The literary scenery in the Soviet Union
January 14, 2012
To start the year 2012 in style, we added today to the website a completely new chapter on the literary scenery in the Soviet Union.
In The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov refers dozens of times to other writers, both classics from the Golden Age of Russian Literature and his contemporaries like Mayakovsky and the duo Ilf and Petrov. These references we already discussed on the website, most of them in the section Annotations.
Click here for the section Annotations
In this part of the website we outline the landscape in which the authors from the time of Bulgakov had to try to survive.
This chapter is not intended to describe the Russian literature in detail. The number of major and influential Russian writers is just too big for this. But to understand The Master and Margarita, it may be useful to know to what Bulgakov refers when he writes about Massolit and Griboedov or when he gives explicit or hidden links to classical Russian writers of to his contemporaries. That is why you will find here, in a nutshell, a brief overview of Russian literature, from the time of the tsars until now. With a special page about Aleksandr Pushkin, because he is is often quoted in The Master and Margarita..
Click here to read everything on the literary scenery in the Soviet Union
News archives
- Introduction
- 201031 A new book about the novel
- 200824 Illustrations Alexander Semushin
- 200822 Illustrations panalevich
- 200724 Animation Galina Sokolova
- 200714 ABC Radio National
- 200608 Ksenia Voloshkina
- 200604 Gabi Bania
- 200510 Would-be Margaritas
- 200223 Katy Kononova and MC TJ
- 200222 Illustrations Vyacheslav Zhelvakov
- 200220 Music by Trails Don't Lie
- 200210 The screen adaptations
- 200202 Illustrations Jan Vanhellemont
- 200124 Our book in Dutch
- 200122 Illustrations by Julia Galkina
- 200116 Illustrations by Andrey Nikolaev
- 200101 Book about the novel