He told about fatal eggs and a dog's heart. A dangerous experiment (stories by M

“Fatal Eggs” (1924) is a story written by M. A. Bulgakov during a special period in the cultural life of the country. Then many works were created only to motivate a wide range of the population to perform tasks necessary for the country’s survival in critical conditions. Therefore, many different one-day authors appeared, whose creations did not linger in the memory of readers. Not only art, but also science was put on stream. Then all advanced inventions went to the service of industry and agriculture, increasing their efficiency. But scientific thought on the part of the Soviet government was subject to ideological control, which (among other things) was ridiculed by Bulgakov in “Fatal Eggs.”

The story was created in 1924, and the events in it unfold in 1928. The first publication took place in the magazine “Nedra” (No. 6, 1925). The work had different names - first “Ray of Life”, in addition, there was another one - “Professor Persikov’s Eggs” (the meaning of this name was to preserve the satirical tone of the story), but for ethical reasons this name had to be changed.

The central figure of the story, Professor Persikov, remotely contains some features of real prototypes - the Pokrovsky brothers-doctors, Bulgakov's relatives, one of whom lived and worked on Prechistenka.

In addition, the text mentions the Smolensk province, in which the events of “Fatal Eggs” unfold, for a reason: Bulgakov worked there as a doctor and briefly visited the Pokrovskys in their Moscow apartment. The situation of the Soviet country during the period of war communism also comes from real life: then there were food shortages due to the unstable socio-political situation, there were riots in management structures due to unprofessionalism, and the new government had not yet fully managed to control public life .

Bulgakov in “Fatal Eggs” ridicules both the cultural and socio-political situation of the country after the revolutionary coup.

Genre and direction

The genre of the work “Fatal Eggs” is a story. It is characterized by a minimal number of plot lines and, as a rule, a relatively small volume of narration (relative to the novel).

Direction - modernism. Although the events outlined by Bulgakov are fantastic, the action takes place in a real place, the characters (not only Professor Persikov, but everyone else) are also quite viable citizens of the new country. And a scientific discovery is not fabulous, it only has fantastic consequences. But on the whole the story is realistic, although some of its elements are colored grotesquely and satirically.

This combination of fantasy, realism and satire is characteristic of modernism, when the author makes bold experiments on a literary work, bypassing established classical norms and canons.

The modernist movement itself appeared in special conditions of social and cultural life, when previous genres and trends began to become obsolete, and art required new forms, new ideas and ways of expression. “Fatal Eggs” is just such a work that meets modernist requirements.

About what?

“Fatal Eggs” is a story about the brilliant discovery of a scientist - professor of zoology Persikov, which ended in tears, both for those around him and for the scientist himself. The hero in his laboratory discovers a beam that can only be obtained with a special combination of mirror glass with beams of light. This ray affects living organisms so that they increase in size and begin to multiply at supernatural speed. Professor Persikov and his assistant Ivanov are in no hurry to release their discovery “to the world” and believe that they still need to work on it and conduct additional experiments, since the consequences may be unexpected and even dangerous. However, sensational information about the “ray of life” quickly penetrates the press, recorded by the semi-literate but lively journalist Bronsky, and, filled with false, unverified facts, spreads throughout society.

A discovery becomes known against the will of the scientist. Persikov is pestered by journalists on the streets of Moscow, demanding to tell him about his invention. It becomes impossible to work in the laboratory due to a barrage of press employees; even a spy comes who, for five thousand rubles, tries to find out the secret of the ray from the professor.

After this, Persikov’s house and laboratory are guarded by the NKVD, not allowing journalists in and thus providing the professor with a quiet working environment. But soon an epidemic of chicken infection occurs in the country, because of which people are strictly forbidden to eat chickens, eggs, or trade in live chickens and chicken meat. Even an emergency commission has been created to combat chicken plague. But in circumvention of the law, someone still sells chicken and eggs, and soon an ambulance comes to pick up the buyers of these products.

The country is excited. On the occasion of the epidemic, topical works are created that respond to the current mood of the public. When it begins to subside, the head of a demonstration state farm named Rokk comes to Professor Persikov with a special document from the Kremlin, who, with the help of the “ray of life,” intends to resume chicken breeding.

The document from the Kremlin turns out to be an order to advise Rokk on the use of the “life ray”, and immediately a call comes from the Kremlin. Persikov is categorically against using the beam, which has not yet been fully studied, in chicken farming, but he has to give Rokk cameras with which he can achieve the desired effect. The hero takes the cameras to a state farm in the Smolensk province and orders chicken eggs.

Soon, three boxes of unusual-looking, spotted eggs arrive in a foreign package. Rokk places the resulting eggs under the beam and tells the watchman to watch them so that no one steals the hatched chickens. The next day, egg shells are found, but no chicks. The caretaker blames the watchman for everything, although he swears that he carefully watched the process.

In the last chamber, the eggs are still intact, and Rokk hopes that at least chickens will hatch from them. He decided to take a break and goes with his wife Manya to swim in the pond. On the shore of the pond, he notices a strange calm, and then a huge snake rushes at Manya and swallows her right in front of her husband. This causes him to turn gray and almost fall into madness.

Strange news reaches the GPU that something strange is happening in the Smolensk province. Two GPU agents, Shchukin and Polaitis, go to the state farm and find there a distraught Rokk, who cannot really explain anything.

Agents examine the state farm building - the former estate of Sheremetev, and find in the greenhouse cameras with a reddish beam and hordes of huge snakes, reptiles and ostriches. Shchukin and Polaitis die in a fight with monsters.

Newspaper editors receive strange messages from the Smolensk province about strange birds the size of horses, huge reptiles and snakes, and Professor Persikov receives boxes of chicken eggs. At the same time, the scientist and his assistant see a sheet with an emergency message about anacondas in the Smolensk province. It immediately turns out that the orders of Rokka and Persikov were mixed up: the supply manager received snake and ostrich ones, and the inventor received chicken ones.

By that time, Persikov was inventing a special poison for killing toads, which was then useful for fighting huge snakes and ostriches.

Red Army troops, armed with gas, are fighting this scourge, but Moscow is still alarmed, and many are planning to flee the city.

Maddened people break into the institute where the professor works, destroy his laboratory, blaming him for all the troubles and thinking that it was he who released the huge snakes, kill his watchman Pankrat, housekeeper Marya Stepanovna and himself. They then set the institute on fire.

In August 1928, a frost suddenly sets in, killing the last snakes and crocodiles that were not finished off by special forces. After epidemics that were caused by the rotting corpses of snakes and people suffering from the invasion of reptiles, by 1929 a normal spring began.

The beam discovered by the late Persikov can no longer be obtained by anyone, not even by his former assistant Ivanov, now an ordinary professor.

The main characters and their characteristics

1. Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov- a brilliant scientist, professor of zoology, who discovered a unique ray. The hero opposes the use of the ray because its discovery has not yet been verified and researched. He is careful, does not like unnecessary fuss and believes that any invention requires many years of testing before the time comes for its operation. Because of interference in his activities, his life's work perishes with him. The image of Persikov symbolizes humanism and the ethics of scientific thinking, which were destined to die under the Soviet dictatorship. A lonely talent is contrasted with an unenlightened and driven crowd that does not have its own opinion, drawing it from newspapers. According to Bulgakov, it is impossible to build a developed and fair state without an intellectual and cultural elite, which was expelled from the USSR by stupid and cruel people who had neither the knowledge nor the talent to build a country on their own.
2. Pyotr Stepanovich Ivanov- Assistant to Professor Persikov, who helps him in his experiments and admires his new discovery. However, he is not such a talented scientist, so he fails to receive the “life ray” after the death of the professor. This is the image of an opportunist who is always ready to appropriate the achievements of a truly significant person, even if he has to step over his corpse.
3. Alfred Arkadievich Bronsky- an omnipresent, fast, dexterous journalist, a semi-literate employee of many Soviet magazines and newspapers. He is the first to enter Persikov’s apartment and learn about his unusual discovery, then spreads this news everywhere against the will of the professor, embellishing and distorting the facts.
4. Alexander Semenovich Rokk- a former revolutionary, and now the head of the Red Ray state farm. An uneducated, rude, but cunning person. He attends Professor Persikov’s report, where he talks about the “ray of life” he discovered, and he comes up with the idea of ​​restoring the chicken population after the epidemic using this invention. Rokk, due to illiteracy, does not realize the full danger of such an innovation. This is a symbol of a new type of people, tailored according to the standards of the new government. A dependent, stupid, cowardly, but, as they say, “punchy” citizen who plays only by the rules of the Soviet state: runs through the authorities, seeks permission, tries by hook or by crook to adapt to new requirements.

Themes

• The central theme is the carelessness of people in handling new scientific inventions and lack of understanding of the dangers of the consequences of such handling. People like Rokk are narrow-minded and want to achieve their goals by any means necessary. They don’t care what happens after, they are only interested in the immediate benefit of what could turn into collapse tomorrow.
• The second theme is social: confusion in management structures, due to which any disaster can occur. After all, if the uneducated Rokk had not been allowed to manage the state farm, the disaster would not have happened.
• The third theme is impunity and the enormous influence of the media, irresponsible in the pursuit of sensations.
• The fourth theme is ignorance, which resulted in many people not understanding the cause-and-effect relationship and unwillingness to understand it (they blame Professor Persikov for the disaster, although in fact Rokk and the authorities who assisted him are to blame).

Issues

• The problem of authoritarian power and its destructive influence on all spheres of society. Science should be separated from the state, but this was impossible under Soviet rule: distorted and simplified science, suppressed by ideology, was demonstrated to all people through newspapers, magazines and other media.
• In addition, “Fatal Eggs” discusses a social problem, which lies in the unsuccessful attempt of the Soviet system to combine the scientific intelligentsia and other segments of the population who are far from science in general. It is not for nothing that the story shows how an NKVD employee (in fact, a representative of the authorities), protecting Persikov from journalists and spies, finds a common language with the simple and illiterate watchman Pankrat. The author implies that they are on the same intellectual level with him: the only difference is that one has a special badge under the collar of his jacket, and the other does not. The author hints at how imperfect such power is, where insufficiently educated people try to control what they themselves do not really understand.
• An important problem of the story is the irresponsibility of totalitarian power to society, which is symbolized by Rokk’s careless handling of the “ray of life”, where Rokk himself is power, the “ray of life” is the ways the state influences people (ideology, propaganda, control), and reptiles, reptiles and ostriches hatched from eggs - society itself, whose consciousness is distorted and damaged. A completely different, more reasonable and rational way of managing society is symbolized by Professor Persikov and his scientific experiments, which require caution, taking into account all the subtleties and attentiveness. However, it is precisely this method that is eradicated and disappears altogether, because the crowd is led and does not want to independently understand the intricacies of politics.

