Stephen Lovel "Bulgaokov as Soviet Culture"

The reception of culture for the works produced in the USSR after 1917 are difficult for the literary scholar. When many of the works came about in the thaws of the 1960s and 1980s the readers were not always ready for them but they were able to respond. M and M makes for a great study of this because it was released to the public later and it had such a great affect when it did surface. 28

When the work was released it was received into three different spheres of literature: It was criticized by the officials and made into a new classic in the Soviet mold, it was a classic in the intelligentsia sub-culture, and the same by the general population. 29 Twenty years after his death B's novels started to have a real, not just a proposed readership. He would read his works to friends in a sort of salon, but not to the public, however conscious of the potential readership. 29. The release of his works was gradual based on the party's hold on literature. In the 50s and 60s works by Bunin, Bulgakov and Tynianov were alloed publication.

When M and M was released it came out in the lit journal "Moskva" - a smaller publication and only the first part of the novel came out at first. It was cut for words too. The publication itself was a form of censorship - Moskva had a medium circulation and didn't sell that well in the provinces - or the copies were sent back to the publisher before the public could get them. Until the 1980s it was not released in any great numbers and far below the levels for other Soviet works and classics. 31

For those that got a hold of it it was hard to conceive, since they only knew B as a minor playwrite in the 20s and there was no criticism on his plays or short fiction. Readers had hard time dealing with the fantastic, the Christ images, the use of time and irony, levels and symbols.

Page 32 has a number of examples of the critics from the period and what they were able to write about its release. Talk also of how his biography was to be written and how much of his biography to include in the reception of his works. There was much debate about his siding with the Whites or with creating sympathy for him in the biography. The release of his official collected works was delayed under these pretexts and thus the public was given a taste a bit at a time. Thus the public was not given full access even at the time when the controls were lighted. 33

How did the intelligentsia receive it? It is difficult to discern because of the limited release and the inability of them to get ahold of a copy. However they did read each other's copies from Moskva and considered it a major event. In the 70s it was not official literature, but was not samizdat, though sort of and not dissidant lit either. The Intelligentsia viewed him as the torch bearer from Ilf and Petrov as the cult writer of the intelligentsia. They viewed his satire as not the same carefree satire as I and P and had a deeper moral componant. He was seen as the new Chekhov.

The theater reproductions give some light on how to view the reception of M and M. The theater had restricted audiences that gave them the feel of a small community that could communicate ideas between the ranks. In an attempt to keep the significance down the authorities gave the initial production no funds so they had to recycle props from other plays. This only served to underline the place the novel held in the minds of the intelligentsia - it became a part of their symbolic past, present and future. The production used the same actors in jeruselum as it did in Moskow which helped to underline the overall message of morality and power. In the 80s the audience included the general population, but the audience had not evolved with the ideas the novel was taking up in the productions. The idea the 'manuscripts don't burn' was huge in the late 70s, but by the 80s it came to be understood that it also came to mean that these great writers were largely forgotten and couldn't live out their normal lives in their times. 37

Sobache Serdtse was taken to the theaters immediately after it came out and some of the first people to interpret the novel were the theater directors in 1987. Sharikov was more menacing than humorous and played into the lives of the intelligentsia in the Soviet period. 38

The play of SS for the next few productions played into the current period and asked questions with the main idea looking back at the last 70 years and not just taking the novel as it was written. 38

The graffitti that appeared on the stairwell of B's old apt in moscow started in 1983. The grafitti numbered in the hundreds very quickly and despite being regualrly whitewashed were replaced. In the 1990s there was a slight backlash when people started questioning the religious aspects of satan and the bible being discussed so closely together.