Bulgakov House (Moscow)

The building was originally intended for luxury rental apartments and was built between 1902 and 1905 by order of the Russian millionaire Ilya Pigit, owner of the tobacco company Ducat. The building was erected in the so-called Russian Art Nouveau style at a time when Moscow came into full bloom and many new avenues, lined with trees, were constructed. The Bolshaya Sadovaya ulitsa or Big Garden street was one of those avenues, and was part of the Garden Ring around the center of Moscow. In June 1917, just before the October Revolution, Ilya Pigit sold the building to a private real estate company. It was a good move, because after the revolution, the new Soviet regime claimed the house to transform it into one of the first communal apartments buildings in Moscow.[2] In 1938, the building lost much of its original charm as the front fence was removed to make way for a broadening of the street.

In September 1921, the Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov settled in apartment number 50 on the fourth floor with his first wife Tatyana Nikolaevna Lappa.[3] Bulgakov, who was a fierce opponent of the Soviet regime, described his aversion to the communal apartments, and especially the apartment number 50 Bolshaya Sadovaya ulitsa 10 as follows:

On Bolshaya Sadovaya street

Stands a great block of apartments.
In the block live our brothers:

The organized proletariat.[4]

Bulgakov used this building as one of the most important locations in his renowned novel The Master and Margarita, in which he described it as The Evil Apartment (Diana Burgin/Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) or The Haunted Flat (Michael Glenny).[5][6][7]

In The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov did not situate the building at number 10, using instead the number 302-bis, to denounce the complexity of the Soviet administration in his time.

In the summer of 1924, Bulgakov managed things in such way that he could move to the fifth floor, to the much quieter apartment number 34, of which he also used some characteristics in his description of apartment number 50 in the novel. His wife Tatyana Lappa would later realize that Bulgakov had arranged the move to make sure that she would not be left alone in an unpleasant environment, as a few months later, Bulgakov himself left the building to move in with Lyubov Evgenyeva Belozerskaya, whom he would marry in April 1925.[8]

Once there was a café in the basement of this building, named Pegasus' Stables, in which the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin met his later wife, the American dancer Isadora Duncan.[9]

Bulgakov's nieces Varvara M. Svetlayeva and Yelena A. Zemskaya at the Bulgakov House

Long before there was a Bulgakov museum in Moscow, Bolshaya Sadovaya ulitsa 10 was already a sort of pilgrimage for fans of the writer. The wall of the staircase leading to the apartment number 50 was overwhelmed with graffiti, drawings and quotes from The Master and Margarita.[10]

Between 1984 and 1986, the house, the staircase, and the apartment were subject of a battle between the official bodies, the caretaker of the building, and the creators of the graffiti. The graffiti were regularly removed and painted over, but the fans came back again and again to put new graffiti. The caretaker changed the entrance security code several times, but it was always broken. Eventually the official authorities gave up. In the spring of 1988, the city government gave permission to establish an official Bulgakov museum, but it would be some time before that actually happened.

In the early 21st century, the whole block was renovated, and in early 2004, a handful of enthusiastic Bulgakov adepts managed to establish a museum at Bolshaya Sadovaya number 10. On 15 May 2004, the anniversary of Mikhail Bulgakov, the Bulgakov House was opened. Since the apartment number 50 was not available at that time, the Bulgakov House took up residence on the ground floor of the building.[11]

As the Bulgakov operation became more successful, it also attracted opponents and rivals.

• One of the toughest opponents of the Bulgakov House is the self-proclaimed "keeper of the Russian cultural heritage," Aleksandr Morozov, who regards the work of Bulgakov as satanic. On December 22, 2006, he entered the repository of the Bulgakov and the studio of its children's theatre and destroyed all of its contents.[24] The damage of the vandalism totaled approximately 100,000 USD. The Bulgakov House was forced to close its doors but reopened not long after on January 1, 2007.
• There came also opposition from official corners. The well-known writer, critic, and historian Marietta Chudakova was given permission by the Department of Culture of Moscow to transform the apartment number 50 into an official museum.[25] The Museum M.A. Bulgakov was inaugurated on May 15, 2007. Inna Mishina, Chudakova's sister, was appointed as the first director. However, the official museum could hardly develop the same dynamics as its downstairs neighbors and fell prey to internal struggles. On May 14, 2012, a day before the fifth anniversary of the museum, the Department of Culture announced that Mishina was fired and that a competition would be organized to install a new management team. On October 9, 2012, the management was entrusted to the Italian architect Gabriele Filippini. Upon his appointment, Filippini announced that he had ambitious plans for the museum and its immediate vicinity, and that he was willing to work with anyone who wished to honor the legacy of Bulgakov, including the Bulgakov House and Marietta Chudakova.[26]

• Bulgakov, Michail, The Master and Margarita, Translated by Michael Glenny, Everyman's Library, New York, 1967. ISBN 0-67941-04-65
• Bulgakov, Michail, The Master and Margarita, Translated by Diana Burgin, Vintage Books, New York, 1996. ISBN 0-67976-08-06
• Bulgakov, Michail, The Master and Margarita, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Penguin Classics, New York, 1997. ISBN 0-14118-01-45
• Bushnell, John, A Popular Reading of Bulgakov: Explication des Graffiti, Slavic Review, Vol. 47, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 502–511
• Curtis, Julie, Manuscripts Don't Burn. Mikhail Bulgakov, a Life in Letters and Diaries, The Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York, 1991. ISBN 0-87951-462-0
• Proffer, Ellendea, Bulgakov. Life and Work, Ardis Publishers, Ann Arbor, 1984. ISBN 0-88233-198-1

55°46′00.87″N 37°35′34.48″E