Fatal eggs are the meaning of the work. The story "Fatal Eggs". "Fatal eggs": analysis

"FATAL EGGS": "red beam" and its inventor

One of the sources of the plot of the story was the novel by the famous British science fiction writer HG Wells "Food of the Gods". There we are talking about wonderful food that accelerates the growth of living organisms and the development of intellectual abilities in giant people, and the growth of the spiritual and physical capabilities of mankind leads in the novel to a more perfect world order and a collision of the world of the future and the world of the past - the world of giants with the world of pygmies. In Bulgakov, however, the giants are not intellectually advanced human individuals, but especially aggressive reptiles. The "Fatal Eggs" also reflected another Wells novel - "The Struggle of the Worlds", where the Martians who conquered the Earth suddenly die from terrestrial microbes. The same fate awaits the hordes of reptiles approaching Moscow, who fall prey to the fantastic August frosts.

Among the sources of the story there are more exotic ones. So, the poet Maximilian Voloshin, who lived in Koktebel, in the Crimea, sent Bulgakov a clipping from a Feodosia newspaper in 1921, which said “about the appearance of a huge reptile in the region of Mount Kara-Dag, to capture which a company of Red Army soldiers was sent.” The writer and literary critic Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky, who served as the prototype for Shpolyansky in The White Guard, in his book Sentimental Journey (1923) cites rumors that circulated in Kiev in early 1919 and probably fed Bulgakov's fantasy:

“They said that the French had a violet ray with which they could blind all the Bolsheviks, and Boris Mirsky wrote a feuilleton “The Sick Beauty” about this ray. Beauty is an old world that needs to be treated with a violet ray. And never before had the Bolsheviks been so feared as at that time. They said that the British - they were not sick people - that the British had already landed herds of monkeys in Baku, trained in all the rules of the military system. It was said that these monkeys cannot be propagated, that they attack without fear, that they will defeat the Bolsheviks.

They showed with their hands a arshin from the floor the growth of these monkeys. It was said that when one such monkey was killed during the capture of Baku, it was buried with an orchestra of Scottish military music and the Scots wept.

Because the instructors of the monkey legions were the Scots.

A black wind was blowing from Russia, the black spot of Russia was growing, the “sick beauty” was delirious.”

In Bulgakov's work, the terrible violet ray is parodied turned into a red ray of life, which also caused a lot of trouble. Instead of marching on the Bolsheviks with miraculous fighting monkeys, allegedly brought from abroad, at Bulgakov's, hordes of giant ferocious reptiles, hatched from eggs sent from abroad, approach Moscow.

Please note that there was an original version of the story, different from the published one. On December 27, 1924, Bulgakov read The Fatal Eggs at a meeting of writers at the Nikitinskie Subbotniki cooperative publishing house. On January 6, 1925, the Berlin newspaper Dni responded to this event under the heading Russian Literary News:

“The young writer Bulgakov recently read the adventurous story The Fatal Eggs. Although it is literary insignificant, it is worth getting acquainted with its plot in order to get an idea of this side of Russian literary creativity.

The action takes place in the future. The professor invents a method of unusually rapid reproduction of eggs with the help of red sunlight ... A Soviet worker, Semyon Borisovich Rokk, steals his secret from the professor and writes boxes of chicken eggs from abroad. And so it happened that at the border they confused the eggs of reptiles and chickens, and Rokk received eggs of bare-footed reptiles. He spread them in his Smolensk province (where all the action takes place), and boundless hordes of reptiles moved to Moscow, besieged it and devoured it. The final picture is dead Moscow and a huge serpent wrapped around the bell tower of Ivan the Great.

It is unlikely that the reviews of visitors to Nikitinskiye Subbotniks, most of which Bulgakov did not put a penny on, could force the writer to change the ending of the story. There is no doubt that the first, “pessimistic” end of the story existed. Bulgakov's neighbor in the "bad apartment" writer Vladimir Lyovshin (Manasevich) gives the same version of the final, as if improvised by Bulgakov in a telephone conversation with the Nedra publishing house. Then the text of the finale was not yet ready, but Bulgakov, writing on the go, pretended to read from what was written: "... The story ended with a grandiose picture of the evacuation of Moscow, which is approached by hordes of giant boas." It should be noted that, according to the memoirs of P.N. Zaitsev, secretary of the editorial office of the Nedra almanac, Bulgakov immediately handed over the Fatal Eggs here in finished form, and, most likely, Lyovshin’s memories of “telephone improvisation” are a memory error. Incidentally, Bulgakov was informed of the existence of the "Fatal Eggs" with a different ending by an anonymous correspondent in a letter on March 9, 1936. It is possible that the final version was written down by someone present at the reading on December 27, 1924, and later got into samizdat.

Interestingly, the “pessimistic” ending that really existed almost literally coincided with the one proposed by Maxim Gorky after the publication of the story, which was published in February 1925. On May 8, he wrote to the writer Mikhail Slonimsky: “I liked Bulgakov very much, very much, but he did not finish the story. The march of reptiles to Moscow has not been used, but think what a monstrously interesting picture it is!

Probably, Bulgakov changed the ending of the story because of the obvious censorship unacceptability of the final version with the occupation of Moscow by hordes of giant reptiles.

Censorship, by the way, "Fatal Eggs" was difficult. On October 18, 1924, Bulgakov wrote in his diary:

“I still suffer in the “Beep”. I spent the day today to get 100 rubles at Nedra. Great difficulties with my grotesque story "The Fatal Eggs". Angarsky highlighted 20 places that should be changed for censorship reasons. Will it be censored? The end of the story is spoiled because I wrote it hastily.

Luckily for the writer, censorship saw in the campaign of bastards against Moscow only a parody of the intervention of 14 states against Soviet Russia during the Civil War (the bastards are foreign, since they hatched from foreign eggs). Therefore, the capture by hordes of reptiles of the capital of the world proletariat was perceived by the censors only as a dangerous allusion to the possible defeat of the USSR in a future war with the imperialists and the destruction of Moscow in this war. And the curia pestilence, against which the neighboring states establish cordons, are the revolutionary ideas of the USSR, against which the Entente proclaimed the policy of the cordon sanitaire.

