Diaries and Selected Letters

November 15, 2013

When writer and playwright Bulgakov (1891-1940) forsook his medical practice for a writer's life in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, he could not have anticipated the measure of his hardships. This selection of letters (1921-40) and diary entries (1921-25) attest to the writer's personal sacrifice and commitment in defiance of totalitarian suppression and dictate. Daily accounts and correspondence to his brothers, his wives, and Constantin Stanislavski, cofounder of the Moscow Art Theatre, among other theater directors and his small circle of trusted friends, reveal a lifelong protest against bureaucratic intransigence, betrayal, and censorship. His impassioned letters to party apparatchiks and even Stalin, pleading for a chance to emigrate or secure a temporary visa, are depressing in their futility. Bulgakov often refers to his work on stories and plays, but there is little on his posthumously published masterpiece novel The Master and Margarita (1967). The informative endnotes beg amplification, and the biographical and historical "extra material" at the end of the book would have been more advantageous as a prolog contextualizing the forthcoming material. This selection, taken from more complete Russian editions (1997; 2004), is a fluid and solid English translation by Cockrell (Russian, Univ. of Exeter, England; Bulgakov's The Fatal Eggs and The White Guard). VERDICT For large public and academic libraries and ardent Bulgakov readers.--Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal

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