Metropol: A luxury hotel in Moscow, built at the turn of the century, decorated with mosaics by the artist Vrubel. Used mainly by foreigners during the Soviet period, it still exists and has recently been renovated.
Chapter 4: The Chase
1 about a dozen extinguished primuses: The shortage of living space after the revolution led to the typically Soviet phenomenon of the communal apartment, in which several families would have one or two private rooms and share kitchen and toilet facilities. This led to special psychological conditions among people and to a specific literary genre (the communal-apartment story, which still flourishes in Russia). The primus stove, a portable one-burner stove fuelled with pressurized benzene, made its appearance at the same time and became a symbol of communal-apartment life. Each family would have its own primus. The old wood- or (more rarely) coal- burning ranges went out of use but remained in place. The general problem of ‘living space’, and the primus stove in particular, plays an important part throughout the Moscow sections of The Master and Margarita.
2 two wedding candles: In the Orthodox marriage service, the bride and groom stand during the ceremony holding lighted candles. These are special, large, often decorated candles, and are customarily kept indefinitely after the wedding, sometimes in the comer with the family icon.
3 the Moscow River amphitheatre: Ivan takes his swim at the foot of what had been the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was dynamited in 1931. The remaining granite steps and amphitheatre were originally a grand baptismal font at the riverside, popularly known as ‘the Jordan’. The cathedral has now been rebuilt.
4 Evgeny Onegin: An opera by Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky (1840-93), with libretto by the composer’s brother Modest, based on the great ‘novel in verse’ of the same title by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837). Its ubiquity, like the orange lampshades, suggests the standardizing of Soviet life. Tatiana, mentioned further on, is the heroine of Evgeny Onegin.
Chapter 5: There were Doings at Griboedov’s
1 Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov: (1795 — 1829), poet, playwright and diplomat, best known as the author of the comedy Woe From Wit, the first real masterpiece of the Russian theatre.
2 Perelygino: The name is clearly meant to suggest the actual Peredelkino, a ‘writers’ village’ near Moscow where many writers were allotted country houses. It was a privileged and highly desirable place.
3 Yalta, Suuk-Su ... (Winter Palace): To this list of resort towns in the Crimea, the Caucasus and Kazakhstan, Bulgakov incongruously adds the Winter Palace in Leningrad, former residence of the emperors.
4 dachas: The Russian dacha (pronounced DA-tcha) is a summer or country house.
5 coachmen: Though increasingly replaced by automobiles, horse-drawn cabs were still in use in Moscow until around 1940. Thus the special tribe of Russian coachmen persisted long after their western counterparts disappeared.
Chapter 6: Schizophrenia, as was Said
1 saboteur: Here and a little further on Ivan uses standard terms from Soviet mass campaigns against ‘enemies of the people’. Anyone thought to be working against the aims of the ruling party could be denounced and arrested as a saboteur.
2 Kulak: (Russian for ‘fist’) refers to the class of wealthy peasants, which Stalin ordered liquidated in 1930.
3 the First of May: Originally commemorating the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, this day later became a general holiday of the labour movement and was celebrated with particular enthusiasm in the Soviet Union.
4 a metal man: This is the poet Pushkin, whose statue stands in Strastnaya (renamed Pushkin) Square. The snowstorm covers ...‘ is the beginning of Pushkin’s much-anthologized poem The Snowstorm’. The reference to ‘that white guard’ is anachronistic here. The White Guard opposed the Bolsheviks (’Reds‘) during the Russian civil war in the early twenties. Pushkin was fatally wounded in the stomach during a duel with Baron Georges D’ Anthes, an Alsatian who served in the Russian Imperial Horse Guard. Under the Soviet regime the term ’white guard’ was a pejorative accusation, which was levelled against Bulgakov himself after the publication of his novel, The White Guard, and the production of his play, Days of the Turbins, based on the novel. In having Riukhin talk with Pushkin’s statue, Bulgakov parodies the ‘revolutionary’ poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), whose poem Yubileinoe was written in 1924 on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth.
Chapter 7: A Naughty Apartment
1 people began to disappear: Here, as throughout The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov treats the everyday Soviet phenomenon of ‘disappearances’ (arrests) and other activities of the secret police in the most vague, impersonal and hushed manner. The main example is the arrest of the master himself in Chapter 13, which passes almost without mention.
2 Here I am!: Bulgakov quotes the exact words (in Russian translation) of Mephistopheles’ first appearance to Faust in the opera Faust, by French composer Charles Gounod (1818 — 93).
3 Woland: A German name for Satan, which appears in several variants in the old Faust legends (Valand, Woland, Faland, Wieland). In his drama, Goethe once refers to the devil as ’Junket Woland‘.