However, in fact, Bulgakov's "impudence", for which he was afraid to get into "places not so remote", was quite different. The protagonist of the story is Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov, the inventor of the red "ray of life", with the help of which monstrous reptiles are brought to light. The red ray is a symbol of the socialist revolution in Russia, carried out under the slogan of building a better future, but which brought terror and dictatorship. The death of Persikov during a spontaneous riot of the crowd, excited by the threat of an invasion of Moscow by invincible giant reptiles, personifies the danger that the experiment begun by Lenin and the Bolsheviks concealed to spread the “red ray”, first in Russia, and then throughout the world.

Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov was born on April 16, 1870, because on the day the story begins in the imaginary future of 1928, on April 16, he turns 58 years old. Thus, the main character is the same age as Lenin. April 16 is also not a random date. On this day (according to New Style) in 1917, the leader of the Bolsheviks returned to Petrograd from exile. And exactly eleven years later, Professor Persikov discovered a wonderful red ray (it would be too transparent to make Persikov's birthday April 22). For Russia, the arrival of Lenin became such a ray, the next day he promulgated the famous April Theses, with a call for the development of the “bourgeois-democratic” revolution into a socialist one.

Persikov's portrait is reminiscent of Lenin's: “A wonderful head, pusher, with bunches of yellowish hair sticking out on the sides ... Persikov's face always bore a somewhat capricious imprint. On the red nose are old-fashioned small glasses in a silver frame, the eyes are shiny, small, tall, stooping. He spoke in a creaky, thin, croaking voice and, among other oddities, had this: when he said something weightily and confidently, he turned the index finger of his right hand into a hook and screwed up his eyes. And since he always spoke confidently, because his erudition in his field was absolutely phenomenal, the hook very often appeared before the eyes of Professor Persikov's interlocutors.

From Lenin here - a characteristic bald head with reddish hair, an oratorical gesture, a manner of speaking, and finally, the famous squint of eyes, which entered the Leninist myth. The vast erudition, which, of course, Lenin had, also coincides, and even Lenin and Persikov speak the same foreign languages, speaking French and German fluently. In the first newspaper report about the discovery of the red ray, the reporter misrepresented the name of the professor from rumor to Pevsikov, which clearly indicates the burriness of Vladimir Ipatievich, as well as Vladimir Ilyich. By the way, Persikov is named Vladimir Ipatievich only on the first page of the story, and then everyone around him calls him Vladimir Ipatievich - almost Vladimir Ilyich. Finally, the time and place of the completion of the story, indicated at the end of the text - "Moscow, 1924, October" - indicate, among other things, the place and year of the death of the Bolshevik leader and the month forever associated with his name thanks to the October Revolution.

In the Leninist context of the image of Persikov, the German, judging by the inscriptions on the boxes, finds its explanation of the origin of the eggs of reptiles, which then, under the influence of the red ray, almost captured (and even captured) Moscow in the first edition. After all, after the February Revolution, Lenin and his comrades were transported from Switzerland to Russia through Germany in a sealed wagon (it is not by chance that the eggs that he takes for chickens that arrived at Rocca are labeled all around).

The likening of the Bolsheviks to gigantic reptiles marching on Moscow was made in a letter from a nameless insightful Bulgakov reader on March 9, 1936: “... Among other reptiles, the non-free press undoubtedly hatched from the fatal egg.”

Among the prototypes of Persikov was the famous pathologist Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov, whose surname is parodied in the surname of Vladimir Ipatich. Abrikosov had just dissected Lenin's corpse and extracted his brain. In the story, this brain is, as it were, transferred to the scientist who extracted it, unlike the Bolsheviks, a gentle man, not a cruel one, and carried away to self-forgetfulness by zoology, and not by the socialist revolution.

Bulgakov's acquaintance with the discovery in 1921 by the biologist Alexander Gavrilovich Gurvich of mitogenetic radiation, under the influence of which mitosis (cell division) occurs, could have prompted Bulgakov's idea of the ray of life.

Chicken pestilence is a parody of the tragic famine of 1921 in the Volga region. Persikov is a comrade of the chairman of Dobrokur, an organization designed to help eliminate the consequences of the death of chicken stock in the USSR. Dobrokur clearly had its prototype in the Committee for Assistance to the Starving, created in July 1921 by a group of public figures and scientists opposed to the Bolsheviks. The Committee was headed by former ministers of the Provisional Government S.N. Prokopovich, N.M. Kishkin and a prominent figure in the liberal movement E.D. Kuskova. The Soviet government used the names of the participants in this organization to obtain foreign aid, which, however, was often used not at all to help the starving, but for the needs of the party elite and the world revolution. Already at the end of August 1921, the Committee was abolished, and its leaders and many ordinary participants were arrested. Interestingly, Persikov also dies in August. His death symbolizes, among other things, the collapse of the attempts of non-party intelligentsia to establish civilized cooperation with the totalitarian government.

L.E. Belozerskaya believed that “describing the appearance and some habits of Professor Persikov, M.A. repelled from the image of a living person, my relative, Evgeny Nikitich Tarnovsky, a professor of statistics, with whom they had to live at one time. Some features of Bulgakov's uncle on the mother's side, surgeon N.M. Pokrovsky, could also be reflected in the image of Persikov.

In The Fatal Eggs, Bulgakov, for the first time in his work, raised the problem of the responsibility of a scientist and the state for the use of a discovery that could harm humanity. The fruits of the discovery can be used by people who are unenlightened and self-confident, and even those who have unlimited power. And then the catastrophe can happen much sooner than the general welfare.

