Heart of a Dog only appeared in official printing after perestroika in 1987.

However, the book was circulated among the Soviet intelligentsia via self-publishing copies of samizdat in the 1960s and made a true splash. The story was written in 1925, but the manuscript was confiscated by state security services. Bulgakov was mocking the fact that not very well educated people from former “lower classes” suddenly became the ruling class.

As a result, the dog takes a human form… but becomes a drunkard and a rowdy, though it perfectly fits into the new Soviet society. He catches a stray dog and transplants a part of a human brain and testicles into it. A Young Doctor’s NotebookĪt the dawn of the new Soviet state, a genius Moscow surgeon named Professor Preobrazhensky (the prototype was allegedly Bulgakov’s uncle) does a scientific experiment. Even though the plot features anti-Bolshevik officers, Stalin himself liked the play and watched it several times in the theater. The Days of the Turbins became one of the most frequently staged plays in Russian theaters and beyond. The White Guard was published in 1925 and, in the same year Bulgakov, wrote a play based on the novel. This is a semi biographical novel and Bulgakov’s family members became prototypes for his characters, while the house where the Turbins live is clearly similar to the real Bulgakov house in Kiev. They still have guests and drink tea, but the world has changed with people reacting to the new circumstances in different ways: some become traitors, others flee, while a select few prefer to die fighting. Their house is the last shelter of the past life, ruined by the war. This is a story of the Turbin family captured by the turbulent political events. In 1918, the city wasn’t yet seized by the Bolsheviks and many of the tsarist military men and noblemen arrived there. Sergei Snezhkin/Non-stop production, 2012īulgakov’s first ever novel depicts the city of Kiev that used to be a part of the Russian Empire and now was caught in the maelstrom of the Civil War that happened in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Heart of a dog by mikhail bulgakov