Meaning

“Fatal Eggs” is a kind of satire on Soviet power, on its imperfections due to its novelty. The USSR is like one big, untested invention, and therefore dangerous for society, which no one knows how to handle yet, which is why various malfunctions, failures and disasters occur. Society in "Fatal Eggs" is experimental animals in a laboratory, subjected to irresponsible and unscrupulous experiments that clearly serve to harm rather than benefit. Uneducated people are allowed to manage this laboratory; they are entrusted with serious tasks that they are unable to perform due to their inability to navigate social, scientific and other spheres of life. As a result, experimental citizens may turn into moral monsters, which will lead to irreversible catastrophic consequences for the country. At the same time, the unenlightened crowd mercilessly attacks those who can really help them overcome difficulties, who know how to use an invention on a national scale. The intellectual elite is being exterminated, but there is no one to replace it. It is very symbolic that after Persikov’s death no one can restore the invention lost with him.

Criticism

A. A. Platonov (Klimentov), ​​considered this work as a symbol of the implementation of revolutionary processes. According to Platonov, Persikov is the creator of the revolutionary idea, his assistant Ivanov is the one who implements this idea, and Rokk is the one who decided, for his own benefit, to use the idea of ​​revolution in a distorted form, and not as it should be (for the sake of the general benefit) - as a result, everyone suffered. The characters in “The Fatal Eggs” behave as Otto von Bismarck (1871 - 1898) once described: “The revolution is prepared by geniuses, carried out by fanatics, and the fruits of it are enjoyed by scoundrels.” Some critics believed that “Fatal Eggs” was written by Bulgakov for fun, but members of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) reacted negatively to the book, quickly considering the political background in this work.

Philologist Boris Sokolov (b. 1957) tried to find out what prototypes Professor Persikov had: it could be the Soviet biologist Alexander Gurvich, but if we proceed from the political meaning of the story, then it is Vladimir Lenin.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

The special atmosphere characteristic of the progressive development of technology and science, impressive inventions similar to the discoveries of Welsh heroes, the presence of specialized terms in “The Fatal Eggs” and “The Heart of a Dog” by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov can be correlated in the mind of a not entirely attentive reader with the belonging of these stories to a number of scientific -fantastic works. However, these literary works also touch upon social problems characteristic of the author’s contemporary era, which, among other things, makes us talk about “Fatal Eggs” and “Heart of a Dog” as dystopias.

Written in 1924, “Fatal Eggs” contains the story of the zoologist professor Persikov, who discovered a ray of life that accelerates the growth and reproduction processes of all living creatures that fall within its field of action. To further study the beam, the inventor orders eggs of snakes and crocodiles from abroad. At the same time, an epidemic spread throughout the country, killing all the chickens; In order to “revive” them, one of the state farms decided to use Persikov’s equipment. And here a fatal mistake occurs: instead of chicken eggs, reptile eggs ordered by the professor end up on the state farm... A massive fight against giant reptiles begins in the country, and only the unprecedented August frosts became a salvation from them. The scientist himself (even before the victory over the mutants) was killed by an angry crowd.

“... the professor began to get dressed in the lobby. He put on a gray summer coat and a soft hat, then, remembering the picture in the microscope, stared at his galoshes as if he was seeing them for the first time. Then I put the left one on and wanted to put the right one on the left one, but it didn’t fit. “What a monstrous accident that he called me away,” said the scientist, “otherwise I would never have noticed him.” But what does this promise?.. After all, it promises God knows what!.. The professor grinned, squinted at his galoshes and took off the left one and put on the right one. - My God! After all, you can’t even imagine all the consequences... - The professor contemptuously poked his left galosh, which irritated him, not wanting to fit on the right one, and went to the exit in one galosh. He immediately lost his handkerchief and went out, slamming the heavy door. On the porch, he spent a long time looking for matches in his pockets, slapping his sides, found them and set off down the street with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. The scientist did not meet a single person until the temple itself. There the professor, with his head raised, was chained to a golden helmet. The sun licked him sweetly on one side. - How come I haven’t seen him before, what an accident? Should we return to Pankrat? No, you won't wake him up. It would be a pity to leave her, the vile one. You'll have to carry it in your hands. “He took off his galosh and carried it with disgust.”

Also comical is the typo in the newspaper, where Persikov’s last name is misspelled: “Pevsikov,” which hints at the professor’s burr, and, consequently, at identifying him with the main Russian and Soviet “experimenter” - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Here it is important to remember the fate that the author “prepared” for the leader.

In general, the story (like Bulgakov’s work as a whole) is literally imbued with various kinds of prototypes, their presence further clothes it in a dystopian genre form, precisely based on the technique of parodies. In the work “Above the pages of the dystopias of K. Chapek and M. Bulgakov” S.V. Nikolsky points out the writer’s use of prototypes, except for Lenin, Abrikosov (Persikov), Trotsky (Bronsky), Stalin (Stepanov), Kamenev (Rokk).

The inclusion of these parallels (real person - character) contains a clear indication of revolutionary events. The whole story is “painted” with red shades: raspberry eggs, the state farm “Red Ray”, the hotel “Red Paris”, the newspaper “Red Evening Moscow”, the magazines “Red Light”, “Red Searchlight”, “Red Pepper”, “Red Magazine” . Even the ray of life is “painted” in the color of the revolution, and the amoebas endlessly moving and fighting with each other under the microscope are the participants in the revolutionary movement themselves.

It is entirely logical that at the center of this socially acute work there is a tense conflict, where the mind of Professor Persikov confronts the absurdity of the head of the state farm, Rokka. The thoughtless use of scientific discoveries can harm society. Rokk did not take this into account, which led to disaster.

The very solution to the problem associated with the mass death of chickens is absurd in nature. Attempts at artificial breeding of birds turned not into a chicken Renaissance, but into a reptile invasion...

Bulgakov gave a different outcome to the story “Heart of a Dog,” written in 1925. Moscow professor Philip Filippovich Preobrazhensky, conducting research in the field of rejuvenation, performs an operation to transplant human organs into a dog. The donor for the homeless dog Sharik was the thief and alcoholic Klim Chugunkin, who died in a fight. Soon a new person appears in the professor’s house, possessing both “Sharikov’s” and “Klimov’s” negative habits. Preobrazhensky very soon had to regret his experience, since his “ward,” oversaturated with proletarian ideas, actually became a class enemy. The scientist, together with his assistant Bormenthal, decides to transform Sharikov back into Sharik, who, already in his old guise, remains to live in the professor’s apartment, not remembering his past offenses before the owner.

Preobrazhensky, unlike Persikov, who is significant only as the inventor of the ray of life, is one of the main characters. The “life lines” of the professors from the first and second stories are similar: they have social significance, since they have impressive scientific potential, both are the creators of phenomenal inventions, represent a “tasty morsel” for scandalous journalists, are subject to pressure from socialists, for example, through attempts separation of rooms. But in the biography of Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky you can no longer find any misunderstandings with galoshes or typos. He is presented as a wise, educated, independent and, it is important to emphasize, intelligent person.

As an active defender of the rights of intellectuals, Bulgakov very vividly depicted their confrontation with the proletarians, who live by principles in the spirit of “divide everything” or “who was nothing will become everything.” Sharikov, who adheres to the interests of the working class, is a clear antipode to Preobrazhensky. And, it seems to me, in order to even more clearly focus on the relationships of these heroes, the writer gave them names and patronymics, built on the same model: Philip Philipovich and Poligraf Poligrafovich. Through this plot conflict, and it is closely connected with social reality, the story’s belonging to a number of dystopias is clearly expressed.

So, Sharikov is the “new man” that supporters of Marxist teachings wanted to create, this is the real harbinger of the beginning of the “new era” that the revolutionaries most expected. And here, according to dystopian trends created on the basis of variations of the myths about the birth of Jesus and the flood, he is a parody of Christ, and therefore the Antichrist. If you look at the situation more broadly, then Preobrazhensky is God himself. This is what a model of the most undesirable future looks like, when two ideals irreconcilably collide with each other!

Bulgakov’s stories “Fatal Eggs” and “Heart of a Dog” contain ideal examples of a far from ideal future. These works have a bright, expressionistic style, a futurological orientation and, most importantly, social significance. Mikhail Afanasyevich, deeply concerned about social problems, clearly showed how great the influence of the environment on objects and phenomena is. The results of the discoveries of Persikov and Preobrazhensky in themselves would have been safe, but in the current social conditions they became deadly...

And there is no reason to doubt the genius of the writer, who, even at an early stage of his work, so skillfully handled dystopian techniques.

The story “Fatal Eggs” was written in 1924. Its publication in 1925 caused a wide response in criticism and literary circles - from admiration to political accusations against the writer. Here's how A. Voronsky wrote about it: Bulgakov's "Fatal Eggs" - an unusually talented and sharp work - caused a number of fierce attacks. Bulgakov was dubbed a counter-revolutionary, a White Guard, etc., and, in our opinion, he was dubbed in vain... The writer wrote a pamphlet about how a good idea turns into disgusting nonsense when this idea gets into the head of a brave but ignorant person.”

The story “Fatal Eggs” tells how professor of zoology Persikov discovered the “ray of life”, which helps accelerate the maturation and reproduction of living beings. At the same time, a chicken pestilence began in the country, threatening the population with starvation. And, of course, salvation is seen in Professor Persikov’s discovery. A certain Alexander Semenovich Rokk, a man in a leather double-breasted jacket and with a huge old-fashioned pistol in a yellow holster on his side, is taking this discovery into practice. Rokk introduced himself to the professor as the head of the demonstration state farm "Red Ray", which intends to carry out experiments with chicken eggs using the discovery. Despite Persikov’s protests, citing the untested experience and the unpredictability of the consequences, Rokku, with the help of paper from the Kremlin, manages to take his discovery. To which Persikov could only say: “I wash my hands of it” (later Pilate would behave in a similar way when deciding the fate of Yeshua in “The Master and Margarita.”) Here the question arises about the moral responsibility of the scientist.

In understanding this problem, Bulgakov is close to Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky believed that a person is responsible not only for his actions, but even for his thoughts and their consequences. The most famous and condensed version of this idea is in the novel The Brothers Karamazov. In the third meeting with Ivan Fedorovich Karamazov, Smerdyakov says: “...You are to blame for everything, sir, because you knew about the murder, sir, but they entrusted it to me, sir, and you yourself, knowing everything, left. That’s why I want to prove this to your eyes this evening that the main killer in everything here is you, sir, and I’m just not the main one, even though it was I who killed...” The point of the conversation is that although Ivan Fedorovich himself did not commit the crime , but it was he who gave Smerdyakov the philosophical idea: “If there is no God, then everything is permitted.” Therefore, the blame for the murder lies with Ivan Karamazov.

