Bookvica

[SAMIZDAT] Diavoliada [i.e. Diaboliad]

Bulgakov, M.

Item #2065

[1970-е]. [44] photocopy leaves (rectos only). 19x27,5 cm. In contemporary blue artificial leather binding. Endpapers faded, few small stains on outer edge of pages, otherwise very good.

A late-Soviet samizdat copy reproducing an emigre publication of the banned book.

The collection ‘Diaboliad’ is Bulgakov's only book which was published in the USSR during his lifetime. It had begun Mikhail Bulgakov’s triumphant entry into Russian literature, and with it persecution and literary ostracism. The novel ‘Diaboliad’ first appeared in the Nedra almanac (1924, No.4) and the collection of the same name was subsequently printed at the Nedra publishing house in 1925. Apart from ‘Diaboliad’, this collection consists of ‘The Fatal Eggs’, ‘#13. The House of Elpit Pabkomunna’, ‘The Chinese Story’ and ‘Chichikov’s Adventures’ (the satire on Gogol’s ‘Dead Souls’ in which the characters from the original work are placed in the early Soviet reality). Due to the criticism of the Soviet bureaucratic machine, the book caused disfavor of Soviet authorities and was confiscated two months after the release. In the following year, the editor of Nedra, Nikolay Angarsky managed to print the second edition – soon it was confiscated as well. An OGPU report of 1926 reads: “It is desirable to identify the writer M. Bulgakov, the author of the collection ‘Diaboliad’, where the story ‘Fatal Eggs’ reveals him as a typical ideologist of the modern spiteful bourgeoisie. The thing is extremely characteristic for certain circles of society.” In 1929, the main censorship organ Glavpolitprosvet included this book, as well as Bulgakov’s works printed by emigrant publishing houses, in the list of banned books.

London-based Flegon Press run by Alec Flegon was among the emigre companies spreading books by Soviet authors banned in their homeland. The company was founded in 1962, starting with ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ (despite it was officially approved by Nikita Khrushchev) and ‘The Heart of the Dog’, due to their fame among Russian emigrants. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Voznesensky spoke negatively about this publishing house – for pirated printing, typos, omissions of entire pages, changes in names, etc. The company is well-known as a participant of the black market of Soviet literature in which intelligence services were involved. Pirated abroad, the work returned to the USSR to be pirated again and spread in inconspicuous samizdat copies.

Price: $950.00