Criticism after the release of "Fatal Eggs" quickly saw through the political hints hidden in the story. A typewritten copy of an excerpt from an article by the critic M. Lirov (Moisei Litvakov) about Bulgakov's work, published in 1925 in No. 5–6 of the journal Print and Revolution, has been preserved in Bulgakov's archive. Bulgakov emphasized here the most dangerous places for himself: “But the real record was broken by M. Bulgakov with his“ story ”“ Fatal Eggs ”. This is really something remarkable for a “Soviet” almanac.” A typewritten copy of this article has been preserved in Bulgakov's archive, where the writer underlined the phrase quoted above with a blue pencil, and in red - the phrase Vladimir Ipatievich, used by Lirov seven times, of which only once - with the surname Persikov.

M. Lirov continued:

“Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov made an extraordinary discovery - he discovered a red sunbeam, under the influence of which the eggs of, say, frogs instantly turn into tadpoles, tadpoles quickly grow into huge frogs, which immediately multiply and immediately begin mutual extermination. And the same is true of all living creatures. Such were the amazing properties of the red ray discovered by Vladimir Ipatievich. This discovery was quickly learned in Moscow, despite the conspiracy of Vladimir Ipatievich. The nimble Soviet press was greatly agitated (here is a picture of the mores of the Soviet press, lovingly copied from nature ... the worst tabloid press of Paris, London and New York). Now “gentle voices” from the Kremlin rang on the phone, and the Soviet ... confusion began.

And then a disaster broke out over the Soviet country: a devastating epidemic of chickens swept through it. How to get out of a difficult situation? But who usually brings the USSR out of all disasters? Of course, agents of the GPU. And then there was one Chekist Rokk (Rock), who had a state farm at his disposal, and this Rokk decided to restore chicken breeding at his state farm with the help of Vladimir Ipatievich's discovery.

From the Kremlin came an order to Professor Persikov, so that he would lend his complex scientific apparatus to Rocca for the needs of restoring chicken breeding. Persikov and his assistant, of course, are outraged and indignant. And indeed, how can such complex devices be provided to the profane.

After all, Rokk can do disasters. But the “gentle voices” from the Kremlin are relentless. Nothing, Chekist - he knows how to do everything.

Rokk received devices operating with the help of a red beam, and began to operate on his state farm.

But a catastrophe came out - and here's why: Vladimir Ipatievich wrote out reptile eggs for his experiments, and Rokk - chicken eggs for his work. Soviet transport, of course, mixed everything up, and instead of chicken eggs, Rokk received "fatal eggs" of reptiles. Instead of chickens, Rokk spread huge reptiles that devoured him, his employees, the surrounding population and rushed in huge masses to the whole country, mainly to Moscow, destroying everything in their path. The country was declared under martial law, the Red Army was mobilized, the detachments of which died in heroic but fruitless battles. Danger already threatened Moscow, but then a miracle happened: in August, terrible frosts suddenly struck, and all the bastards died. Only this miracle saved Moscow and the entire USSR.

But on the other hand, a terrible riot took place in Moscow, during which the “inventor” of the red ray, Vladimir Ipatievich, also died. Crowds of people broke into his laboratory and shouted: “Beat him! World Villain! You dismissed the reptiles!“ - they tore him to pieces.

Everything fell into place. Although the assistant of the late Vladimir Ipatievich continued his experiments, he failed to open the red beam again.

The critic stubbornly called Professor Persikov Vladimir Ipatievich, also emphasizing that he was the inventor of the red ray, i.e., as it were, the architect of the October Socialist Revolution. It was clear to those in power that the figure of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was peeping behind Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov, and the "Fatal Eggs" was a libelous satire on the late leader and the communist idea as a whole. M. Lirov focused the attention of possible biased readers of the story on the fact that Persikov died during a popular uprising, that they kill him with the words "world villain" and "you dismissed the bastards." Here one could see a hint of Lenin as the proclaimed leader of the world revolution, as well as an association with the famous “hydra of revolution”, as opponents of the Soviet government expressed it (the Bolsheviks, in turn, spoke of the “hydra of counterrevolution”). It is interesting that in the play “Running ”, ended in the year when the action of the “Fatal Eggs” takes place, the “eloquent” messenger Krapilin calls the hangman Khludov “the world beast”.

And the death of the "inventor of the red ray" at the hands of the indignant "crowds of people" (Bulgakov does not have such an exalted expression) could hardly please the communists in power. Lirov was afraid to openly declare that Lenin was parodied in the story (he himself could be attracted for such inappropriate associations), but he hinted at this, we repeat, very directly and transparently. Wells did not deceive him. The critic argued that “from mentioning the name of his progenitor Wells, as many are now inclined to do, Bulgakov’s literary face does not at all clear up. And what is Wells, really, when here the same boldness of fiction is accompanied by completely different attributes? The resemblance is purely external ... ”Lirov, like other Bulgakov ill-wishers, sought, of course, to clarify not the literary, but the political face of the writer.

By the way, the mention of Wells in "Fatal Eggs" could also have political meaning. The great science fiction writer, as you know, visited our country and wrote the book “Russia in the Dark” (1921), where, in particular, he spoke about meetings with Lenin and called the Bolshevik leader, who spoke with inspiration about the future fruits of the GOELRO plan, “the Kremlin dreamer.” Bulgakov's "Kremlin dreamer" depicts Persikov, detached from the world and immersed in his scientific plans. True, he does not sit in the Kremlin, but he constantly communicates with the Kremlin leaders in the course of action.

The hopes that the critics in the service of power, unlike thoughtful and sympathetic readers of the author, would not catch the anti-communist orientation of the "Fatal Eggs" and would not understand who exactly was parodied in the image of the protagonist did not come true (although the purposes of disguise should have served and transferring the action to a fantastic future, and explicit borrowings from Wells' novels "Food of the Gods" and "War of the Worlds"). Vigilant critics understood everything.

M. Lirov, who became adept at literary denunciations (only literary ones?) and did not know in the 1920s that he would perish during the great purge of 1937, sought to read and show "who should" even what in the "Fatal Eggs" and was not, without stopping at direct fraud. The critic claimed that Rokk, who played the main role in the tragedy, was a Chekist, an employee of the GPU. Thus, a hint was made that the story parodied real episodes of the struggle for power that unfolded in the last years of Lenin's life and in the year of his death, where the Chekist Rokk (or his prototype F.E. Dzerzhinsky) finds himself at the same time with some "affectionate voices" in the Kremlin and leads the country to disaster with his inept actions.