Searched here:

• fatal eggs analysis
• fatal eggs problem
• fatal egg problems

In the works “Fatal Eggs” and “Heart of a Dog,” the contrast serves to create a disharmonious world, an irrational existence. The real is opposed to the fantastic, and man is opposed to the cruel state system. In the story “Fatal Eggs,” the reasonable ideas of Professor Persikov collide with an absurd system in the person of Rock, which leads to tragic consequences. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the biographies of Persikov and Rock are built on the same principle: before and after October. That is, the pre-revolutionary way of life is contrasted with the Soviet one.
Before the revolution, the professor gave lectures in four languages, studied amphibians, introduced a measured and predictable life, but in 1919, three out of five rooms were taken away from him, no one needed his research, and the windows at the institute froze through. Bulgakov gives an expressive detail: “The clock embedded in the wall of the house on the corner of Herzen and Mokhovaya stopped at eleven and a quarter.” Time stood still, the flow of life after the revolution was interrupted.
Rokk served in the famous concert ensemble of Maestro Petukhov until 1917. But after October, “he left the “Magic Dreams” and the dusty starry satin in the foyer and threw himself into the open sea of ​​war and revolution, exchanging the flute for the destructive Mauser.” Bulgakov ironically and at the same time bitterly concludes that “it was a revolution that was needed” to fully reveal this man, who either edited a huge newspaper, then wrote works on the irrigation of the Turkestan region, or held all sorts of honorable positions. Thus, Persikov's erudition and knowledge contrast with Rokk's ignorance and adventurism.
At the beginning of the work, Bulgakov writes about Persikov: “It was not the mediocre mediocrity that sat at the microscope in the mountainous republic. No, Professor Persikov was sitting!” And a little further about Rocca: “Alas! On the mountain of the republic, Alexander Semenovich’s ebullient brain did not go out; in Moscow, Rokk encountered Persikov’s invention, and in the rooms on Tverskaya “Red Paris”, Alexander Semenovich came up with the idea of ​​how to revive chickens in the republic with the help of Persikov’s beam within a month.” By contrasting the characters and activities of Persikov and Rokk, Bulgakov illuminates the absurdity of a social system in which people like Rokk come to power, and the professor is forced to obey orders from the Kremlin.
M.A. Bulgakov uses the technique of contrast to gain a deeper understanding of the character of the main character, in order to show his exclusivity. The professor is an adult, serious person and an accomplished scientist, but at the same time, Marya Stepanovna follows him like a nanny. “Your frogs excite an unbearable shudder of disgust in me. “I will be unhappy all my life because of them,” the wife told Professor Persikov when she left him, and Persikov did not even try to argue with her, that is, the problems of zoology are more important to him than family life. Professor Persikov's worldview contrasts with the worldview and moral principles of the entire society. “Persikov was too far from life - he was not interested in it...”
“It was a very sunny August day. He disturbed the professor, so the curtains were drawn.” Persikov is not like the others even in that, like everyone else, he does not rejoice at a fine summer day, but, on the contrary, treats it as something superfluous and useless. Even love letters sent to him at the end of the presentation of one of his works were mercilessly torn up by him.
The author considers Persikov to be an exceptional person and shows this to the reader, contrasting the professor with all other people not only in the moral, but also in the physical aspect: “... he fell ill with pneumonia, but did not die.” As you know, pneumonia is a very serious disease, from which even now, in the absence of proper treatment, people die. However, Professor Persikov survived, which speaks of his exclusivity.
Thanks to the contrast, we can perceive changes in the internal state of the protagonist: “Pankrat was horrified. It seemed to him that the professor’s eyes were teary in the twilight. It was so extraordinary, so scary.”
“That’s right,” Pankrat answered tearfully and thought: “It would be better if you yelled at me!” Thus, the ray discovered by the professor changed not only his life, but also the lives of the people around him.
“Go, Pankrat,” the professor said heavily and waved his hand, “go to bed, my dear, my dear, Pankrat.” How great was the emotional shock of Persikov, who called the night watchman “darling”! Where did his authority and severity go? The former Persikov is here contrasted with the current Persikov - dejected, downtrodden, pitiful.
M.A. Bulgakov uses the technique of contrast even in small details to show the comedy and absurdity of life in Soviet Russia: Persikov gives lectures on the topic “Reptiles of the Hot Zone” in galoshes, a hat and a muffler in an auditorium where it is invariably 5 degrees below zero. At the same time, the situation at the institute contrasts with the external environment of life in Soviet Moscow: no matter what happens on the street, nothing changes within the walls of the institute, while outside the window the way of life of a multinational, long-suffering country is boiling and changing.
The story contrasts the prejudices and ignorance of ordinary people and the scientific worldview. The old woman Stepanovna, who thinks that her chickens have been damaged, is contrasted with prominent scientists who believe that this is a pestilence caused by a new unknown virus.
The contrast in "Fatal Eggs" also serves to create a comic effect. It is achieved through incompatibility, discrepancy: syntactic, semantic, stylistic, content. Persikov's last name is mixed up. The content of Vronsky's article about the professor does not correspond to reality. Rokk's actions are illogical. The behavior of the crowd towards Persikov is unreasonable and unfair. Combinations such as “a case unheard of in history”, “a troika of sixteen comrades”, “chicken questions”, etc. are built on the principle of violating the semantic-syntactic valency of words. And all this is a reflection of the violation of not only the laws of nature, but above all - moral and social laws.
So, we are gradually getting closer to voicing one of the most important ideas of the work, which is again expressed through the technique of contrast.
The ray discovered by Persikov becomes a symbol of a new era in natural science and at the same time a symbol of revolutionary ideas.
No wonder it is “bright red”, the color of October and Soviet symbols. At the same time, it is not by chance that the names of Moscow magazines are mentioned: “Red Light”. “Red Searchlight”, “Red Pepper”, “Red Magazine”, newspaper “Red Evening Moscow”, hotel “Red Paris”. The state farm where Rocca's experiments are carried out is called "Red Ray". In this case, the red ray in “Fatal Eggs” symbolizes the socialist revolution in Russia, forever merged with the color red, with the confrontation between red and white in the civil war.
At the same time, the revolution, which is represented in the work by a red ray, is opposed to evolution, which is implicit and can only be seen in a distorted version when the action of the ray is described. “These organisms reached growth and maturity in a few moments, only to then, in turn, immediately give rise to a new generation. The red stripe, and then the entire disk, became crowded, and an inevitable struggle began. The newly born furiously rushed at each other, tore them to shreds and swallowed them. Among those born lay the corpses of those killed in the struggle for existence. The best and strongest won. And these best ones were terrible. Firstly, they were approximately twice the volume of ordinary amoebas, and secondly, they were distinguished by some special malice and agility. Their movements were swift, their pseudopods were much longer than normal ones, and they worked with them, without exaggeration, like octopuses with tentacles.”
Persikov's assistant Ivanov calls the ray of life monstrous, which is paradoxical - how can an invention that gives life be monstrous?
Or remember the cries of the boy with the newspapers: “The nightmare discovery of Professor Persikov’s life ray!!!”
Indeed, we understand that the life ray is monstrous when we learn about the consequences that resulted from its use in inept hands.
Thus, the ray of life turns into a ray of death: a violation of the social, historical and spiritual evolution of society leads to a national tragedy.

