The Master and Margarita is a well-known work of Russian literature. In it Bulgakov, among other things, described the abode of Woland, which really exists and attracts many fans of the great writer.
House on Bolshaya Sadovaya
"Bad apartment" - so the writer calls the communal apartment number 50 in the building at the address: Moscow, st. Sadovaya, 302 bis. According to the plot, Satan himself settled here with his retinue.
Fictional address
The book fiction is actually located in Moscow at the address: Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10, apartment 50. Mikhail Bulgakov himself lived here with his wife Tatyana from 1921 to 1924.
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The house was built by architects Edmund Yuditsky and Antonin Milkov in 1903 for a wealthy merchant Ilya Pigit. According to the tradition of that time, it was called that - the house of Pigit (without declination).
The building consisted of residential buildings and art workshops, it looked like a trapezium, in the center of which was a courtyard with a fountain. A front garden was laid out in front of the house.
The house was built to rent out apartments to wealthy intellectuals. The apartments had 5-6 spacious rooms, and Pigit himself lived in a 10-room apartment. Part of the building was equipped as a hostel for female students of the Higher Courses for Women, the rooms of which had less conveniences. This was also apartment no. 50.
With the establishment of Soviet power, the house was turned into a workers' commune, where employees of Ivan Mashistov's printing house lived. The great writer also got into this company when he moved from the south of the country to Moscow.
Bulgakov described the move to the capital and the painful search for housing in the story "Memoirs", created on the occasion of Lenin's death. The writer was lucky, as his wife's brother left for Kiev and allowed his relatives to settle in his apartment. This was the same apartment number 50.
Mikhail's wife recalled the problems associated with legalization in the new housing: "… There were bitter drunks in the house management, they all came to us, threatened to dismiss his brother Andrey, and they did not register us, they apparently wanted money, but we did not have."
At that time Bulgakov managed to get a job in the literary department of the Glavpolitprosvet, which was headed by Nadezhda Krupskaya. The leader's wife helped the writer register at a new address.
Although the writer was still dissatisfied with the apartment. He described its ceiling as follows: "True, it is a disgusting ceiling - low, smoky and cracked, but still it is a ceiling, and not a blue sky in the stars over Prechistensky Boulevard."
But the playwright's main problem was the neighbors. Most of them were alcoholics and had drunken fights day and night. Bulgakov wrote in his memoirs: "I positively don't know what to do with the bastard that inhabits this apartment."
Bulgakov's friend in the gymnasium sympathized with him and also recalled an annoying episode from the creator's life in this apartment: “Bulgakov's neighbors brought a rooster from the village. He embarrassed Bulgakov by singing at night without time. Life in the city confused the rooster."
In the story "Moonshine Lake" the writer describes his neighbors. Through the wall from them lived the 23-year-old unemployed Evdokia, who was engaged in prostitution. They often knocked at them at night with the words: "Dusya, open up!" Mikhail's wife answered: "Nearby."
Fatal Annushka
Annushka first appears in Moonshine Lake, who later appears in many of the writer's works. It was his neighbor, 53-year-old Anna Fyodorovna Goryacheva, who was dependent on her husband.
In The Master and Margarita, she breaks a can of sunflower oil. In the story "No. 13. House of Elpit-Rabkommuna" she completely burns down the whole house. In this work, the writer describes the residents of his house.
The culmination of the story was Annushka's phrase, which reflects Bulgakov's attitude to the proletariat: “We are dark people. Dark people. You need to teach us, you fools …"
The playwright burns this unfortunate house several times in his works, which undoubtedly shows his real attitude towards neighbors.
In 1924 Bulgakov moved to another apartment in the same building. A wealthy married couple, the Monasevichs, lived in the new apartment. However, the writer did not stay there for a long time, because he started an affair with another woman and soon left the house on Bolshaya Sadovaya forever, moving to a new passion.
Nevertheless, it was in this house that Bulgakov's literary career began. Here he wrote his famous "White Guard".
After the death of the writer in 1940, the house was gradually emptied. Until the collapse of the USSR, it housed a communal apartment. In the 90s, an engineering bureau settled here for a short time.
Back in the 70s, young people found out that a great writer lived in this house. Boys and girls arranged gatherings with a guitar at the entrance and painted all the walls with graffiti.
In the 90s, rock musicians loved to gather here. They even staged impromptu concerts.
Gradually the house turned into a real hangout. The informals and hippies who lived in it once started a serious fire. After this incident, the police evicted all illegal tenants from the house.
In the 2000s, the Bulgakov Foundation fought to create a museum in the writer's first apartment. In 2007, they got their way. The first Moscow orphanage, so unloved by the writer, became a state museum, which bears the name of Bulgakov. He would undoubtedly appreciate this irony.
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