. Now for those who already have the first edition of BE in their library: how is the 2016 version different from it? The number of articles has not changed much, mainly the volume of the book has increased due to the increase in the "specific sheet weight" of the materials themselves. They have become more detailed, there are more quotes and photographs. There is only one abbreviation - the text of the play "Sons of the Mullah", which was published in 1996 as one of the appendix materials, has been removed from the book. The rest is just growth. Added articles about Friedrich Nietzsche, about the sequels to The Master and Margarita (which were already written in our time by other authors), about the feuilleton "The Muse of Revenge" (dedicated to the work of Nikolai Nekrasov, was not published during Bulgakov's lifetime), about the already mentioned festive libretto " Anniversary meeting", a separate article about Bulgakov's language and style. The name index closing the edition was also absent in the BE of 1996.
You ask where I found additional information about the authors? Pay attention to the section of the menu "Master's Community", in which there is an item "Master's Club". By the way, if you like it here and if you also love Bulgakov's work, you can become full members of this club.
Links to the main sections that make up the core of the encyclopedia are contained in the menu under the heading, which is called "Encyclopedia". It all starts with the "Biography". This is not an essay, but a very detailed chronograph, starting on May 3 (15), 1891, when "in the family of the teacher of the Kiev Theological Academy Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov and his wife Varvara Mikhailovna (nee - Pokrovskaya) in Kiev, the first child was born - a son, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov. Place of birth - the house of the priest Father Matvey Butovsky (Vozdvizhenskaya st., 28)." And further, paginated by decade, up to the fateful 1940. The quotation I have given is very characteristic, for wherever possible, detailed addresses of people and houses, maiden names of women, real names of people who lived or wrote under pseudonyms, etc. are given in brackets. Basically, the sentences are short. But in one, on which my eyes fell by chance, I almost got confused. Judge for yourself: "The end of September (we are in 1921. - V. L.) - The Bulgakovs move to an apartment at the kindergarten of printers" Goldfish "(Vorotnikovsky lane, 1, apt. 2) to the relatives of Nadezhda Andrey Mikhailovich Zemsky, husband Bulgakov's sister (the wife of Boris Zemsky's brother A. M. Zemsky, Maria Danilovna, was in charge of a kindergarten and had an apartment with him). Obviously, this is not about some kind of "hope" of Andrei Mikhailovich Zemsky, albeit with a capital letter, but about the fact that he was the husband of Nadezhda, Bulgakov's sister. In parentheses, the word order is formally correct, but it is very difficult to get through the jumble of names: “Zemsky Boris Maria Danilovna”, and even despite the fact that this Maria Danilovna is the brother’s wife, but just now it was about the sister’s husband ... To understand all this, of course, you can, but isn't it better to change the order of words, for example: "Maria Danilovna, wife of Boris, brother of A. M. Zemsky, was in charge of a kindergarten."
The next section of the "Encyclopedia" is "Characters". Recently, for some reason, I became interested in the prototype of Dr. Bormenthal from "Heart of a Dog". But he didn't find it here. For on this page the heroes of only one work by Bulgakov are presented, however, probably the most famous one - the novel "The Master and Margarita". About each of them - a whole study.
Here, for example, is a completely passing character - the poet Alexander Ryukhin. Anyone who has not reread the novel for a long time may not even remember that Ryukhin accompanies the mentally damaged Ivan Bezdomny to Dr. Stravinsky's clinic. Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky served as the prototype for Ryukhin. Therefore, in Ryukhin's reasoning about Pushkin, one can hear the echo of Mayakovsky's poem "Jubilee", dedicated to the namesake of the novel poet. Let's say, "he shot, this White Guard Dantes shot at him" is clearly inspired by the lines: "" Son of a bitch Dantes! //Great Skoda. //We would have asked him: // - And who are your parents? //What did you do //before the 17th year?"
Here, by the way, is a curious excerpt from the memoirs of S. A. Yermolinsky about the billiard battles between Bulgakov and Mayakovsky:
"From two sides to the middle," said Bulgakov.
Miss.