In fact, Rokk is not a Chekist at all, although he conducts his experiments in the Krasny Luch under the protection of GPU agents.

He is a participant in the Civil War and the revolution, into the abyss of which he throws himself, "changing his flute for a destructive Mauser", and after the war "edits a" huge newspaper "in Turkestan, having managed to become famous as a member of the" supreme economic commission "for his amazing work on irrigating the Turkestan region "".

The obvious prototype of Rocca is the editor of the Kommunist newspaper and the poet G.S. Astakhov, one of the main persecutors of Bulgakov in Vladikavkaz in 1920-1921, although the resemblance to F.E. Dzerzhinsky, who headed the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the country, is also possible if desired. see. In "Notes on the Cuffs" a portrait of Astakhov is given: "bold with an eagle face and a huge revolver on his belt." Rokk, like Astakhov, walks around with a Mauser and edits a newspaper, only not in the Caucasus, but in the equally outlying Turkestan. Instead of the art of poetry, which Astakhov considered himself involved in, who denounced Pushkin and considered himself clearly superior to the "sun of Russian poetry", Rokk is committed to the art of music. Before the revolution, he was a professional flutist, and then the flute remains his main hobby. That is why he tries at the end, like an Indian fakir, to bewitch a giant anaconda by playing the flute, but without success.

If we accept that L.D. Trotsky, who really lost the struggle for power in 1923-1924 (Bulgakov noted this in his diary), could be one of the prototypes of Rocca, then one cannot but marvel at the completely mystical coincidences. Trotsky, like Rokk, played the most active role in the revolution and the Civil War, being chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. At the same time, he was also engaged in economic affairs, in particular, the restoration of transport, but switched entirely to economic work after leaving the military department in January 1925. In particular, Trotsky briefly headed the main committee on concessions. Rokk arrived in Moscow and received a well-deserved rest in 1928. With Trotsky, the same thing happened almost at the same time. In the autumn of 1927 he was taken out of the Central Committee and expelled from the party, at the beginning of 1928 he was exiled to Alma-Ata, and literally a year later he was forced to leave the USSR forever, to disappear from the country. Needless to say, all these events took place after the creation of the Fatal Eggs. Lirov wrote his article in the middle of 1925, during a period of further intensification of the inner-party struggle, and, it seems, counting on the inattention of readers, he tried to attribute to Bulgakov its reflection in the Fatal Eggs, written almost a year earlier.

Bulgakov's story did not go unnoticed by the informants of the OPTU either. On February 22, 1928, one of them reported:

“The most irreconcilable enemy of the Soviet power is the author of The Days of the Turbins and Zoya’s Apartment, Mikh. Afanasyevich Bulgakov, former Smenovekhovets. One can simply be amazed at the long-suffering and tolerance of the Soviet government, which still does not prevent the distribution of Bulgakov's book (ed. "Nedra") "Fatal Eggs". This book is a brazen and outrageous slander against the Red authorities. She vividly describes how, under the influence of a red ray, reptiles gnawing each other were born, who went to Moscow. There is a vile place there, a vicious nod towards the late comrade LENIN, who lies a dead toad, which even after death has an evil expression on its face (here we mean a giant frog, bred by Persikov with the help of a red beam and her aggressiveness, and “even after her death there was an evil expression on her muzzle” - here the sexist saw a hint of Lenin’s body, preserved in the mausoleum. - B.S.). How this book of his walks freely is impossible to understand. It is read avidly. Bulgakov is loved by young people, he is popular. His earnings reach 30,000 rubles. in year. One tax he paid 4000 rubles. Because he paid that he was going to go abroad.

These days he was met by Lerner (we are talking about the famous Pushkinist N.O. Lerner. - B.S.). Bulgakov is very offended by the Soviet government and is very dissatisfied with the current situation. You can't work at all. Nothing is certain. We need either war communism again, or complete freedom. The coup, says Bulgakov, should be made by a peasant who finally spoke his real native language. In the end, there are not so many communists (and among them are “such”), but there are tens of millions of offended and indignant peasants. Naturally, during the first war, communism will be swept out of Russia, etc. Here are the thoughts and hopes that are swarming in the head of the author of Fatal Eggs, who is about to take a walk abroad. It would be quite unpleasant to release such a "bird" abroad ... By the way, in a conversation with Lerner, Bulgakov touched on the contradictions in the policy of the Soviet authorities: - On the one hand, they shout - save. And on the other hand: if you start saving, they will consider you a bourgeois. Where is the logic?

Of course, one cannot vouch for the literal accuracy of the transmission by an unknown agent of Bulgakov's conversation with Lerner. However, it is quite possible that it was precisely the tendentious interpretation of the story by the scammer that contributed to the fact that Bulgakov was never released abroad. In general, what the writer said to the Pushkinist is in good agreement with the thoughts captured in his diary "Under the heel." There, in particular, there are arguments about the likelihood of a new war and the inability of the Soviet government to withstand it. In an entry dated October 26, 1923, Bulgakov cited his conversation on this subject with a neighbor baker:

“The actions of the authorities are considered fraudulent (bonds, etc.). He said that two Jewish commissars in the Krasnopresnensky soviet had been beaten up by those who came to the mobilization for arrogance and threats with a revolver. I don't know if it's true. According to the baker, the mood of the mobilized is very unpleasant. He, a baker, complained that hooliganism among young people was developing in the villages. In the head of the little one is the same as in everyone else - in his own mind, he understands perfectly well that the Bolsheviks are swindlers, they don’t want to go to war, they have no idea about the international situation. We are a wild, dark, unfortunate people.

Obviously, in the first edition of the story, the capture of Moscow by foreign bastards symbolized the future defeat of the USSR in the war, which at that moment the writer considered inevitable. The invasion of reptiles also personified the ephemerality of the NEP prosperity, drawn in a fantastic 1928 rather parodic.

