Mikhail Bulgakov was born to Russian parents in
Kiev, Ukraine, the oldest son of a professor at a
theological seminary. The Bulgakov sons enlisted in the
White Army, and in post-
Civil War Russia, ended up in
Paris, save for Mikhail. Mikhail, who enlisted as a field doctor, ended up in the
Caucasus, where he eventually began working as a journalist. Despite his relatively favoured status under the Soviet rule of
Joseph Stalin, Bulgakov was prevented from either emigrating or visiting his brothers in the West. Some details of his biography are unclear as Bulgakov was quite secretive about his past life and swore his wives to secrecy about it.
In
1913 Bulgakov married Tatiana Lappa. At the outbreak of the
First World War he volunteered with the
Red Cross. In
1916, he graduated from the Medical School of
Kiev University and then served in the White Army. He briefly served in the
Ukrainian Nationalist Army. In
1919 he decided to leave medicine to pursue his love of literature. In
1921, he moved with Tatiana to
Moscow where he began his career as a writer. Three years later, divorced from his first wife, he married Lyubov' Belozerskaya. He published a number of works through the early and mid 1920s, but by 1927 his career began to suffer from criticism that he was too anti-Soviet. By 1929 his career was ruined and none of his works were published due to
censorship.
In
1931, Bulgakov married for the third time, to Yelena Shilovskaya, who would prove to be inspiration for the character Margarita from his most famous novel, and settled with her at
Patriarch's Ponds. During the last decade of his life, Bulgakov continued to work on
The Master and Margarita, wrote plays, critical works, stories, and made several translations and dramatisations of novels, but these were unpublished.
Bulgakov never supported the Soviet power, and mocked it in many of his works. Therefore, most of them were consigned to his desk drawer for several decades. In
1930 he wrote a letter to Stalin requesting permission to emigrate if the Soviet Union could not find use for him as a
satirist and received a personal phone call from Stalin himself, denying him that. Stalin had enjoyed Bulgakov's work,
The Days of the Turbins and found work for him at a small Moscow theatre, and then the
Moscow Art Theatre. In his autobiography and in many biographies, it is stated that Bulgakov wrote the letter out of desperation and mental anguish, never actually intending to post it. The refusal of the authorities to let him work in the theatre and his desire to see his family living abroad, whom he had not seen for many years, led him to seek drastic measures. Despite his new work, the projects he worked on at the theatre were unsuccessful and he was stressed and unhappy. He also worked briefly at the
Bolshoi Theatre as a librettist, but left after his works were not produced.
Bulgakov died from an inherited
kidney disorder in 1940 and was buried in the
Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
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