As in the work “Fatal Eggs,” M.A. Bulgakov in “The Heart of a Dog” uses the technique of contrast at various levels of the text.
In “Heart of a Dog,” as in “Fatal Eggs,” the author contrasts evolution with revolution. Evolution is again implicit, it is only implied as the opposite of revolution, which, in turn, is expressed very clearly and is expressed in the intervention of Professor Preobrazhensky in the natural course of things. Preobrazhensky's good intentions become a tragedy for him and his loved ones. After some time, he understands that violent, unnatural interference in the nature of a living organism leads to catastrophic results. In the story, the professor manages to correct his mistake - Sharikov again turns into a good dog. But in life such experiments are irreversible. And Bulgakov appears here as a seer who was able to warn about the irreversibility of such violence against nature in the middle of those destructive transformations that began in our country in 1917.
The author uses the technique of contrast to contrast the intelligentsia and the proletariat. And although, at the very beginning of the work of M.A. Bulgakov treats Professor Preobrazhensky ironically, he still sympathizes with him, because he understands his mistake and corrects it. People like Shvonder and Sharikov, in the author’s understanding, will never be able to assess the scale of their activities and the level of harm they cause to the present and future. Sharikov believes that he is increasing his ideological level by reading the book recommended by Shvonder - the correspondence of Engels with Kautsky. From Preobrazhensky’s point of view, all this is profanation, empty attempts that in no way contribute to Sharikov’s mental and spiritual development. That is, the intelligentsia and the proletariat are also opposed in terms of intellectual level. Fantastic elements help to express the idea that hopes for improving society through revolutionary means are unrealistic. The two classes are contrasted not only in portraits, powers and habits, but also in speech. One has only to remember the bright, figurative and categorical speech of Preobrazhensky and the “abbreviated” speech of Shvonder, stamped with Soviet labels. Or the self-possessed, correct speech of Bormental and the vulgar speech of Sharikov. The speech characteristics of the characters show the difference between people of the old upbringing and the new, who were nobody, but became everything. Sharikov, for example, who drinks, swears, blackmails and insults his “creator,” the man who gives him shelter and food, occupies a leadership position in the city cleanup department. Neither his ugly appearance nor his origin hindered him. By contrasting Preobrazhensky with those who are replacing those like him, Bulgakov makes one feel the full drama of the era that has come to the country. In no way does he justify Preobrazhensky, who, during the devastation in the country, eats caviar and roast beef on weekdays, but, nevertheless, he considers the “shvonders” and “balls” to be even worse representatives of society, if only because they get away with everything from hand Bulgakov more than once draws the reader’s attention to the preference in that era of proletarian origin. So Klim Chugunkin, a criminal and a drunkard, is easily saved from severe just punishment by his origin, but Preobrazhensky, the son of a cathedral archpriest, and Bormental, the son of a judicial investigator, cannot hope for the saving power of origin.
Bulgakov contrasts the everyday, everyday worldview with the scientific one. From a scientific point of view, the result was phenomenal, without precedents throughout the world, but in everyday terms it seems monstrous and immoral.
To fully show the result and significance of Preobrazhensky's experiment, Bulgakov, using the technique of contrast, describes the changes occurring in a creature that was once a cute dog, thus contrasting the original character with the resulting one. First, Sharikov begins to swear, then smoking is added to the swearing (the dog Sharik did not like tobacco smoke); seeds; balalaika (and Sharik did not approve of music) - and balalaika at any time of the day (evidence of attitude towards others); untidiness and bad taste in clothing. Sharikov's development is rapid: Philip Philipovich loses the title of deity and turns into a “daddy.” These qualities of Sharikov are accompanied by a certain morality, more precisely, immorality (“I’ll register, but fighting is a piece of cake”), drunkenness, and theft. This process of transformation “from the sweetest dog into scum” is crowned by a denunciation of the professor, and then an attempt on his life.
Thanks to the contrast, the author contrasts pre-revolutionary Russia with Soviet Russia. This is manifested in the following: the dog compares the cook of Count Tolstoy with the cook from the Council of Normal Nutrition. In this very “Normal Nutrition” “the bastards cook cabbage soup from stinking corned beef.” One can feel the author's longing for the passing culture and noble life. But it’s not just everyday life that the author yearns for. The revolutionary government encourages snitching, denunciation, the most base and rude human traits - we see all this in the example of Sharikov, who every now and then writes denunciations against his benefactor, notices his every word, regardless of the context, understanding it in his own way. The peaceful life of Professor Preobrazhensky in the Kalabukhov House before the revolution is contrasted with the life of the present.
Eternal values ​​are contrasted with temporary, transitory values ​​inherent in Soviet Russia. A striking sign of revolutionary times is women, in whom it is impossible to discern even women. They are deprived of femininity, wear leather jackets, behave in an emphatically rude manner, and even speak of themselves in the masculine gender. What kind of offspring can they give, according to what canons to raise them? The author draws the reader's attention to this. The contrast between moral values ​​and temporary ones can be traced in another way: no one is interested in duty (Preobrazhensky, instead of treating those who really need it, operates on moneybags), honor (a typist is ready to marry an ugly gentleman, seduced by hearty dinners), morality (an innocent animal two they operate on him several times, disfiguring him and putting him in mortal danger).
Using the technique of contrast, Bulgakov forms a grotesque, unnatural image of the reality of Soviet Russia. It connects the global (the transformation of a dog into a human) and the small (description of the chemical composition of sausage), the comic (details of the “humanization” of Sharik) and the tragic (the result of this very “humanization”). The grotesqueness of the world is enhanced even by the contrast of high art (theatre, Verdi's opera) with low art (circus, balalaika).
Showing the character and image of the main character, his experiences in connection with the consequences of the experiment, Bulgakov again resorts to the technique of contrast. At the beginning of the story, Preobrazhensky appears before us as an energetic, youthful, creatively thinking person. Then we see a haggard, lethargic old man who sits for a long time in his office with a cigar. And although Professor Preobrazhensky still remains an omnipotent deity in the eyes of his student, in fact, the “magician” and “sorcerer” turned out to be powerless in the face of the chaos brought into his life by the completed experiment.
In “Heart of a Dog” there are two opposing spaces. One of them is Preobrazhensky’s apartment on Prechistenka, “a dog’s paradise” as Sharik calls it and an ideal space for a professor. The main components of this space are comfort, harmony, spirituality, and “divine warmth.” Sharik’s arrival in this space was accompanied by the fact that “the darkness clicked and turned into a dazzling day, and it sparkled, shone and turned white from all sides.” The second space is external - unprotected, aggressive, hostile. Its main features are blizzard, wind, street dirt; its permanent inhabitants are “a scoundrel in a dirty cap” (“a thief with a copper face”, “a greedy creature”), a cook from the canteen, and “the most vile scum” of all proletarians - a janitor. External space appears - as opposed to internal space - as a world of absurdity and chaos. Shvonder and his “retinue” come from this world. Thus, the internal, ideal space is violated, and the main character is trying to restore it (remember how reporters harassed Professor Persikov).
Using contrast, the author portrays not only a representative of the intelligentsia - Preobrazhensky, but also a representative of the proletariat - Shvonder. People like him, in words, defend the noble ideas of the revolution, but in reality, having seized power, they strive to get themselves a larger piece of public property. The satirical depiction of these heroes, as well as everything else in the work, is built on the discrepancy between external behavior (fighters for social justice) and internal essence (self-interest, dependency).

Stories by M.A. Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog” and “Fatal Eggs” were a reflection of Soviet reality in the first post-revolutionary years. They were topical in nature and reflected all the imperfections of the structure of society in which the writer happened to live. Moreover, in various aspects, both stories are relevant today, as people continue to fail in their duty, lose honor, forget about true values, and scientific discoveries and experiments become more and more dangerous and irreversible.
The author achieves this result solely through the use of contrast. In the first chapter of this work, it was noted that the technique of contrast is suitable for works written in an era of paradoxes and contrasts. Soviet Russia of that period fits this description. Now the whole world fits this description. Having entered the new millennium, humanity has not been able to live up to its expectations of something new, and therefore we are all now experiencing a crisis and disharmony of global problems.
Thus, the importance of the technique of contrast in literature is difficult to overestimate, because literature, like other forms of art, is in some way the engine of progress, it forces humanity not only to think inertly, but also to act; literature motivates. And she is helped in this by the technique of contrast, on which most literary techniques are based, thanks to which it is possible to more accurately express the intention of the work and expose and contrast various aspects. After all, as you know, truth is learned through comparison.

One of the sources for the plot of the story was the novel by the famous British science fiction writer H.G. Wells “Food of the Gods”. There we are talking about wonderful food that accelerates the growth of living organisms and the development of intellectual abilities in giant people, and the growth of the spiritual and physical capabilities of humanity leads in the novel to a more perfect world order and a collision of the world of the future and the world of the past - the world of giants with the world of pygmies. In Bulgakov, however, the giants turn out to be not intellectually advanced human individuals, but especially aggressive reptiles. “The Fatal Eggs” also reflected another of Wells’s novels, “The Struggle of the Worlds,” where the Martians who conquered the Earth suddenly die from terrestrial microbes. The same fate awaits the hordes of reptiles approaching Moscow, who fall victim to the fantastic August frosts.

Among the sources of the story there are also more exotic ones. Thus, the poet Maximilian Voloshin, who lived in Koktebel, Crimea, sent Bulgakov a clipping from a Feodosia newspaper in 1921, which said “about the appearance in the area of ​​the Kara-Dag mountain of a huge reptile, which a company of Red Army soldiers was sent to capture.” The writer and literary critic Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky, who served as Shpolyansky’s prototype in the “White Guard,” in his book “Sentimental Journey” (1923), cites rumors that circulated in Kyiv at the beginning of 1919 and probably fed Bulgakov’s fantasy:

“They said that the French have a violet ray with which they can blind all the Bolsheviks, and Boris Mirsky wrote a feuilleton “Sick Beauty” about this ray. Beauty is an old world that needs to be treated with a violet ray. And never before had the Bolsheviks been so feared as at that time. They said that the British - people who were not sick told this - that the British had already landed herds of monkeys in Baku, trained in all the rules of the military system. They said that these monkeys cannot be propagated, that they go into attacks without fear, that they will defeat the Bolsheviks.

They showed with their hand the height of these monkeys a yard above the floor. They said that when one such monkey was killed during the capture of Baku, it was buried with an orchestra of Scottish military music and the Scots cried.

Because the instructors of the monkey legions were the Scots.

A black wind was blowing from Russia, the black spot of Russia was growing, the “sick beauty” was raving.”

In Bulgakov, the terrible violet ray is parodically turned into a red ray of life, which also caused a lot of trouble. Instead of miraculous fighting monkeys, supposedly brought from abroad, attacking the Bolsheviks, in Bulgakov, hordes of giant, ferocious reptiles, hatched from eggs sent from abroad, approach Moscow.

Please note that there was an original edition of the story that was different from the published one. On December 27, 1924, Bulgakov read “Fatal Eggs” at a meeting of writers at the cooperative publishing house “Nikitinsky Subbotniki”. On January 6, 1925, the Berlin newspaper “Days” responded to this event in the “Russian Literary News” section:

“The young writer Bulgakov recently read the adventurous story “Fatal Eggs.” Although it is literary insignificant, it is worth getting acquainted with its plot in order to get an idea of ​​this side of Russian literary creativity.

The action takes place in the future. The professor invents a method for the unusually rapid reproduction of eggs using red sun rays... A Soviet worker, Semyon Borisovich Rokk, steals the professor's secret and orders boxes of chicken eggs from abroad. And so it happened that at the border the eggs of reptiles and chickens were confused, and Rokk received the eggs of bare-legged reptiles. He bred them in his Smolensk province (where all the action takes place), and boundless hordes of reptiles moved towards Moscow, besieged it and devoured it. The final picture is of dead Moscow and a huge snake entwined around the bell tower of Ivan the Great.”

It is unlikely that the reviews of visitors to the Nikitin Subbotniks, most of whom Bulgakov did not give a damn about, could force the writer to change the ending of the story. There is no doubt that the first, “pessimistic” end of the story existed. Bulgakov’s neighbor in the “bad apartment,” writer Vladimir Levshin (Manasevich), gives the same version of the ending, allegedly improvised by Bulgakov in a telephone conversation with the Nedra publishing house. At that time, the text of the finale was not yet ready, but Bulgakov, writing on the fly, pretended to read from what was written: “...The story ended with a grandiose picture of the evacuation of Moscow, which is approached by hordes of giant boa constrictors.” Let us note that, according to the recollections of the secretary of the editorial office of the almanac “Nedra” P.N. Zaitsev, Bulgakov immediately transferred “Fatal Eggs” here in finished form, and, most likely, Levshin’s memories of “telephone improvisation” are a memory error. By the way, an anonymous correspondent reported to Bulgakov about the existence of “Fatal Eggs” with a different ending in a letter on March 9, 1936. It is possible that a version of the ending was written down by someone present at the reading on December 27, 1924 and later ended up in samizdat.

It is interesting that the real “pessimistic” ending almost literally coincided with the one proposed by Maxim Gorky after the publication of the story, which was published in February 1925. On May 8, he wrote to the writer Mikhail Slonimsky: “I liked Bulgakov very much, very much, but he did not finish the story. The march of the reptiles to Moscow was not used, but think what a monstrously interesting picture this is!”

Probably, Bulgakov changed the ending of the story due to the obvious censorship unacceptability of the final version with the occupation of Moscow by hordes of giant reptiles.

By the way, “Fatal Eggs” passed censorship with difficulty. On October 18, 1924, Bulgakov wrote in his diary:

“I’m still struggling with ‘Gudok’. Today I spent the day trying to get 100 rubles from Nedra. There are big difficulties with my grotesque story “Fatal Eggs”. Angarsky highlighted 20 places that need to be changed for censorship reasons. Will it pass censorship? The end of the story is spoiled because I wrote it hastily.”

