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[SAMIZDAT] Master i Margarita [i.e. The Master and Margarita]

Item #2048

[USSR, 1960-70s]. 228 typewritten pages. 31x21 cm. In contemporary inconspicuous cloth binding common for samizdat. Slightly rubbed, otherwise mint.

Samizdat copy of the complete text of Bulgakov’s masterpiece.

Bulgakov started to work on this novel in 1928 and kept writing it until his death. The earliest version was titled ‘The Engineer’s Hoof’. Bulgakov submitted its fifth chapter ‘Mania furibunda’ [Mania of Rage] to the magazine Nedra for publication (only fragments are preserved up to today). This earliest manuscript contained all the Jerusalem chapters and material about the Devil. In his letter to the government in March 1930, he stated that he “with his own hands, threw the manuscript of the novel about the Devil into a stove”.
He returned to the idea and worked on the second version in 1931-1936. It was titled differently (The Great Chancellor, Satan, Here I am, The Black Theologian, and The Foreigner's Horseshoe). He re-wrote the novel greatly. The third version of the manuscript was formed in 1936-1937. Bulgakov stopped correcting due to his disease, a month before the death, leaving the novel with some unfinished sentences and loose ends.
In spring 1939, the author read the novel for friends. According to memoirs of his wife Elena Shilovskaya (Bulgakova), everyone fell silent after the end. In a whisper, they asked her how to hint to Bulgakov that the thing was too risky to be ever printed. In his will, Bulgakov gave his widow the right to posthumously edit the text.
During Khrushchev's Thaw, Elena Bulgakova drew up a plan to return his name to literature. She managed to publish ‘The Master and Margarita’ in the magazine ‘Moskva’ ( 1966, No. 11 and 1967, No. 1), but the text passed through rough censorship.
According to the researchers, more than 14,000 words were withdrawn from the text (159 censor cuts, of them 138 from the second part). After publication, Elena Bulgakova transferred the full text of the book abroad and the censored text was first published as a book (YMCA-Press, Paris). In 1969, the Posev publishing house (Frankfurt am Main) released a book, combining the publication in the magazine ‘Moskva’ and the text “Cuts from the novel ‘The Master and Margarita’ (1929-1940)”, prepared by E. S. Bulgakova, highlighting censorship exceptions in italics.
It was Elena Bulgakova who submitted to samizdat a typewritten copy of all censorship exceptions, indicating lines and words after which they should be inserted, in the late 1960s. In the USSR, the complete book edition without cuts but with editorial changes by A. A. Saakyants was published in 1973.

Price: $3,500.00

Status: On Hold