“It happens,” Mayakovsky sympathized, pacing around the table and choosing a comfortable position. - Get rich completely on your aunts Manya and Uncle Vanya, build a country house and a huge billiards of your own. I will definitely visit and train.
- Thank you. What a house!
- Why not?
- Oh, Vladimir Vladimirovich, but the insecticide will not help you either, I can assure you. A country house with its own billiards will build your Prisypkin on our bones with you.
What is the visionary Bulgakov, huh?
If so much has been written about a completely minor character in the Encyclopedia, then you can imagine what dissertations are deployed here around the main characters. For example, 9 (nine!) computer pages are dedicated to Woland. I will cite only a few of their thematic headings: "The Coming of the Devil to Moscow according to Marx-Lenin", "Bulgakov gave a villa in Nice to Woland", "A swindler-miser and a opportunistic writer"...
The master is given even more - 10 pages. It is understandable, it is largely an autobiographical image. Suffice it to recall that the author shared his love with the protagonist of the novel, or that the call of the critic Mstislav Lavrovich to "strike hard on Pilatchina" was inspired by an article in the newspaper "Working Moscow" dated November 15, 1928 under the heading "Let's hit Bulgakovism!".
You can read about the prototypes of the characters in Bulgakov's other books in the essays dedicated to these books, located in the "Works" section. I emphasize that in this case these are stories about works, and not themselves. For example, five computer pages tell about the same "Heart of a Dog". I found information about the prototypes of Professor Preobrazhensky and even a certain Moritz, later renamed Alphonse, only mentioned by a voluptuous patient of a brilliant doctor, but I did not find anything about Dr. Bormental.
What struck me was the reports "to the authorities" of various "attentive agents" flickering here and there. After all, I also lived in the Soviet country, although later, and I also heard about informers, but all the same, when you read detailed reports, with a retelling of plots read in the circle of familiar works, with the reaction of these acquaintances, the hair stands on end. How many "Barons Meigels" revolved around each more or less significant person!
It is clear that the "Bulgakov Encyclopedia" would not be complete without information about demonology. The section of the same name is dedicated to them here. Remember the prediction of the fate of Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, uttered by Woland at the Patriarch's Ponds:
He looked Berlioz up and down as if he were going to make him a suit, muttered through his teeth something like: “One, two ... Mercury in the second house ... the moon is gone ... six - misfortune ... evening - seven. .." - and loudly and joyfully announced:
"Your head will be cut off!"
It turns out that every word here is not accidental. I quote: "According to the principles of astrology, twelve houses are twelve parts of the ecliptic. The location of certain luminaries in each of the houses reflects certain events in the fate of a person. Mercury in the second house means happiness in trade. Berlioz is really punished for having introduced to the temple of literature of traders - members of the MASSOLIT headed by him, concerned only with obtaining material benefits in the form of dachas, creative business trips, vouchers to a sanatorium (Mikhail Alexandrovich thinks about such a voucher in the last hours of his life).Unhappiness in the sixth house means failure in marriage "From further narration we learn that Berlioz's wife fled to Kharkov with a visiting choreographer. In the 1929 edition, Woland said more clearly that "the moon had left the fifth house." This indicated that Berlioz had no children. It is not surprising that the only heir to the chairman of MASSOLIT turns out to be a Kiev uncle, to whom Woland immediately offers to give a telegram about the death of his nephew. The seventh house is the house of death, and the movement of the luminary there, with which the fate of a literary functionary is connected, means the death of Berlioz ... "
The creators of the encyclopedia devoted a special section to "The Great Ball with Satan". According to the memoirs of E. S. Bulgakova (recorded by V. A. Chebotareva), its prototype was the impressions of a reception at the American Embassy in Moscow on April 22, 1935, where the US Ambassador William Bullitt invited the writer and his wife. But, of course, Bulgakov would not have been Bulgakov if he had limited himself to fixing real events, even if they looked phantasmagoric against the background of the life of that time. The symbolism here is multifaceted, from the roses that decorate the hall where the ball takes place, to likening the novel Margarita to the childless French queen Margaret of Valois. It is impossible to retell all this, read - very exciting!