Fortunately for the writer, the censorship saw in the bastards’ campaign against Moscow only a parody of the intervention of 14 states against Soviet Russia during the Civil War (the bastards were foreign, since they hatched from foreign eggs). Therefore, the capture of the capital of the world proletariat by hordes of reptiles was perceived by censors only as a dangerous hint of the possible defeat of the USSR in a future war with the imperialists and the destruction of Moscow in this war. And the curial pestilence, against which neighboring states are establishing cordons, is the revolutionary ideas of the USSR, against which the Entente proclaimed the policy of a cordon sanitaire.

However, in fact, Bulgakov’s “insolence,” for which he was afraid of ending up in “places not so remote,” was something completely different. The main character of the story is Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov, the inventor of the red “ray of life”, with the help of which monstrous reptiles are born. The red ray is a symbol of the socialist revolution in Russia, carried out under the slogan of building a better future, but which brought terror and dictatorship. The death of Persikov during a spontaneous riot of a crowd, excited by the threat of an invasion of Moscow by invincible giant reptiles, personifies the danger that was fraught with the experiment launched by Lenin and the Bolsheviks to spread the “red ray” first in Russia and then throughout the world.

Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov was born on April 16, 1870, because on the day the story begins in the imaginary future of 1928, April 16, he turns 58 years old. Thus, the main character is the same age as Lenin. April 16 is also not a random date. On this day (according to modern times) in 1917, the leader of the Bolsheviks returned to Petrograd from exile. And exactly eleven years later, Professor Persikov discovered a wonderful red ray (making Persikov’s birthday on April 22 would be too transparent). For Russia, such a ray of light was the arrival of Lenin, who the next day published the famous April Theses, with a call for the development of the “bourgeois-democratic” revolution into a socialist one.

Persikov’s portrait is reminiscent of Lenin’s portrait: “The head is wonderful, like a pusher, with tufts of yellowish hair sticking out on the sides... Persikov’s face always bore a somewhat capricious imprint. On his red nose are small, old-fashioned glasses with silver frames, shiny, small eyes, tall and stooped. He spoke in a creaky, thin, croaking voice and, among other oddities, had this: when he said something weightily and confidently, the index finger of his right hand turned into a hook and squinted his eyes. And since he always spoke confidently, because his erudition in his field was absolutely phenomenal, the hook very often appeared before the eyes of Professor Persikov’s interlocutors.”

From Lenin there is a characteristic bald head with reddish hair, an oratorical gesture, a manner of speaking, and finally, the famous squinting of the eyes, which became part of Lenin’s myth. The extensive erudition that Lenin undoubtedly had also coincides, and even Lenin and Persikov speak the same foreign languages, speaking fluently in French and German. In the first newspaper report about the discovery of the red ray, the professor's name was misrepresented by the reporter as Pevsikov, which clearly indicates the burr of Vladimir Ipatievich, like Vladimir Ilyich. By the way, Persikov is named Vladimir Ipatievich only on the first page of the story, and then everyone around him calls him Vladimir Ipatiech - almost Vladimir Ilyich. Finally, the time and place of completion of the story, indicated at the end of the text - “Moscow, 1924, October” - indicate, among other things, the place and year of death of the Bolshevik leader and the month forever associated with his name thanks to the October Revolution.

In the Leninist context of the image of Persikov, the German, judging by the inscriptions on the boxes, finds its explanation for the origin of the eggs of reptiles, which then, under the influence of a red ray, almost captured (and in the first edition even captured) Moscow. After all, after the February Revolution, Lenin and his comrades were transported from Switzerland to Russia through Germany in a sealed carriage (it is no coincidence that the eggs that arrived at Rokk, which he mistakes for chicken eggs, are covered with labels all around).

The likening of the Bolsheviks to giant reptiles marching on Moscow was made in a letter from a nameless, insightful Bulgakov reader on March 9, 1936: “... Among other reptiles, undoubtedly, the unfree press hatched from the fatal egg.”

Among Persikov's prototypes was the famous pathologist Alexey Ivanovich Abrikosov, whose surname is parodied in the surname of Vladimir Ipatich. Abrikosov had just dissected Lenin’s corpse and extracted his brain. In the story, this brain is, as it were, handed over to the scientist who extracted it, unlike the Bolsheviks, a gentle man, not a cruel one, and passionately passionate about zoology, and not the socialist revolution.

Bulgakov’s idea of ​​a ray of life could have been prompted by his acquaintance with the discovery in 1921 by biologist Alexander Gavrilovich Gurvich of mitogenetic radiation, under the influence of which mitosis (cell division) occurs.

The Chicken Pestilence is a parody of the tragic famine of 1921 in the Volga region. Persikov is a comrade of the chairman of Dobrokur, an organization designed to help eliminate the consequences of the death of the chicken population in the USSR. Dobrokur's prototype was clearly the Famine Relief Committee, created in July 1921 by a group of public figures and scientists opposed to the Bolsheviks. The Committee was headed by former ministers of the Provisional Government S.N. Prokopovich, N.M. Kishkin and a prominent figure in the liberal movement E.D. Kuskova. The Soviet government used the names of the members of this organization to receive foreign aid, which, however, was often used not at all to help the starving, but for the needs of the party elite and the world revolution. Already at the end of August 1921, the Committee was abolished, and its leaders and many ordinary participants were arrested. It is interesting that Persikov also died in August. His death symbolizes, among other things, the collapse of the attempts of the non-party intelligentsia to establish civilized cooperation with the totalitarian regime.

L.E. Belozerskaya believed that “describing the appearance and some habits of Professor Persikov, M.A. I started from the image of a living person, my relative, Evgeniy Nikitich Tarnovsky,” a professor of statistics, with whom they had to live at one time. The image of Persikov could also reflect some features of Bulgakov’s uncle on his mother’s side, the surgeon N.M. Pokrovsky.

In “Fatal Eggs,” Bulgakov, for the first time in his work, raised the problem of the responsibility of the scientist and the state for the use of a discovery that could harm humanity. The fruits of the discovery can be used by unenlightened and self-confident people, and even those with unlimited power. And then a catastrophe can happen much sooner than general prosperity.

Criticism after the release of “Fatal Eggs” quickly saw through the political hints hidden in the story. The Bulgakov archive contains a typewritten copy of an excerpt from an article by critic M. Lirov (Moisey Litvakov) about Bulgakov’s work, published in 1925 in issues 5–6 of the magazine “Print and Revolution”. Bulgakov emphasized here the most dangerous places for himself: “But the real record was broken by M. Bulgakov with his “story” “Fatal Eggs”. This is truly something remarkable for a “Soviet” almanac.” A typewritten copy of this article has been preserved in Bulgakov’s archive, where the writer underlined the phrase quoted above with a blue pencil, and with a red pencil the phrase Vladimir Ipatievich, used by Lirov seven times, of which only once with the surname Persikov.

M. Lirov continued:

“Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov made an extraordinary discovery - he discovered a red ray of sunlight, under the influence of which the eggs of, say, frogs instantly turn into tadpoles, the tadpoles quickly grow into huge frogs, which immediately multiply and immediately begin mutual destruction. And the same applies to all living creatures. Such were the amazing properties of the red ray discovered by Vladimir Ipatievich. This discovery was quickly learned in Moscow, despite Vladimir Ipatievich’s conspiracy. The nimble Soviet press became very agitated (here is a picture of the morals of the Soviet press, lovingly copied from life... the worst tabloid press of Paris, London and New York). Now “gentle voices” from the Kremlin began to ring on the phone, and Soviet... confusion began.

And then a disaster struck the Soviet country: a devastating epidemic of chickens swept through it. How to get out of a difficult situation? But who usually brings the USSR out of all disasters? Of course, GPU agents. And then there was one security officer Rokk (Rock), who had a state farm at his disposal, and this Rokk decided to restore chicken breeding in his state farm with the help of the discovery of Vladimir Ipatievich.

The Kremlin received an order to Professor Persikov to provide his complex scientific apparatus for temporary use to Rokku for the needs of restoring chicken breeding. Persikov and his assistant, of course, are outraged and indignant. And really, how can such complex devices be provided to laymen?

After all, Rokk can cause disasters. But the “gentle voices” from the Kremlin are relentless. It’s okay, the security officer - he knows how to do everything.

Rokk received devices that operate using a red ray and began to operate on his state farm.

But a disaster ensued - and here's why: Vladimir Ipatievich prescribed reptile eggs for his experiments, and Rokk prescribed chicken eggs for his work. Soviet transport, naturally, mixed everything up, and instead of chicken eggs, Rokk received the “fatal eggs” of the bastards. Instead of chickens, Rokk bred huge reptiles that devoured him, his employees, the surrounding population and rushed in huge masses to the entire country, mainly to Moscow, destroying everything in their path. The country was declared under martial law, the Red Army was mobilized, whose troops died in heroic but fruitless battles. Danger was already threatening Moscow, but then a miracle happened: in August, terrible frosts suddenly struck, and all the reptiles died. Only this miracle saved Moscow and the entire USSR.

But a terrible riot occurred in Moscow, during which the “inventor” of the red ray himself, Vladimir Ipatievich, died. Crowds of people burst into his laboratory and shouted: “Beat him!” World villain! You have unleashed the reptiles!” - they tore him to pieces.

Everything fell into place. Although the assistant of the late Vladimir Ipatievich continued his experiments, he failed to open the red beam again.”

The critic persistently called Professor Persikov Vladimir Ipatievich, also emphasizing that he was the inventor of the red ray, i.e., as it were, the architect of the October Socialist Revolution. It was made clear to the powers that be that behind Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov the figure of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was visible, and “Fatal Eggs” was a libelous satire on the late leader and the communist idea as a whole. M. Lirov focused the attention of possible biased readers of the story on the fact that Persikov died during a popular revolt, that they were killing him with the words “world villain” and “you have dissolved the bastards.” Here one could see an allusion to Lenin as the proclaimed leader of the world revolution, as well as an association with the famous “Hydra of revolution”, as opponents of Soviet power expressed themselves (the Bolsheviks, in turn, spoke of the “Hydra of counter-revolution”). It is interesting that in the play “Running” ”, completed in the year when the action of “Fatal Eggs” takes place, the “eloquent” messenger Krapilin calls the hangman Khludov “the world’s beast.”