Curious responses also appeared on the "Fatal Eggs" abroad. Bulgakov kept in his archives a typewritten copy of a TASS report dated January 24, 1926, entitled "Churchill is afraid of socialism." It said that on January 22 British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, in a speech in connection with the workers' strikes in Scotland, pointed out that "the terrible conditions that exist in Glasgow breed communism", but "we do not want to see Moscow crocodile eggs on our table (underlined by Bulgakov. - B.S.). I am sure that the time will come when the liberal party will render all possible assistance to the conservative party in the eradication of these doctrines. I am not afraid of a Bolshevik revolution in England, but I am afraid of an attempt by the socialist majority to arbitrarily introduce socialism. One tenth of the socialism that ruined Russia would have completely ruined England ... ”(It is difficult to doubt the validity of these words today, seventy years later.)

In The Fatal Eggs, Bulgakov parodied V.E. Meyerhold, mentioning "the theater named after the late Vsevolod Meyerhold, who died, as you know, in 1927, when staging Pushkin's Boris Godunov, when trapezes with naked boyars collapsed." This phrase goes back to one joke conversation in the editors of Gudok, which is reported by the head of the "fourth page" of this newspaper, Ivan Semenovich Ovchinnikov:

“The beginning of the twenties ... Bulgakov is sitting in the next room, but for some reason he brings his sheepskin coat to our hanger every morning. The sheepskin coat is one of a kind: it has no fasteners and no belt. He put his hands in the sleeves - and you can consider yourself dressed. Mikhail Afanasyevich himself certifies a sheepskin coat like this - Russian okhaben. Fashion of the late seventeenth century. In the annals for the first time it is mentioned under 1377. Now at Meyerhold's, in such shocks, Duma boyars are falling from the second floor. The injured actors and spectators are taken to the Sklifosovsky Institute. I recommend to see…”

Obviously, Bulgakov suggested that by 1927 - exactly 550 years after the first mention of the ohabny in the annals, Meyerhold's creative evolution would come to the point that the actors playing the boyars would be removed from the okhabny and left in what their mother gave birth, so that only directing and technique acting game replaced all the historical scenery. After all, Vsevolod Emilievich said at one of the lectures in February 1924 about the production of Godunov: to all the tragedy ... "

It is curious that, as in the early story “The Green Serpent”, which has not survived, the snake motif, and even in combination with a woman, reappears in the writer in 1924 in the story “Fatal Eggs”. In this story, Bulgakov's fantasy in the Smolensk province near Nikolskoye created the Krasny Luch state farm, where director Alexander Semenovich Rokk conducts a tragic experiment with reptile eggs - and a giant anaconda hatched before his eyes devours his wife Manya. Perhaps Bulgakov's impressions of Smolensk formed the basis of The Green Serpent, and he wrote the story even then.

By the way, Bulgakov's acquaintance with M.M. Zoshchenko could also be reflected here. The fact is that in November 1918 Mikhail Mikhailovich worked as a poultry farmer (officially the position was called “instructor in rabbit breeding and chicken breeding”) at the Smolensk state farm “Mankovo” near the city of Krasny and restored the number of chickens there after the past pestilence. Perhaps this circumstance prompted the choice of the Smolensk province, which Bulgakov knew so well as a zemstvo doctor, as the place of action for the experiment "to restore the number of chickens in the republic" as the place of action. Zoshchenko and Bulgakov met no later than May 10, 1926, when they performed together in Leningrad at a literary evening. But it is quite possible that they met as early as 1924.

Although Bulgakov and Zoshchenko were in different districts of the Smolensk province almost at the same time, the psychology of the peasants was the same everywhere. And hatred of the landlords was combined with the fear that they might still return.

But Bulgakov still saw the peasant revolt in Ukraine and knew that the naive darkness of the peasants is easily combined with incredible cruelty.

The "First Color" in the title bears a certain resemblance to the Amphitheater's "Fire-Color". It seems that the later edition of this early story could be the famous story of 1924 "Khan's Fire". It describes a fire that really took place in the Muravishniki estate on the eve of the February Revolution. True, in the story he is attributed to the beginning of the 20s.

In the same story, by the way, one of the heroes of Henryk Senkevich, Tatar Asia from “Pan Volodyevsky”, the son of the Tatar leader, who really existed Tugay-bey, who died near Berestechko, was reflected (Tugay-bey himself, as a minor character, acts in the first novel of the trilogy - “ fire and sword). Asia serves the Poles, but then betrays them and burns down the place where the Tatar banner led by him stands. In Bulgakov’s story “Khan’s Fire”, the last representative of the princely family, the Tugay-begs, like his literary prototype, obsessed with a thirst for destruction and revenge, burns down his estate turned into a museum so that the rebellious people could not use it. It should be noted that in 1929, one of the chapters of the first edition of The Master and Margarita, Mania Furibunda, given on May 8 for a separate publication in the almanac Nedra, was signed by the author with the pseudonym K. Tugai.

