Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov

Below is a biography of Mikhail Bulgakov:

• 1891 - born in Kiev, Ukraine.
• 1901 - Bulgakov joined the First Kiev Gymnasium, where he developed an interest in Russian and European literature, theater and opera.
• 1909 - Graduates from the Gymnasium and enters the Medical Facility of Kiev University, which he finished with commendation. He then took position with as a physician at the Kiev Military hospital.
• 1913 - Bulgakov married Tatiana Lappa. At the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered with Red Cross as a medical doctor and was sent directly to the front, where he was badly injured at least twice.
• 1916 - Bulgakov graduates from the Medical Department of Kiev University and after serving as a surgeon at Chernovtsy hospital, was appointed provincial physician to Smolensk province. His life in those days is reflected in his A Country Doctor Notebook.
• September 1917 - Bulgakov was moved to the hospital in Vyazma, near Smolensk.
• February 1918 - He returned to Kiev, Ukraine, where he opened a private practice at his home at Andreyevsky Descent, 13. Here he lived through the Russian Civil War and witnessed ten coups.
• 1919 - In February of that year, Bulgakov was mobilized as an army physician by the Ukrainian People's Army and assigned to the Northern Caucasus. There, he became seriously ill with typhus and barely survived. After illness Bulgakov abandoned his career is doctor for that of a writer. Later that year, he writes and publishes his first book called Future Perspective, which was an almanac of feuilletons. In December 1919, Bulgakov moves to the Vladikavkaz where he wrote and saw his first two plays, Self Defense and The Turbin Brothers, being produced for the city theater stage with great success.
• 1921 - In September of that year, Bulgakov and his wife settled near Patriarch's Ponds, close to Mayakovskaya metro station on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, 10, Moscow. To make a living, he started working as a correspondent and feuilletons writer for the newspapers Gudok, Krasnaia Panorama and Nakanune, based in Berlin. For the almanac Nedra, he wrote Diaboliad, The Fatal Eggs (1924), and Heart of a Dog (1925), works that combined bitter satire and elements of science fiction and were concerned with the fate of a scientist and the misuse of his discovery.
• 1922 - 1926 - Bulgakov wrote several plays ( including Zoyka's Apartment ), none of which where allowed into production at the time. The Run, treating the horrors of a fratricidal war, was personally banned by Joseph Stalin after the Glavrepertkom (Department of Repertoire) decided that it "glorified emigration and White generals".
• 1925 - Bulgakov divorced his first wife and married Lyubov Belozerskaya. This year also saw first partial publication of The White Guard in serial form in Soviet-era literary journal Rossiya, but the magazine was closed before the serial was completed. It was not reprinted in Russia until 1966. The White Guard depicts a life of White Army officer's family in civil war Kiev.
• 1926 - After the first two parts of The White Guard were published in Rossiya, Bulgakov was invited to write a version for the stage. He called the play The Days of the Turbins. This was produced at Moscow Art Theater, to great acclaim. The production ran from 1926 to 1941. Stalin saw it no fewer than 20 times.
• 1928 - Bulgakov began writing his masterpiece: Master and Margarita, which has not been published until 1966 by his widow. The book contributed a number of sayings to the Russian language, for example, "Manuscripts don't burn" and "second-grade freshness". A destroyed manuscript of the Master is an important element of the plot. Bulgakov had to rewrite the novel from memory after he burned the draft manuscript. The novel is a critique of Soviet society and its literary establishment. The work is appreciated for its philosophical undertones and for its high artistic level thanks to its picturesque descriptions (especially of old Jerusalem), lyrical fragments and style. It is a frame narrative involving two characteristically related time periods, or plot lines: a retelling of the gospels and a description of contemporary Moscow.
• 1932 - Bulgakov married for the third time, to Yelena Shilovskaya, who would prove to be inspiration for the character Margarita in Master and Margarita. 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 dramatizations of novels, librettos. Many of them were not published, other ones were "torn to pieces" by critics. Much of his work (ridiculing the Soviet system) stayed in his desk drawer for several decades.
• late 1930s - He joined Bolshoi Theater as a librettist and consultant. He left after perceiving that none of his works would be produced there. Stalin's favor protected Bulgakov from arrests and execution, but he could not get his writing published. His novels and dramas were subsequently banned and, for the second time, Bulgakov's career as playwright was ruined. When his last play Batum (1939), a complimentary portrayal of Stalin's early revolutionary days, was banned before rehearsals, Bulgakov requested permission to leave the country but was refused.
• 1939 - Mikhail Bulgakov organized a private reading of The Master and Margarita to his close circle of friends. Yelena Bulgakova remembered 30 years later, "When he finally finished reading that night, he said: 'Well, tomorrow I am taking the novel to the publisher!' and everyone was silent", "...Everyone sat paralyzed. Everything scared them. P. (P. A. Markov, in charge of the literature division of MAT) later at the door fearfully tried to explain to me that trying to publish the novel would cause terrible things", she wrote in her diary (14 May 1939)
• March 10, 1940 - Mikhail Bulgakov died from nephrosclerosis (an inherited kidney disorder). He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. His father had died of the same disease, and from his youth Bulgakov had guessed his future mortal diagnosis.

"yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. the worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's the trick!"

If you want to find out more about the life of this great author, refer to this Wikipedia entry about him.