And the death of the “inventor of the red ray” at the hands of the indignant “crowds of the people” (Bulgakov does not have such an exalted expression) could hardly have pleased the communists in power. Lirov was afraid to openly declare that Lenin was parodied in the story (he himself could be prosecuted for such inappropriate associations), but he hinted at this, we repeat, very directly and transparently. Wells did not deceive him. The critic argued that “by mentioning the name of his ancestor Wells, as many are now inclined to do, Bulgakov’s literary face does not become any clearer. And what kind of Wells is this, really, when here the same boldness of fiction is accompanied by completely different attributes? The similarity is purely external...” Lirov, like other Bulgakov’s ill-wishers, sought, of course, to clarify not the literary, but the political face of the writer.

By the way, the mention of Wells in “Fatal Eggs” could also have a political meaning. The great science fiction writer, as you know, visited our country and wrote the book “Russia in the Dark” (1921), where, in particular, he spoke about his meetings with Lenin and called the Bolshevik leader, who spoke with inspiration about the future fruits of the GOELRO plan, “a Kremlin dreamer.” Bulgakov depicts Persikov as a “Kremlin dreamer”, detached from the world and immersed in his scientific plans. True, he does not sit in the Kremlin, but he constantly communicates with the Kremlin leaders during the course of the action.

The hopes that critics in the service of power, in contrast to thoughtful and sympathetic readers, would not perceive the anti-communist orientation of “Fatal Eggs” and would not understand who exactly was parodied in the image of the main character, did not materialize (although the purposes of disguise were supposed to serve and transferring the action to a fantastic future, and obvious borrowings from Wells’s novels “Food of the Gods” and “War of the Worlds”). Alert critics understood everything.

M. Lirov, skilled in literary denunciations (only literary ones?) and not knowing in the 1920s that he would perish during the great purge of 1937, sought to read and show “who should” even what in “Fatal Eggs” it was not, without stopping at direct fraud. The critic argued that Rokk, who played the main role in the tragedy that unfolded, was a security officer, an employee of the GPU. Thus, a hint was made that the story parodied real episodes of the struggle for power that unfolded in the last years of Lenin’s life and in the year of his death, where the security officer Rokk (or his prototype F.E. Dzerzhinsky) found himself at one with some “gentle voices” in the Kremlin and is leading the country to disaster with his inept actions.

In fact, Rokk is not a security officer at all, although he conducts his experiments in the “Red Ray” under the protection of GPU agents.

He is a participant in the Civil War and Revolution, into the abyss of which he throws himself, “having replaced the flute with the destructive Mauser,” and after the war “he edits a “huge newspaper” in Turkestan, having managed, as a member of the “high economic commission,” to become famous “for his amazing work on irrigating the Turkestan region "".

The obvious prototype of Rocca is the editor of the newspaper “Communist” and poet G.S. Astakhov, one of the main persecutors of Bulgakov in Vladikavkaz in 1920–1921, although similarities with F.E. Dzerzhinsky, who headed the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the country, can also be considered if desired. see. In “Notes on Cuffs” a portrait of Astakhov is given: “brave with an eagle face and a huge revolver on his belt.” Rokk, like Astakhov, walks around with a Mauser and edits a newspaper, only not in the Caucasus, but in the equally outlying Turkestan. Instead of the art of poetry, to which Astakhov considered himself involved, who reviled Pushkin and considered himself clearly above the “sun of Russian poetry,” Rock is committed to the art of music. Before the revolution, he was a professional flutist, and then the flute remained his main hobby. That is why he tries at the end, like an Indian fakir, to charm a giant anaconda by playing the flute, but without success.

If we accept that one of Rock’s prototypes could have been L.D. Trotsky, who actually lost the struggle for power in 1923–1924 (Bulgakov noted this in his diary), then one cannot help but marvel at completely mystical coincidences. Trotsky, like Rokk, played the most active role in the revolution and the Civil War, being the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. At the same time, he was also involved in economic affairs, in particular, restoring transport, but switched entirely to economic work after leaving the military department in January 1925. In particular, Trotsky briefly headed the main concession committee. Rokk arrived in Moscow and received a well-deserved rest in 1928. A similar thing happened to Trotsky almost at the same time. In the fall of 1927, he was removed from the Central Committee and expelled from the party, at the beginning of 1928 he was exiled to Alma-Ata, and literally a year later he was forced to leave the USSR forever, disappear from the country. Needless to say, all these events occurred after the creation of the “Fatal Eggs”. Lirov wrote his article in mid-1925, during a period of further aggravation of the internal party struggle, and, apparently, counting on the inattention of readers, he tried to attribute to Bulgakov its reflection in “Fatal Eggs,” written almost a year earlier.

Bulgakov's story did not go unnoticed by OPTU informants. One of them reported on February 22, 1928:

“The most implacable enemy of Soviet power is the author of “The Days of the Turbins” and “Zoyka’s Apartment” Mikhail. Afanasyevich Bulgakov, former Smenovekhovite. One can simply be amazed at the long-suffering and tolerance of the Soviet government, which still does not prevent the dissemination of Bulgakov’s book (ed. “Nedra”) “Fatal Eggs.” This book is a brazen and outrageous slander against the Red Power. She vividly describes how, under the influence of a red ray, reptiles gnawing each other were born and went to Moscow. There is a vile place there, an evil nod towards the late Comrade LENIN, that there lies a dead toad, which even after death remained with an evil expression on its face (here we mean a giant frog, bred by Persikov with the help of a red ray and killed with potassium cyanide due to her aggressiveness, and “there was an evil expression on her face even after death” - here Seksot saw an allusion to Lenin’s body, preserved in the mausoleum - B.S.). How this book of his is circulating freely is impossible to understand. They read it voraciously. Bulgakov enjoys the love of young people, he is popular. His earnings reach 30,000 rubles. in year. He paid 4,000 rubles in tax alone. Because he paid because he was going to go abroad.

These days he was met by Lerner (we are talking about the famous Pushkinist N.O. Lerner. - B.S.). Bulgakov is very offended by Soviet power and is very dissatisfied with the current situation. You can't work at all. Nothing is certain. We definitely need either war communism again, or complete freedom. The revolution, says Bulgakov, should be made by the peasant who finally speaks his real native language. In the end, there are not so many communists (and among them there are “those like them”), and there are tens of millions of offended and indignant peasants. Naturally, at the very first war, communism will be swept out of Russia, etc. Here they are, the thoughts and hopes that are swarming in the head of the author of “Fatal Eggs,” who is now preparing to take a walk abroad. It would be completely unpleasant to release such a “bird” abroad... By the way, in a conversation with Lerner, Bulgakov touched upon the contradictions in the policy of the Soviet government: - On the one hand they shout - save. On the other hand, if you start saving, you will be considered a bourgeois. Where is the logic?

Of course, one cannot vouch for the literal accuracy of the unknown agent’s transmission of Bulgakov’s conversation with Lerner. However, it is quite possible that it was the informer’s tendentious interpretation of the story that contributed to the fact that Bulgakov was never released abroad. In general, what the writer said to the Pushkin scholar agrees well with the thoughts captured in his diary “Under the Heel.” There, in particular, there are discussions about the likelihood of a new war and the inability of the Soviet government to withstand it. In an entry dated October 26, 1923, Bulgakov cited his conversation on this topic with a baker neighbor:

“The authorities consider the actions of the authorities to be fraudulent (bonds, etc.). He said that two Jewish commissars in the Krasnopresnensky Council were beaten by those who showed up for mobilization for insolence and threats with a revolver. I don't know if it's true. According to the baker, the mood of the mobilized is very unpleasant. He, a baker, complained that hooliganism was developing among young people in the villages. The guy has the same thing in his head as everyone else - in his own mind, he understands perfectly well that the Bolsheviks are swindlers, he doesn’t want to go to war, he has no idea about the international situation. We are wild, dark, unhappy people.”

Obviously, in the first edition of the story, the capture of Moscow by foreign reptiles symbolized the future defeat of the USSR in the war, which at that moment the writer considered inevitable. The invasion of reptiles also personified the ephemerality of the NEP prosperity, depicted in the fantastic year of 1928 rather parodically.

“Fatal Eggs” received interesting responses abroad as well. Bulgakov kept in his archive a typewritten copy of a TASS message dated January 24, 1926, entitled “Churchill is afraid of socialism.” It said that on January 22, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, speaking in connection with labor strikes in Scotland, indicated that “the terrible conditions existing in Glasgow give rise to communism,” but “we do not want to see Moscow crocodile eggs on our table.” (emphasized by Bulgakov - B.S.). I am confident that the time will come when the Liberal Party will give every possible assistance to the Conservative Party to eradicate these doctrines. I am not afraid of the Bolshevik revolution in England, but I am afraid of the attempt of the socialist majority to arbitrarily introduce socialism. One tenth of the socialism that ruined Russia would have completely ruined England...” (It is difficult to doubt the validity of these words today, seventy years later.)

In “Fatal Eggs,” Bulgakov parodied V.E. Meyerhold, mentioning “the theater named after the late Vsevolod Meyerhold, who died, as is known, in 1927, during the production of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” when the trapeze with naked boyars collapsed.” This phrase goes back to one humorous conversation in the editorial office of Gudok, which was relayed by the head of the “fourth page” of this newspaper, Ivan Semenovich Ovchinnikov:

“The beginning of the twenties... Bulgakov is sitting in the next room, but for some reason he brings his sheepskin coat to our hanger every morning. The sheepskin coat is one of a kind: it has no fasteners and no belt. Put your hands in the sleeves - and you can consider yourself dressed. Mikhail Afanasyevich himself certifies the sheepskin coat as follows - Russian awesome. Fashion of the late seventeenth century. The chronicle mentions it for the first time in 1377. Now Meyerhold’s Duma boyars are falling from the second floor in such obscenities. The injured actors and spectators are taken to the Sklifosovsky Institute. I recommend watching..."

Obviously, Bulgakov assumed that by 1927 - exactly 550 years after the first mention of the ohabnya in the chronicles, Meyerhold's creative evolution would reach the point where the actors playing the boyars would be stripped of the okhabnya and left in what their mother gave birth to, so that only direction and technique acting was replaced by all historical scenery. After all, Vsevolod Emilievich said at one of his lectures in February 1924 about the production of “Godunov”: “... Dmitry had to lie on the couch, certainly half naked... even his body would certainly be shown... by removing stockings, for example, from Godunov, we would force him to approach differently to the whole tragedy..."

It is curious that, as in the lost early story “The Green Serpent,” the motif of a snake, and even in combination with a woman, appears again in the writer in 1924 in the story “Fatal Eggs.” In this story, Bulgakov’s fantasy created the “Red Ray” state farm in the Smolensk province near Nikolskoye, where director Alexander Semenovich Rokk conducts a tragic experiment with the eggs of reptiles - and the hatched giant anaconda devours his wife Manya before his eyes. Maybe “The Green Serpent” was based on Bulgakov’s Smolensk impressions and he wrote the story itself back then.