For those who are interested in Bulgakov's Moscow, I recommend that you look into the appropriate section. You will find in it stories about the "bad apartment" on Bolshaya Sadovaya, about the "Variety Theatre", about the Moscow essays of the writer ...
In a special section - "Bulgakov's Theatre" - there are stories about all his plays, stagings and opera librettos.
We are nearing the end of our walk, and I have not even listed all the topics of the site. I hope you will forgive me this omission by making up for it with your own research. Moreover, I repeat, site navigation is simple. I will only answer the question that arises: "But where are the works of Mikhail Afanasyevich themselves? And are they here?" Eat! In the "Library" section, my favorite "Heart of a Dog", illustrated with shots from the famous film with Evgeny Evstigneev, is highlighted in a special line. Look for the rest of the works in the section, which is called that. I'm not an expert, but it seems that the whole of Bulgakov is represented here. True, links lead to other sites, most often to the familiar "Moshkov Library" . But in order to get into the electronic library, you don’t even need to leave your computer!
Victor Licht(webprogulki.wallst.ru)
To the 125th anniversary of the Master. The most complete edition of the only Bulgakov's encyclopedia, unparalleled. All about the life and work of the great writer. The best guide to the universe of Mikhail Bulgakov. The White Guard and the Days of the Turbins, Diaboliad and Notes of a Young Doctor, The Heart of a Dog and Fatal Eggs, I Killed Morphine, Running and the Cabal of the Saints, Theatrical Romance and The Master and Margarita - in this illustrated encyclopedia you will find comprehensive information not only about all the works without exception and Bulgakov's characters, but also about himself, his family, his friends and enemies, about all the stages and events of his short life, many of which were hushed up for decades, whether it was Mikhail Afanasyevich's service in the White Army, his addiction to morphine, many years of persecution of the Soviet press , difficult relationships with women or Stalin's intervention in his fate.
Russian Federation
Department of Political Science and Sociology, Moscow State University of Printing. Ivan Fedorov
works on history and philology
Boris Vadimovich Sokolov(January 2, Moscow) - Russian historian, critic and literary critic. Doctor of Philology, Candidate of Historical Sciences, member of the Russian PEN Center.
Biography
Author of 60 books on national history and philology, including the Bulgakov and Gogol encyclopedias, the books Deciphered Bulgakov: Secrets of the Master and Margarita, Secrets of Russian Writers, My Book about Vladimir Sorokin, Mikhail Bulgakov : Mysteries of Fate", "Mikhail Bulgakov: Mysteries of Creativity", biographies of Mikhail Bulgakov, Sergei Yesenin, marshals Tukhachevsky and Zhukov, Beria and Stalin, Hitler and Himmler, Inessa Armand and Nadezhda Krupskaya; books "World War II: facts and versions", " Secrets of the Second World War, Secrets of the Finnish War, One Hundred Great Wars, One Hundred Great Politicians, Occupation: Truth and Myth, Russia: Good Luck of the Past Century (co-authored), Budyonny, Wrangel , "Rokossovsky", etc. BV Sokolov's books have been translated into Polish, Japanese, Latvian and Estonian.He is the author of several hundred scientific articles, including those translated into foreign languages.
Boris Sokolov is one of the experts of the film "The Soviet Story", which caused mixed reviews and accusations of manipulation and falsification.