The Yusupov estate served as the prototype for the estate in Khan's Fire, probably because Bulgakov was specifically interested in the story of the assassination of Grigory Rasputin, in which Prince Felix Feliksovich Yusupov (the younger) played a prominent role. In 1921, Bulgakov was going to write a play about Rasputin and Nicholas II. In a letter to his mother in Kiev on November 17, 1921, he asked to pass on to his sister Nadia: “... We need all the material for the historical drama - everything that concerns Nikolai and Rasputin in the period of 16 and 17 years (murder and coup). Newspapers, a description of the palace, memoirs, and most of all Purishkevich’s “Diary” (Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich, one of the leaders of the extreme right in the State Duma, a monarchist, together with Prince F.F. Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich organized the murder of G.E. Rasputin in December 1916, described in detail in a posthumously published diary. - B.S.) - to the point! Description of costumes, portraits, memoirs, etc. “I cherish the idea of creating a grandiose drama in 5 acts by the end of the 22nd year. Some sketches and plans are already ready. The thought fascinates me insanely... Of course, with the withering work that I do, I will never be able to write anything worthwhile, but at least the dream and work on it are dear. If the “Diary” falls into the hands of her (Nadya. - B.S.) temporarily, I ask you to immediately write off verbatim from it everything that concerns the murder with the gramophone (the gramophone was supposed to drown out the sound of the shots, and before that, create the impression in Rasputin, that the wife of F.F. Yusupov, Irina Aleksandrovna Yusupova, the granddaughter of Alexander III and the niece of Nicholas II, who was lusted by the “old man” (Grigory. - B.S.), Felix and Purishkevich’s conspiracy, Purishkevich’s reports to Nikolai, the personality of Nikolai Mikhailovich (we are talking about Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich (1859–1919), chairman of the Russian Historical Society, who was shot during the Red Terror. - B.S.), and send me in letters (I think you can? Heading “Drama Material”? ) (Here is a hint at the widespread perusal of letters. - B.S.) ". However, Bulgakov never wrote a play about Rasputin and Nicholas II. The writer's very appeal to this topic speaks enough of his disappointment in the monarchy. According to the censorship conditions of that time in a work of any genre, Nicholas II and other representatives of the Romanov family could only be portrayed negatively. But Bulgakov himself treated the overthrown dynasty in the early 1920s already quite negatively. In a diary entry on April 15, 1924, he expressed himself rudely and directly in his hearts: “Damn all the Romanovs! They weren't enough." The unfulfilled plan of the historical play, obviously, was reflected in the "Khan's Fire". There is a fairly strong anti-monarchist tendency here. Nicholas II in the photograph is described as "a nondescript person with a beard and mustache, resembling a regimental doctor." In the portrait of Emperor Alexander I, “the bald head smiled slyly in the smoke.” Nicholas I is a “white-haired general”. His mistress was once an old princess, "inexhaustible in depraved fiction, who wore two glory all her life - a dazzling beauty and a terrible Messalina." She could well have been among the outstanding harlots at the Great Ball of Satan, along with the profligate wife of the Roman emperor Claudius I, Valeria Messalina, who was executed in 48.

Nicholas II is also satirically depicted in Bulgakov's last play Batum. Closely related to the imperial family, Prince Tugai-Beg is presented as a man doomed to extinction, who left no offspring and dangerous to society with his willingness to destroy the family nest, so long as it does not become the property of those whom the prince hates. If the devil did not take him, as Bulgakov wished for the Romanovs, then, of course, the devil brought him.

The prototype of Prince Anton Ivanovich Tugay-Beg could be the father and full namesake of the murderer Rasputin, Prince Felix Feliksovich Yusupov (senior, born Count Sumarokov-Elston). In 1923, when the story takes place, he was 67 years old. The wife of the elder Yusupov, Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova, was also still alive at that time, but Bulgakov forced the wife of the hero of the "Khan's Fire" to die earlier in order to leave him completely alone, as Pontius Pilate and Woland later did in "The Master and Margarita" (remember the words Woland on the Patriarchs: “One, one, I am always alone”). Pavel Ivanovich, the younger brother of Tugai-Beg, mentioned in the story, who served in the horse grenadiers and died in the war with the Germans, has as his possible prototype the elder brother F.F. , but killed in a duel in 1908 by Lieutenant of the Cavalier Guard Regiment Count A.E. Manteuffel, who came from the Baltic Germans.

But back to the Fatal Eggs. There are other parody sketches in the story. For example, the one where the fighters of the First Cavalry, at the head of which “in the same raspberry hood, like all riders, rides the commander of the horse mass, who became legendary 10 years ago, aged and gray-haired” - Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, - go on a campaign against reptiles from thieves' song, performed in the manner of the "Internationale":

No ace, no queen, no jack,

We will beat the bastards, no doubt,

Four on the side - yours are not there ...

Combining this song with the lines of the "Internationale", we get a funny, but quite meaningful text:

No one will give us deliverance -

No ace, no queen, no jack.

We will achieve liberation

Four on the side - yours are not.

It was quite appropriate to put a thieves' song in the rhythm of the "Internationale" into the mouths of the Budyonnovites. The slang expression of professional cheaters “Four on the side - there are none of yours” is decoded by Fima Zhiganets in the article “On the secret symbolism of one name in the novel The Master and Margarita”: “... In the pre-revolutionary years, this proverb did not have a wide “circulation”, it was used only in a narrow circle of the underworld. It was born among gamblers, from a situation in the game "point". If a banker buys a nine or ten to the ace he has in his hands (the only two cards that have four suit icons on each side; in the center of the nine there is another icon, the ten has two), this means his undoubted win. He immediately scores either 20 points or 21 (the face value of the ace is 11 points). Even if the player has 20 points, the draw is interpreted in favor of the banker ("banker's point"), and if the player immediately scored 21 points, this would mean his automatic win, and it makes no sense for the banker to buy cards. Thus, “four on the side” are four icons of the card suit, meaning the inevitable loss of the player. Later, the expression began to be used in a figurative sense to denote a hopeless situation, a loss.

There were critical and positive responses to "Fatal Eggs". So, Yu. Sobolev in "Dawn of the East" on March 11, 1925, assessed the story as the most significant publication in the 6th book of "Nedr", stating: "Only Bulgakov with his ironically fantastic and satirically utopian story" Fatal Eggs "suddenly falls out of the general, very well-intentioned and very decent tone. The critic saw the “utopianism” of the “Fatal Eggs” “in the very drawing of Moscow in 1928, in which Professor Persikov again receives an “apartment with six rooms” and feels his whole life as it was ... before October.” However, in general, Soviet criticism reacted negatively to the story as a phenomenon that countered the official ideology. Censorship became more vigilant towards the novice author, and Bulgakov's next story, The Heart of a Dog, was never published during his lifetime.

Fatal Eggs was a great reader success and even in 1930 remained one of the most requested works in libraries.

An analysis of the artistic motives of the "Fatal Eggs" gives reason to speculate about how Bulgakov treated Lenin.