By the way, Bulgakov’s acquaintance with M.M. Zoshchenko could also be reflected here. The fact is that Mikhail Mikhailovich in November 1918 worked as a poultry farmer (officially the position was called “instructor in rabbit breeding and chicken breeding”) at the Smolensk state farm “Mankovo” near the city of Krasny and restored the number of chickens there after the previous pestilence. Perhaps this circumstance prompted him to choose the Smolensk province, so familiar to Bulgakov as a zemstvo doctor, as the location for the experiment “to restore the number of chickens in the republic.” Zoshchenko and Bulgakov met no later than May 10, 1926, when they performed together in Leningrad at a literary evening. But it is quite possible that they met back in 1924.

Although Bulgakov and Zoshchenko were in different districts of the Smolensk province almost at the same time, the psychology of the peasants was the same everywhere. And hatred of the landowners was combined with the fear that they might still return.

But Bulgakov also saw the peasant revolt in Ukraine and knew that the naive darkness of the peasants was easily combined with incredible cruelty.

“First Color” in the name bears a certain echo with the Amphitheater “Fire Color”. It seems that a later edition of this early story could have been the famous 1924 story “Khan’s Fire.” It describes a fire that actually occurred on the Muravishniki estate on the eve of the February Revolution. True, in the story it is dated to the early 20s.

This same story, by the way, reflected one of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s heroes, the Tatar Asia from “Pan Volodyevsky,” the son of the Tatar leader, the real-life Tugai Bey, who died at Berestechko (Tugai Bey himself acts as a minor character in the first novel of the trilogy - “ Fire and sword"). Asia serves the Poles, but then betrays them and burns the place where the Tatar banner he leads stands. In Bulgakov’s story “Khan’s Fire,” the last representative of the princely family of Tugai-begs, like his literary prototype, obsessed with the thirst for destruction and revenge, burns his estate, turned into a museum, so that the rebellious people could not use it. Let us note that in 1929, one of the chapters of the first edition of “The Master and Margarita,” “Mania Furibunda,” submitted on May 8 for separate publication in the almanac “Nedra,” was signed by the author with the pseudonym “K. Tugai.”

The Yusupov estate served as the prototype for the estate in Khan's Fire, probably because Bulgakov was specifically interested in the story of the murder of Grigory Rasputin, in which Prince Felix Feliksovich Yusupov (the younger) played a prominent role. In 1921, Bulgakov was going to write a play about Rasputin and Nicholas II. In a letter to his mother in Kyiv on November 17, 1921, he asked to convey to his sister Nadya: “... We need all the material for the historical drama - everything that concerns Nikolai and Rasputin in the period of 16 and 17 (murder and coup). Newspapers, descriptions of the palace, memoirs, and most of all Purishkevich’s “Diary” (Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich, one of the leaders of the extreme right in the State Duma, monarchist, together with Prince F.F. Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, organized the murder of G.E. Rasputin in December 1916, described in detail in a posthumously published diary. - B.S.) - to the extreme! Description of costumes, portraits, memories, etc. “I cherish the idea of ​​​​creating a grandiose drama in 5 acts by the end of the 22nd year. Some sketches and plans are already ready. The thought captivates me madly... Of course, with the draining work that I do, I will never be able to write anything worthwhile, but at least the road is a dream and work on it. If the “Diary” falls into her (Nadya’s – B.S.) hands temporarily, I ask that everything about the murder with the gramophone be immediately copied verbatim from it (the gramophone was supposed to drown out the sound of the shots, and before that create the impression in Rasputin’s mind that that in the room next door there is F.F. Yusupov’s wife Irina Aleksandrovna Yusupova, the granddaughter of Alexander III and the niece of Nicholas II, whom the “elder” (Gregory. - B.S.) desired, the conspiracy of Felix and Purishkevich, Purishkevich’s reports to Nikolai, the personality of Nikolai Mikhailovich (we are talking about Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich (1859–1919), chairman of the Russian Historical Society, executed during the Red Terror. - B.S.), and send it to me in letters (I think it’s possible? Titled “Drama Material”? ) (Here is a hint at the widespread illustration of letters. - B.S.)". However, Bulgakov never wrote a play about Rasputin and Nicholas II. The writer’s very appeal to this topic speaks volumes about his disappointment in the monarchy. Due to the censorship conditions of that time in a work of any genre, Nicholas II and other representatives of the Romanov family could only be portrayed negatively. But Bulgakov himself had a rather negative attitude towards the overthrown dynasty in the early 20s. In a diary entry on April 15, 1924, he expressed himself rudely and directly in his heart: “Damn all the Romanovs!” There weren't enough of them." The unrealized concept of the historical play was obviously reflected in “Khan’s Fire.” There is a fairly strong anti-monarchist tendency here. Nicholas II in the photograph is described as “a nondescript man with a beard and mustache, looking like a regimental doctor.” In the portrait of Emperor Alexander I, “the bald head smiled insidiously in the smoke.” Nicholas I is the “white haired general”. His mistress was once an old princess, “inexhaustible in depraved invention, who wore two glory all her life - a dazzling beauty and a terrible Messalina.” She could well have been among the outstanding libertines at Satan’s Great Ball, along with the dissolute wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius I, Valeria Messalina, who was executed in 48.”

Nicholas II is also satirically depicted in Bulgakov’s last play “Batum”. Closely connected by kinship with the imperial family, Prince Tugai-Beg is presented as a man doomed to extinction, leaving no offspring and dangerous to society with his willingness to destroy the family nest, so that it does not become the property of those whom the prince hates. If the devil did not take him, as Bulgakov wished for Romanov, then, of course, the devil brought him.

The prototype of Prince Anton Ivanovich Tugai-Beg could be the father and full namesake of the murderer Rasputin, Prince Felix Feliksovich Yusupov (the elder, born Count Sumarokov-Elston). In 1923, when the story takes place, he was 67 years old. The elder Yusupov’s wife, Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova, was also still alive at that time, but Bulgakov forced the wife of the hero of “Khan’s Fire” to die earlier in order to leave him completely alone, like Pontius Pilate and Woland later in “The Master and Margarita” (remember the words Woland on the Patriarchal: “Alone, alone, I am always alone”). The younger brother of Tugai-Beg, Pavel Ivanovich, mentioned in the story, who served in the horse grenadiers and died in the war with the Germans, has as his possible prototype his older brother F.F. Yusupov (younger) Count Nikolai Feliksovich Sumarokov-Elston, who was preparing to enter service in the Cavalry Corps , but killed in 1908 in a duel by Lieutenant of the Cavalry Regiment Count A.E. Manteuffel, who came from Baltic Germans.

But let's return to "Fatal Eggs". There are other parody sketches in the story. For example, the one where the fighters of the First Cavalry, at the head of which “in the same crimson hood as all the riders, rides the aging and gray-haired commander of the cavalry community who became legendary 10 years ago” - Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny - set out on a campaign against the reptiles with thieves' song, sung in the manner of the Internationale:

Neither ace, nor queen, nor jack,

We will beat the bastards, without a doubt,

Four on the side - yours are not there...

Combining this song with the lines of “The Internationale”, we get a funny, but quite meaningful text:

Nobody will give us deliverance -

Neither ace, nor queen, nor jack.

We will achieve liberation

Four on the side - yours is not there.

A real case (or at least a widely spread rumor in Moscow) found its place here. On August 2, 1924, Bulgakov wrote in his diary a story from his friend writer Ilya Kremlev (Sven) that “the GPU regiment went to a demonstration with an orchestra that played “Everyone Adores These Girls.” The promise to “beat the bastards” in the story could, if desired, be attributed to the “red bastards” who captured Moscow, taking into account that, as Bulgakov thought, in the mid-20s, ordinary people were not at all eager to fight for the Bolsheviks. In the story, the GPU is replaced by the First Cavalry, and such forethought was not superfluous. The writer was undoubtedly familiar with evidence and rumors about the morals of the Budennovsky freemen, who were distinguished by violence and robberies. They were captured in the book of stories “Cavalry” by Isaac Babel (though in a somewhat softened form compared to the facts of his own cavalry diary).

It was quite appropriate to put a criminal song in the rhythm of the Internationale into the mouths of the Budennovites. The slang expression of professional cheaters “Four on the side - there are none of yours” is deciphered by Fima Zhiganets in the article “On the secret symbolism of one name in the novel “The Master and Margarita””: “...In the pre-revolutionary years, this proverb did not have a wide “circulation”, it was used only in a narrow circle of the criminal world. It was born among gamblers, from a situation in the game “point”. If a banker adds a nine or a ten to the ace he has in his hand (the only two cards that have four suit icons on each side; the nine has one more icon in the center, and the ten has two), this means his undoubted win. He immediately scores either 20 points or 21 (the value of an ace is 11 points). Even if the player has 20 points, a draw is interpreted in favor of the banker (“banker’s point”), and if the player immediately scored 21 points, this would mean that he automatically wins, and there is no point in buying cards for the banker. Thus, “four on the side” are four icons of a card suit, meaning the player’s inevitable loss. Later, the expression began to be used in a figurative sense to denote a hopeless situation, a loss.”

“Fatal Eggs” received critical and positive responses. Thus, Yu. Sobolev in “Dawn of the East” on March 11, 1925 assessed the story as the most significant publication in the 6th book of “Nedr”, arguing: “Only Bulgakov with his ironic-fantastic and satirical-utopian story “Fatal Eggs” unexpectedly falls out of the general, very well-intentioned and very decent tone.” The critic saw the “utopianism” of “Fatal Eggs” “in the very picture of Moscow in 1928, in which Professor Persikov again receives a “six-room apartment” and feels his entire life as it was... before October.” However, in general, Soviet criticism reacted negatively to the story as a phenomenon counteracting official ideology. Censorship became more vigilant towards the novice author, and Bulgakov’s next story, “The Heart of a Dog,” was never published during his lifetime.

“Fatal Eggs” enjoyed great reader success and even in 1930 remained one of the most requested works in libraries.

An analysis of the artistic motives of “Fatal Eggs” gives reason to speculate about how Bulgakov treated Lenin.

At first glance, this attitude of Bulgakov is quite benevolent, judging only by the image of Persikov and the censored essays discussed in the first volume of our book. The professor evokes obvious sympathy both for his tragic death, and for his genuine grief upon receiving the news of the death of his long-abandoned but still beloved wife, and for his commitment to strict scientific knowledge, and his reluctance to follow the political situation. But this is clearly not from the Leninist hypostasis of Persikov, but from two others - the Russian intellectual and the scientist-creator. Persikov had another prototype - Bulgakov's uncle, surgeon Nikolai Mikhailovich Pokrovsky. Hence, probably, Persikov’s tall stature, his bachelor lifestyle, and much more. Bulgakov, as we will now see, did not have a positive attitude towards Lenin.

