The writers at Griboedov's

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Bulgakov describes the visitors of the Griboedov house on the evening of Berlioz' death. Most of them he only mentions briefly, but with some striking characteristics. Often it are hints enabling the reader to connect them with real life characters.

First there are the twelve members of MASSOLIT's executive board. Their chairman, Berlioz, just decapitated, is not present for obvious reasons. Ten others are explicetly mentioned by Bulgakov: Beskudnikov, Dvubratsky, Bos'n George, Zagrivov, Poprichin, Ababkov, Glukharev, Deniskin, Quant and Zjeldybin. We can only guess who the two other characters are. Maybe one of them is the voice we only hear once in the discussion, when Boz'n says that there's three thousand of them in MASSOLIT. "Three thousand one hundred and eleven", someone put in from the corner.

Further that night are prominently present on the dancing floor: the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Zhukopov the novelist, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, Dragunsky and Cherdakchi, the writer Johann from Kronstadt and a certain Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, apparently a stage director. And also the most eminent representatives of the poetry section of MASSOLIT - Baboonov, Blasphemsky, Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Addphina Buzdyak are mentioned.

Rather than parodying specific writers, Bulgakov employs Gogol's device of significant and funny-sounding names in this passage, like:

Glukharev - Глухарев - black grouse
Dragunsky - Драгунский - dragoon
Baboonov - Павианов (Pavyanov) -baboon
Blasphemsky - Богохульский (Borokhulsky) - blasphemer

The belletrist Beskudnikov

The belletrist Beskudnikov is a quiet, decently dressed man with attentive and at the same time elusive eyes. In an earlier version of the novel he was depicted as a good looking, Frenchy man with a suit and solid shoes made in France. Prototype was the writer and playwright Vladimir Mikhailovich Kirshon (1902-1938), a rival and ardent pursuer of Bulgakov.

The poet Dvubratsky

Dvubratsky is derived from the Russian word Двубратский (dvubratsky), which means two-brotherly, but which is also used to say opportunistic. It is likely that the poet Alexander Ilich Bezymensky (1898-1973) was the real prototype for Dvubratsky. Bezymensky means nameless, which feeds the theory of some scholars that Bezymensky could as well have been the real prototype of Ivan Bezdomny, the homeless. Bezymensky was a proletarian poet who had written a theatre play which partly was a parody of Bulgakov 's The Days of the Turbins.

Boz'n George

It is a natural conclusion that behind Boz'n George, the male pseudonym for the female writer Natasha Lukinisha Nepremenova in the novel, we suppose a parody of the French writer Amandine Dupin (1804-1876) who used the pseudonym Georges Sand. Sand was a 19th-century feminist, who had a relation of nine years with the composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849). She wrote novels inspired by socialism and was politically active, by being a member of the Temporary Government in 1848, in the build-up to the Second Republic in France.

According to Elena Sergeevna however, Bulgakov integrated some more writers in his description of the Boz'n George character. Like, for instance, the playwright Sofya Aleksandrovna Apraksina-Lavrinaitis, who also used a male pseudonym. She was known as Sergei Miyatezhny. She knew Bulgakov and presented him, in 1939, a libretto for the Bolshoy Theatre. Another source of inspiration for Boz'n George was Larissa Mikhailovna Reisner (1895-1926), writer and participant to the civil war during which she was actively involved on ships of the Red Fleet.

The scenarist Glukharev

Glukharev is derived from the Russian word глухарь (glukhar), which is a grouse, a bird of the family of the gallinaceans.

Tamara Polumesyats

The name Полумесяц (Polumesyats) means half moon.

The novelist Zhukopov

Zhukopov is derived from the Russian word жук (zhuk), which means beetle or bug.

Cherdakchi

Cherdakchi is derived from the Russian word чердак (cherdak), which means attic, junk room or loft.

The writer Johann from Kronstadt

With this character Bulgakov refers to the two film scripts of Vsevolod Vitalyevich Vishnevsky (1900-1951), the man who inspired him to study in depth the character of Mstislav Lavrovich. In these scripts, We from Kronstadt (1933) and We are the Russian People (1937), there is a charachter namend Johann Ilyich Sergeev (1829-1908), nicknamed Father Johann, rector of the cathedral of Kronstadt, which is not far from Saint-Petersburg. He organised many activities for the poor and was canonized by the Russian orthodox church.

Mstislav Lavrovich

Mstislav Lavrovich is the critic who reviled the novel of the Master and proposed to strike back hard against "pilatism" and "icon-daubers". According to the literators in Gribojedov he has "five rooms to himself in Perelygino". Perelygino is a symbol for Peredelkino, a place at 25 km southwest of Moscow. It was very popular among the cultural and literary elite in the Soviet era. In 1958 it became very famous when Boris Pasternak won the Nobel prize for literature. He had a dacha there and worked there on his novel Doctor Zhivago. Nowadays the new rich are buying the whole village. They demolish the wooden houses for replacing them by luxury palaces.

Lavrovich is a parody to Vsevolod Vitalyevich Vishnevsky (1900-1951), novellist and playwright and rabid rival of Bulgakov. He prevented that Bulgakov's pieces Бег (The Flight) and Мольер (Molière) could be performed.



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