Written by Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita is a fantastical and satirical novel in which the Devil comes to Moscow. Along with his odd band of friends, they stir up mischief and chaos, all of which starts when Professor Woland, the Devil, interjects into a conversation between two Russians, named Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny Nikolayavich, his friend, about God and human nature. When Woland spoke strangely about the death of one of the two men, in exacting detail, the Russians determined him to be mad. The tables turned when, only moments later, that man, named Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, died in the precise manner that Woland predicted. Ivan Nikolayavich, convinced of the professor’s evil in having a role in the death of his friend, was proclaimed insane when he tried to warn people, albeit in a very odd fashion. And this is only the beginning of the trouble caused: from  manipulating a man into leaving his own home to the band of hellish creatures to having Margarita, Master’s Lover, join their group at a party where she attended nude and flew around Russia on a broom nude, to a magic show where Woland and his friends proved the constancy of human nature by making money rain from nowhere, making a boutique of fashionable clothing and shoes in exchange for whatever the women wore before only to disappear later leaving the women nude, and removing a man’s head from his body without killing him. 

This novel switches from the story’s current day to the story of Pontius Pilate. Master is the name of an author who is also proclaimed mad and in the (insanity asylum) that meets Ivan Nikolaiskich, and when the Master is told what Ivan had heard from Satan/the professor (Woland), it is revealed that both men are in the asylum due to the story of Pontus Pilate. The Master, the very picture of an oppressed writer, suffering in the world Mikhail Bulgakov created in this novel, represents, in my opinion, how he too suffered under the Soviet Union. The world created in the book shows a bleak picture of Bulgakov’s reality, the hypocrisy and foolish attempts to pretend the fundamental nature of humanity can be changed through governmental dictatorship or indoctrination that reminded me in multiple ways of the stories Ayn Rand and Solzhenitsyn wrote, all of whom too suffered under the Soviet Regime and although there are incredible differences in all three authors and their stories, their interpretations of the Soviet Union and humanity are fascinating to compare and contrast. As someone with a vested interest in the history of the Soviet Union, since my family suffered under the regime and many died under it, studying the history of the time and the psychology of mankind through literature is one of my great passions. And Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of the most phenomenal books to emerge from the Soviet Union; I would highly recommend this novel.