The fact is that Bulgakov’s Leninism did not end with Persikov. Let's try to get ahead a little and find Lenin's traces in the novel “The Master and Margarita,” which the writer began in 1929, that is, five years after “The Fatal Eggs.” The new novel chronologically continued the story, because its action, as we will show later, also takes place in 1929 - which, as expected, came immediately after 1928 - that near future in which the events in the story unfold. Only in “The Master and Margarita” Bulgakov no longer describes the future, but the present.

To understand which hero of “The Master and Margarita” Lenin became the prototype for, let us turn to the clipping from “Pravda” dated November 6–7, 1921, preserved in Bulgakov’s archive, with Alexander Shotman’s memoirs “Lenin in Underground.” It described how the leader of the Bolsheviks in the summer and autumn of 1917 was hiding from the Provisional Government, which declared him a German spy. Shotman, in particular, noted that “not only counterintelligence and criminal detectives were brought to their feet, but even dogs, including the famous sniffer dog Tref, were mobilized to capture Lenin” and they were helped by “hundreds of volunteer detectives among the bourgeois inhabitants” . These lines make us remember the episode of the novel when the famous police dog Tuzbuben unsuccessfully searches for Woland and his henchmen after a scandal in Variety. By the way, after February 1917, the police were officially renamed the police by the Provisional Government, so the Bloodhound Tref, like Tuzbuben, is correctly called the police.

The events described by Shortman are very reminiscent in their atmosphere of the search for Woland and his retinue (after a session of black magic) and, to an even greater extent, the actions in the epilogue of the novel, when distraught ordinary people detain tens and hundreds of suspicious people and cats. The memoirist also quotes the words of Y.M. Sverdlov at the VI Party Congress that “although Lenin is deprived of the opportunity to personally attend the congress, he is invisibly present and leads it.” In exactly the same way, Woland, by his own admission to Berlioz and Bezdomny, was invisibly personally present at the trial of Yeshua, “but only secretly, incognito, so to speak,” and the writers in response suspected that their interlocutor was a German spy.

Shotman tells how, while hiding from enemies, Lenin and G.E. Zinoviev, who was with him in Razliv, changed their appearance: “Comrade. Lenin in a wig, without a mustache and beard was almost unrecognizable, but Comrade. By this time, Zinoviev’s mustache and beard had grown, his hair was cut, and he was completely unrecognizable.” Perhaps this is why Bulgakov has both Professor Persikov and Professor Woland shaved, and the cat Behemoth, Woland’s favorite jester, the closest to him from his entire retinue, suddenly takes on a resemblance to Zinoviev in The Master and Margarita. The plump, food-loving Zinoviev, with his mustache and beard, must have acquired something of a cat's appearance, and on a personal level he was indeed the closest to Lenin of all the Bolshevik leaders. By the way, Stalin, who replaced Lenin, treated Zinoviev as a buffoon, although later, in the 30s, he did not spare him.

Shotman, who was with Lenin both in Razliv and in Finland, recalled one of the conversations with the leader: “I very much regret that I did not study shorthand and did not write down everything that he said. But... I am convinced that Vladimir Ilyich foresaw much of what happened after the October Revolution.” In The Master and Margarita, Woland is endowed with a similar gift of foresight.

A.V. Shotman, who wrote the memoirs that fed Bulgakov’s creative imagination, was shot in 1937, and his memoirs were banned. Mikhail Afanasyevich, of course, remembered that Persikov’s prototype was identified quite easily at one time. True, then, after the death of Bulgakov, when “Fatal Eggs” was not republished for decades, even for people professionally involved in literature, the connection between the main character of the story and Lenin became far from obvious, and anyway could not be made public due to strict censorship . For the first time, as far as we know, such a connection was openly played out in the dramatization of “Fatal Eggs,” staged by E. Yelanskaya at the Moscow Sphere Theater in 1989. But Bulgakov’s contemporaries were much more directly interested in collecting incriminating evidence than their descendants, and the censorship was more vigilant. So Lenin’s endings in the novel had to be hidden more carefully, otherwise there was no way to seriously count on publication. Just likening Lenin to Satan was worth it!

The following literary source, in particular, served the purposes of camouflage: In 1923, Mikhail Zoshchenko’s story “The Dog Case” appeared. It was about an old professor conducting scientific experiments with the prostate gland in dogs (Professor Preobrazhensky also conducts similar experiments in “Heart of a Dog”), and the criminal bloodhound Trefka also appeared in the course of the action. The story was quite well known to contemporaries, and it is unlikely that anyone would compare Bulgakov’s dog Tuzbuben with it, and not with Shotman’s memoirs, which were never republished after 1921. So Bulgakov’s novel now has a kind of cover. And such a forced camouflage of one prototype by another became one of the “trademark” features of Bulgakov’s work.

The parody itself in Zoshchenko's story is based on the fact that the club is the official suit, which is why police (as well as police) dogs were often given a similar name. Before the revolution, the ace of diamonds was sewn onto the backs of criminals (Blok’s description of the revolutionaries from The Twelve immediately comes to mind: “You should have an ace of diamonds on your back”).

Of course, Woland can lay claim to the title of the most sympathetic devil in world literature, but he remains a devil. And any doubts about Bulgakov’s attitude towards Lenin completely disappear when the name of another character in “The Master and Margarita” is revealed, the prototype of which was also Ilyich.

Let us remember the dramatic artist who convinced the house manager Bosogo and other arrested people to voluntarily hand over currency and other valuables. In the final text he is called Savva Potapovich Kurolesov, but in the previous edition of 1937–1938 he was named much more transparently - Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov (as an option - also Ilya Potapovich Burdasov). This is how this unattractive character is described: “The promised Burdasov did not hesitate to appear on stage and turned out to be elderly, shaven, in a tailcoat and white tie.

Without any preamble, he made a gloomy face, knitted his eyebrows and spoke in an unnatural voice, looking at the golden bell:

Like a young rake waiting for a date with some wicked libertine...

Further, Burdasov told a lot of bad things about himself. Nikanor Ivanovich, very gloomy, heard Burdasov admit that some unfortunate widow, howling, knelt before him in the rain, but did not touch the artist’s callous heart. Nikanor Ivanovich did not know the poet Pushkin at all before this incident, although he uttered, and often, the phrase: “Will Pushkin pay for the apartment?” - and now, having become acquainted with his work, he immediately became sad, thought and imagined a woman with children on their knees and involuntarily thought: “This bastard Burdasov!” And he, raising his voice, walked on and completely confused Nikanor Ivanovich, because he suddenly began to address someone who was not on stage, and for this absentee he himself He answered himself, and called himself now “sovereign,” now “baron,” now “father,” now “son,” now “you,” now “you.”

Nikanor Ivanovich understood only one thing: that the artist died an evil death, shouting: “Keys!” The keys are mine!“ - after that he fell to the floor, wheezing and tearing off his tie.

Having died, he stood up, shook off the dust from his tail-coat knees, bowed, smiling a false smile, and walked away amid thin applause, and the entertainer spoke like this.

Well, dear currency traders, you listened to Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov’s wonderful performance of “The Stingy Knight.”

A woman with children, on her knees begging the “miserly knight” for a piece of bread, is not just a quote from Pushkin’s “The Stingy Knight,” but also an allusion to a famous episode from the life of Lenin. In all likelihood, Bulgakov was familiar with the contents of the article “Lenin in Power”, published in the popular Russian émigré Parisian magazine “Illustrated Russia” in 1933 by the author, hiding under the pseudonym “Chronicle” (perhaps it was the former secretary of the Organizing Bureau who fled to the West and Politburo Boris Georgievich Bazhanov). In this article we find the following interesting touch to the portrait of the Bolshevik leader:

“From the very beginning, he understood perfectly well that the peasantry would not, for the sake of the new order, not only make selfless sacrifices, but also voluntarily give up the fruits of their hard labor. And alone with his closest collaborators, Lenin, without hesitation, said exactly the opposite of what he had to say and write officially. When it was pointed out to him that even the children of the workers, that is, the very class for whose sake and in whose name the coup was carried out, were malnourished and even starving, Lenin retorted the claim with indignation:

The government cannot give them bread. Sitting here in St. Petersburg, you won’t get bread. You have to fight for bread with a rifle in your hands... If they fail to fight, they will die of hunger!..”

It is difficult to say whether the Bolshevik leader actually said this or whether we are dealing with another legend, but Lenin’s mood is reliably conveyed here.

Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov is a parody of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin). The correspondences here are obvious: Ilya Vladimirovich - Vladimir Ilyich, Ulyana - Akulina (the last two names are consistently paired in folklore). The names themselves, which form the basis of surnames, are also significant. Ulyana is a distorted Latin Juliana, that is, belonging to the Julian family, from which Julius Caesar came, whose nickname was adopted in a modified form by the Russian tsars. Akulina is a distorted Latin Aquilina, that is, eagle-like, and the eagle, as you know, is a symbol of the monarchy. Probably, Persikov’s middle name, Ipatievich, is in the same category. It appeared not only because of the consonance between Ipatich and Ilyich, but, most likely, also because in the house of engineer Ipatiev in Yekaterinburg in July 1918, on the orders of Lenin, the Romanov family was destroyed. Let us also remember that the first Romanov, before his coronation, found refuge in the Ipatiev Monastery.

Although in the early 20s Bulgakov was going to write a book about the royal family and G.E. Rasputin and was interested in all the sources related to this, he never wrote this drama, probably realizing the impossibility of adapting it to censorship conditions, which were satisfied only by frank fakes like “The Conspiracy of the Empress” by A.N. Tolstoy and P.E. Shchegolev. But Mikhail Afanasyevich was keenly interested in materials related to the fate of the last Russian Tsar.

Since the name Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov would be too obvious a challenge to censorship, Bulgakov tried other names for this character that would make readers smile without scaring the censors. He was called, in particular, Ilya Potapovich Burdasov, which evoked associations with hunting dogs. In the end, Bulgakov named his hero Savva Potapovich Kurolesov. The character's name and patronymic are associated with the censor Savva Lukich from the play "Crimson Island" (one can also recall Lenin's popular nickname - Lukich). And the surname reminds us of the consequences for Russia of the activities of the Bolshevik leader and his comrades, who really “played the trick.” In the epilogue of the novel, the actor, like Lenin, dies an evil death - from a blow. The addresses that Akulinov-Kurolesov addresses to himself: “sovereign,” “father,” “son” are a hint both at the monarchical essence of Lenin’s power (the term “commissar power” was popular in the first years after the revolution among the anti-communist opposition), and at deification of the leader’s personality by Soviet propaganda (he is God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit).