The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" became a must-read long before this expression entered our everyday life. When the novel was first published in 1966, a quarter of a century after it was written, it became an event in the literary life of the country. It was impossible to get a copy of the magazine "Moscow" that published it. Of course, there was total censorship. But it was all "nullified" by samizdat lists that went to the people, in which all the excerpts were reproduced with an indication of the places from which they were cut. Veniamin Kaverin spoke of "The Master and Margarita" as a work in which "incredible events occur in every chapter." Indeed, Bulgakov placed Satan himself in Bolshevik Moscow, his Master is hounded by critics - adherents of socialist realism, and the heroes of the "novel within a novel" - Yeshua, Levi Matthew and Pontius Pilate - are definitely not heroes of Bulgakov's time. But they all march through time - perhaps our era is already looking around, searching for a strange figure on Patriarch's Ponds.