New works illuminate the dark times of Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov

@ Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Harvill Press, 176 pp. $16.95.

B The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Harvill Press, 128 pp. $16.95 (text translated from the Russian by Michael Glenny, distributed by Raincoast Books).

i Three unpublished stories by Mikhail Bulgakov, Madenviselle Janna, Jumping the Line, and The Conductor and the Member of the Imperial Family, in Conjunctions 31: Radical Shadows, Fall 1998 (text translated from the Russian by Annceta Greenlee).

Over supper Angarsky asked, I can’e understand it, why is it that writers nowadays are writing about all sorts of historical subjects and avoiding modern ones? — trom Yelena Sergeyevna’s diary, May 9, 1935 (Manuscripts Don’t Burn: Mikbasl Bulgakov, A Life in Letters and Diaries, J.A.E. Curtis, Bloomsbury 1991).

John Goodman This Week Editor

THE Moscow Arts Theatre records that Joseph Stalin saw Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Days of the Turbins 15 times during 1929. History doesn’t tell us whether he got comps.

The Soviet dictator played a deadly version of cat and mouse with the Russian cultural elite and kept most of “his” artists at the end of a short leash. The brilliant novelist/playwright Mikhail Bulgakov was no exception. Making the wrong move was not an option and one never knew if they’d made the right one. On May 7, 1926 the police raided Bulgakov’s flat and confiscated diaries and the manuscript to The Heart of a Dog. The government

. was building a case against the Rossiya journal which was scrializ- ing Bulgakov’s novel The White Guard. When the documents were returned he burned them. From the beginning of his career as a writer Bulgakov knew the dan- gers of publication yet he persisted in producing works that were criti- cal of the state. The Heart of a Dag is a barely disguised satire of Communist ideology that would never have been acceptable to Sovict authorities. Moscow profes- sor Preobrazhensky transplants the testes and pituitary gland from a 28-year-old male into a mongrel named Sharik(ov). His surreal take on the Russian Revolution was not published until 1987. Bulgakov’s plays would be given the green light from some bureau- crat and then go into an endless purgatory of rchearsals, Some would never be staged for the pub- lic, others would be denounced by communist party hacks and disap- pear from the repertory after opening night.

The Days of the Turbins, based on his novel The White Guard, was a huge hit for the Moscow Arts Theatre, as was Zoyka’s Apartment written in the latter part of 1925. That Stalin enjoyed The Days of the Turbins while his minions banned The White Guard suggests the shaky ground Bulgakov walked on. The play and novel are both based on the same material with “White” removed from the staged version’s title to assuage Sovict censors.

This period of history, known as che Stalin terror, increased in intensity as friends and foes disappeared. Activities “became par- ticularly sweeping after the murder of Kirov in December 1934, a murder we now know to have been engineered by Stalin him- self — who then used it as an excuse to root out supposed threats to his rule.” (Curtis 199J).

MIKHAIL BULGAKOU: BLACK an

Photo Museum of Pushkinsky Dom, St. Peteraburg

MIKHAIL Bulgakov and Yelena Sergeyevna hosted evening readings in their apartment. The writer would entertain his friends with material from what would become Slack Snow and The Master and Margarita.

I offer this ta you in place of graveside roses,

Instead of smoking incense,

You lived so severely, and to the end you carried

Your magnificent disdain.

You drank wine, you were an incomparable jester,

And gasped for breath between stifling walls,

Aud you yourself let in your awesome guest,

And with her you remained alone.

— Anna Akhmatova, April, 1940 (a poem to Bulgakov’s wife

Teleng on written after Bulgakov died of illness on March ), .

Bulgakov owed his employment as an assistant director at the Moscow Arts Theatre to a Stalin phone call. After the writer’s repeated requests to leave the country were rejected he asked for a job. Yelena Sergeyevna notes in her diary of seeing their passports on a bureaucrat’s desk waiting a final stamp of approval. It never came. :

Bulgakov’s experiences working with the Moscow Arts Theatre and his love/hate relationship with its director Stanislavsky have come down to us in his satirical novel Black Snow also known as A Theatrical Novel and The Notes of a Dead Man.

He began writing the backstage tell-all in 1936 ten years after first coming into contact with the group. While he had enjoyed much success with them he had also suffered great indignations. The playwright had no use for Stanislavski’s “method” and parodies it ruthlessly.

Bulgakov gave readings of the work-in-progress to friends but never allowed the text to leave his apartment. It tells the story of the dramatization and staging of The White Guard during 1925. Bulgakov held Stanislavski responsible for the failure of his later play Moliere (only seven perfor- mances were permitted after four years in rehearsal) and translator Michael Glenny suggests that Black Snow is his revenge.

The satire was never completed as Bulgakov spent the last years of his life working on his masterpiece The Master and Margarita. Nevertheless it is highly recommended. Both novels were first published decades after they were written and new Bulgakov material continues to come out.

The literary journal Conjunctions printed three previously unpublished short stories last fall in Radical Shadows. The complete texts are available on line at ; <www.conjunctions.com>. All three document the everyday nightmares of the Soviet reality under Stalin. In the last story the conductor of the Moscow-Byelorussian-Baltic Railroad encounters the “Emperor” in a dream. It ends like this: “Help!” Khvostikov screamed, as if his throat were being ext. And then he woke up. Bathed in cold sweat.”

Safeguarding rights on the information highway

& Freedom of Expression and New Communication Technologies, edited by Michéle Paré and Peter Desbarats, IQ Collectif/Orbicom, 261 pages, $35.

NEW York-based Loral Space & Communications Ltd. informed BeoNET, a Belgrade Internet service provider, that it was cutting off access to its satellite connection May 12 in accordance with a U.S. trade embargo against Yugoslavia.

Protests from Internet interests worldwide postponed the action but left open the question — who controls the Internet?

Orbicom, 1 UNESCO communications network, consid- ers the free flow of information in a new publication which collects research from experts in the field.

Papers include “Safeguarding humankind against the pursuit of false gods: a sociological perspective on the histo- ry of censorship” by Jean K. Chalaby, a research associate at the London School of Economics; “Privacy: our future under close surveillance” by Louise Cadoux, vice president of the National Commission on Information Technology and Frecdom in Paris; “Media in the information highway: freedom of expression in the age of global communication” by Anura Goonasekera, research director, Asian Media and Communications Centre, Brisbane; and “Indonesians use the net to fight censorship” by Andreas Harsono, Indonesian journalist, Jakarta correspondent for the Bangkok daily Nazion. In total there are 21 essays in the collection.

Freedom of Expression is an excellent source for exploring the issues affecting new communications technologies. Biographical! notes include ¢-mail addresses for each author.

To obtain a copy of Freedom of Expression and New Communication Technolagies contact Orbicom at the Université du Québec 4 Montréal, P.O. Box 8888, Downtown Branch, Montréal, Quebec H3C 3P8. The books cost $35 plus $7.45 for GST, shipping and handling.

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