At first glance, this attitude of Bulgakov is quite benevolent, judging only by the image of Persikov and the censored essays discussed in the first volume of our book. The professor evokes obvious sympathy for his tragic death, and genuine grief upon receiving the news of the death of his long-dead, but still beloved wife, and his commitment to strict scientific knowledge, and unwillingness to follow the political situation. But this is clearly not from the Leninist hypostasis of Persikov, but from two others - a Russian intellectual and a creative scientist. After all, Persikov had another prototype - Bulgakov's uncle, surgeon Nikolai Mikhailovich Pokrovsky. Hence, probably, the high growth of Persikov, and the bachelor lifestyle, and much more. As for Lenin, Bulgakov, as we shall now see, was not at all positive.

The fact is that Bulgakov's Leniniana on Persikov has by no means ended. Let's try to run a little ahead and find Lenin's trace in the novel "The Master and Margarita", begun by the writer in 1929, that is, five years after the "Fatal Eggs". The new novel chronologically continued the story, as it were, because, as we will show later, its action also takes place in 1929 - which, as expected, immediately after 1928 - that near future in which the events in the story unfold. Only in The Master and Margarita Bulgakov no longer describes the future, but the present.

In order to understand what Lenin became the prototype of which hero of The Master and Margarita, let us turn to the clipping from Pravda dated November 6–7, 1921, preserved in Bulgakov’s archive, with the memoirs of Alexander Shotman “Lenin in the Underground”. It described how the leader of the Bolsheviks in the summer and autumn of 1917 was hiding from the Provisional Government, which declared him a German spy. Shotman, in particular, noted that "not only counterintelligence and criminal detectives were put on their feet, but even dogs, including the famous sniffer dog Tref, were mobilized to capture Lenin" and they were helped by "hundreds of voluntary detectives among the bourgeois inhabitants" . These lines make us recall the episode of the novel, when the famous police dog Tuztuben unsuccessfully searches for Woland and his henchmen after the scandal in Variety. By the way, after February 1917, the police was officially renamed the police by the Provisional Government, so the bloodhound of Clubs, like Tuzbuben, should be correctly called the police.

The events described by Shotman are very reminiscent of their atmosphere of the search for Woland and his retinue (after a session of black magic) and, to an even greater extent, the actions in the epilogue of the novel, when distraught inhabitants detain tens and hundreds of suspicious people and cats. The memoirist also quotes the words of Ya.M. Sverdlov at the VI Congress of the Party that "although Lenin is deprived of the opportunity to personally attend the congress, he is invisibly present and leads it." In exactly the same way, Woland, by his own admission to Berlioz and Bezdomny, was invisibly personally present at the trial of Yeshua, “but only secretly, incognito, so to speak,” and the writers in response suspected that their interlocutor was a German spy.

Shotman tells how, hiding from enemies, Lenin and G.E. Zinoviev, who was with him in Razliv, changed their appearance: “Comrade. Lenin in a wig, without a mustache and beard was almost unrecognizable, while Comrade. Zinoviev by this time had grown a mustache and a beard, his hair was cut, and he was completely unrecognizable. Perhaps that is why both Professor Persikov and Professor Woland are shaved by Bulgakov, and Behemoth the cat, Woland’s favorite jester, the closest to him of the entire retinue, suddenly acquires a resemblance to Zinoviev in The Master and Margarita. Fat Zinoviev, who loved to eat, in a mustache and beard, was supposed to acquire something of a cat in appearance, and on a personal level he was in fact the closest to Lenin of all the leaders of the Bolsheviks. By the way, Stalin, who replaced Lenin, treated Zinoviev as a jester, although later, in the 1930s, he did not spare him.

Shotman, who was with Lenin both in Razliv and in Finland, recalled one of his conversations with the leader: “I am very sorry that I did not study shorthand and did not write down everything that he said then. But ... I am convinced that much of what happened after the October Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich foresaw even then. In The Master and Margarita, Woland is endowed with a similar gift of foresight.

A.V. Shotman, who wrote the memoirs that nourished Bulgakov's creative imagination, was shot in 1937, and his memoirs were banned. Mikhail Afanasyevich, of course, remembered that Persikov's prototype had been identified quite easily at the time. True, later, after the death of Bulgakov, when the "Fatal Eggs" were not reprinted for decades, even for people professionally engaged in literature, the connection between the protagonist of the story and Lenin became far from obvious, and still could not be announced due to severe censorship. . For the first time, as far as we know, such a connection was openly played up in the staging of "Fatal Eggs", staged by E. Elanskaya at the Moscow theater "Sphere" in 1989. But Bulgakov's contemporaries were much more directly interested in collecting compromising evidence than their descendants, and the censorship was more vigilant. So Lenin's ends in the novel had to be hidden more carefully, otherwise it was not necessary to seriously count on publication. One likeness of Lenin to Satan was worth something!

The following literary source, in particular, served the purposes of disguise. In 1923, Mikhail Zoshchenko's story "The Case of a Dog" appeared. It was about an old professor conducting scientific experiments with the prostate gland in dogs (Professor Preobrazhensky also makes similar experiments in Heart of a Dog), and the criminal bloodhound Trefka also appeared in the course of the action. The story was quite well known to contemporaries, and with him, and not with Shotman's memoirs, which were never reprinted after 1921, hardly anyone would compare Bulgakov's dog Tuzbuben. So Bulgakov's novel had a kind of cover. And such a forced disguise by some prototypes of others has become one of the "signature" features of Bulgakov's work.

The parody itself in Zoshchenko's story is based on the fact that the club is a state suit, which is why police (as well as police) dogs were often called by a similar name. Before the revolution, the ace of diamonds was sewn on the back of criminals (Blok's characterization of the revolutionaries from The Twelve immediately comes to mind: “You should have an ace of diamonds on your back”).

Of course, Woland can claim the title of the prettiest devil in world literature, but at the same time he remains a devil. And any doubts about Bulgakov's attitude to Lenin completely disappear when the name of another character in The Master and Margarita is revealed, the prototype of which was also Ilyich.