On September 17, 2008, he stopped working at RSSU. According to the interpretation of events presented by Sokolov himself, after the publication on August 19, 2008 in Gazeta (the owner of the newspaper is Vladimir Lisin, the owner of the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works), an article entitled "Did Saakashvili lose" with the subtitle "The results of the war in Georgia are not as clear as they are painted by official propaganda. In this article, Sokolov argues that Russia would still have found another reason to conduct a military operation against Georgia, even if there had been no Georgian strike on Tskhinvali. In the event that Georgia had not attacked Tskhinvali, then, according to Sokolov, Russia could have played out a different scenario and captured Tbilisi in one day. The author proclaims Saakashvili's actions "not only quite rational, but also the only possible ones for his salvation." From the point of view of the author of the article, “Saakashvili decided to preempt a potential enemy and start a war on the day the Olympics began, which was attended by the Russian prime minister, while the Russian president was relaxing on the Volga. As a result, Russian troops, instead of immediately invading Georgia, were forced to recapture Tskhinvali from the Georgians for two days.” After that, "the Georgian army, clearly according to a previously developed plan, quickly retreated to the Tbilisi region." In general, the author gives the victory in the conflict completely to Georgia, which “has now more chances to join NATO than ever,” while Russia lost from all points of view. After the publication of such an article, the university management demanded his dismissal of his own free will. According to Sokolov, this happened after calls to the university administration from the presidential administration. The article “Did Saakashvili lose?” was removed from the newspaper's website.
In March 2010, he signed the appeal of the Russian opposition "Putin must go."
Criticism
The activities of B. Sokolov caused sharp criticism from some historians and writers.
So, Boris Zhutovsky in his book describes a major quarrel that occurred between B. Sokolov and Lev Razgon about the fact that in his book (“Bulgakovskaya Encyclopedia”, pp. 153-154) Sokolov published information that G.I. Bokiy started a brothel at his dacha, where he also dragged his two young daughters. . (One of the daughters of Bokiy was the wife of L. Razgon)
The writer, acting under the pseudonym "Mark Desadov", accused Sokolov of using in his book "Secrets of the Second World War" (M .: Veche, 2001) a fragment of a porn story written by him as a source without indicating the author.
Accusations of falsifying data on the losses of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War
A number of historians, sociologists and publicists believe that the works of B. Sokolov have no historical authenticity and are unscientific. Sokolov estimated the total number of dead Soviet servicemen in - years. V 26.4 million people, while the Germans on the eastern front lost only 2.6 million(that is, a loss ratio of 10:1). Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Osipov described B. V. Sokolov as "the most tireless" professional "falsifier", and his calculations are absurd, since "for all the years of the war, 34.5 million people were mobilized (taking into account the pre-war number of military personnel), of which direct participants war was about 27 million people. After the end of the war, there were about 13 million people in the Soviet Army. None of the 27 million participants in the war could have killed 26.4 million.
Bibliography
- Sokolov B.V.. One hundred great wars. M.: Veche 2000, 2001. - 544 p., ISBN 5-7838-0903-9
- Sokolov Boris Vadimovich. Mikhail Bulgakov: mysteries of fate. Moscow: Vagrius, 2008. ISBN 978-5-9697-0625-5
- Sokolov Boris Vadimovich. Mikhail Bulgakov: the mysteries of creativity. Moscow: Vagrius, 2008. ISBN 978-5-9697-0626-2
- Sokolov B.V. Bulgakov. Encyclopedia. Algorithm, 2003. ISBN 5-320-00143-6
- Sokolov B.V. Baron Ungern. Black horseman. - M.: AST-PRESS BOOK, 2007. - 448 ., 8 sheets. ill. - (Historical investigation). ISBN 978-5-462-00585-5
- Sokolov B.V. World War II. Facts and versions. - M.: AST-PRESS BOOK. - 432 p. ISBN 5-462-00445-1
- Sokolov B.V. An occupation. Truth and myths. Moscow: AST, 2002. online version
- Sokolov B.V. Adolf Gitler. Life under the swastika. - M.: AST-PRESS BOOK, 2006. - 384 p., 32 sheets. ill. ISBN 5-462-00101-2
- Sokolov B.V. Hermann Goering. Iron Marshal. - M.: AST-PRESS BOOK, 2006. - 416 p., 16 p. ill. ISBN 5-462-00492-3
- Sokolov B.V. Joseph Stalin: Power and blood. - M.: AST-PRESS BOOK. - 400 pages, 16 sheets. ill. ISBN 5-462-00170-3
- Third Reich. Myths and reality Eksmo, Yauza, 2005
- Sokolov B.V. The truth about the Great Patriotic War (Collection of articles). - St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 1999 (