Let us recall the dramatic artist who urged the manager of the house, Bosoy, and other detainees to voluntarily surrender their currency and other valuables. In the final text, he is called Savva Potapovich Kurolesov, but in the previous edition of 1937-1938 he was named much more transparently - Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov (as an option - also Ilya Potapovich Burdasov). This is how this unsympathetic character is described: “The promised Burdasov was not slow to appear on stage and turned out to be elderly, clean-shaven, in a tailcoat and white tie.

Without any preamble, he drew up a gloomy face, knitted his eyebrows and spoke in an unnatural voice, looking at the golden bell:

Like a young rake waiting for a meeting with some sly debauchee ...

Further, Burdasov told a lot of bad things about himself. Nikanor Ivanovich, very gloomy, heard Burdasov confess that some unfortunate widow, howling, knelt before him in the rain, but did not touch the artist's callous heart. Prior to this incident, Nikanor Ivanovich did not know the poet Pushkin at all, although he often uttered the phrase: “Will Pushkin pay for the apartment?” children on his knees and involuntarily thought: “That bastard Burdasov!” And he, raising his voice, went on and completely confused Nikanor Ivanovich, because he suddenly began to address someone who was not on stage, and for this he answered himself, and called himself either “sovereign”, then “baron”, then “father”, then “son”, then to “you”, and then to “you”.

Nikanor Ivanovich understood only one thing, that the artist died an evil death, shouting: “Keys! The keys are mine!“ - after that he collapsed on the floor, wheezing and tearing off his tie.

When he died, he got up, brushed the dust from his tailcoat knees, bowed, smiling with a false smile, and with liquid applause he left, and the entertainer spoke like this.

Well, dear money changers, you listened to Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov's wonderful performance of The Miserly Knight.

A woman with children, on her knees begging the "mean knight" for a piece of bread, is not just a quote from Pushkin's "The Miserly Knight", but also an allusion to a famous episode from the life of Lenin. In all likelihood, Bulgakov was familiar with the contents of the article “Lenin in power”, published in the popular Russian émigré Parisian magazine “Illustrated Russia” in 1933 by the author, hiding under the pseudonym “Chronicler” (possibly, this was the former secretary of the Orgburo who fled to the West and Politburo Boris Georgievich Bazhanov). In this article we find the following curious touch to the portrait of the Bolshevik leader:

“From the very beginning, he perfectly understood that the peasantry would not go for the sake of the new order, not only for selfless sacrifices, but also for the voluntary return of the fruits of their hard labor. And alone with his closest collaborators, Lenin did not hesitate to say just the opposite of what he had to say and write officially. When it was pointed out to him that even the children of workers, that is, of the very class for whose sake and in whose name the coup was carried out, were malnourished and even starving, Lenin indignantly parried the claim:

The government cannot give them bread. Sitting here, in St. Petersburg, you won't get bread. You have to fight for bread with a rifle in your hands ... If they don’t know how to fight, they will die of hunger! .. ”

It is difficult to say whether the leader of the Bolsheviks really said this or we are dealing with another legend, but Lenin's mood is conveyed authentically here.

Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov is a parody of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin). The correspondences here are obvious: Ilya Vladimirovich - Vladimir Ilyich, Ulyana - Akulina (the last two names are steadily conjugated in folklore). The names themselves, which form the basis of surnames, are also significant. Ulyana is a distorted Latin Juliana, that is, belonging to the Julius family, from which Julius Caesar also came, whose nickname was adopted by the Russian tsars in a modified form. Akulina is a distorted Latin Akilina, that is, eagle, and the eagle, as you know, is a symbol of the monarchy. Probably, in the same row and patronymic Persikov - Ipatievich. It appeared not only because of the consonance Ipatich - Ilyich, but, most likely, also because in the house of engineer Ipatiev in Yekaterinburg in July 1918, by order of Lenin, the Romanov family was destroyed. Let us also recall that the first Romanov, before his wedding to the kingdom, took refuge in the Ipatiev Monastery.

Although in the early 1920s Bulgakov was going to write a book about the royal family and G.E. fakes like "The Conspiracy of the Empress" by A.N. Tolstoy and P.E. Shchegolev. But Mikhail Afanasyevich was keenly interested in materials related to the fate of the last Russian tsar.

Since the name Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov would have been too obvious a challenge to censorship, Bulgakov tried other names for this character, which were supposed to make readers smile without scaring the censors at the same time. He was called, in particular, Ilya Potapovich Burdasov, which caused associations with hunting dogs. In the end, Bulgakov named his hero Savva Potapovich Kurolesov. The name and patronymic of the character is associated with the censor Savva Lukich from the play "Crimson Island" (you can also recall Lenin's popular nickname - Lukich). And the surname reminds of the consequences for Russia of the activities of the leader of the Bolsheviks and his comrades, who really "played tricks." In the epilogue of the novel, the actor, like Lenin, dies an evil death - from a blow. The appeals that Akulinov-Kurolesov addresses to himself: “sovereign”, “father”, “son” are an allusion both to the monarchical essence of Lenin’s power (the term “commissar-power”, popular in the first years after the revolution among the anti-communist opposition), and to the deification of the personality of the leader by Soviet propaganda (he is both God the son, and God the father, and God the holy spirit).

The story `The Fatal Eggs` is a fantastic work and, at the same time, terrifyingly realistic. You will enjoy the atmosphere and spirit of the story, embodied in a capacious, multifaceted `Bulgakov` language, a vivid game of allegories and meaning, bitter and merciless humor .... Scientist Persikov develops a ray of life that can repeatedly accelerate the development of living beings. Alexander Semenovich Rokk, head of the state farm, is going to take advantage of this discovery. He orders boxes of chicken eggs from abroad. As a result of a fatal mistake, eggs of snakes, crocodiles and ostriches are sent to the state farm, which have bred, grown to incredible sizes and moved to Moscow ...

"Fatal Eggs" - a story. Published: Nedra, M., 1925, No. 6. Included in the collections: Bulgakov M. Diaboliad. Moscow: Nedra, 1925 (2nd ed. - 1926); and Bulgakov M. Fatal eggs. Riga: Literature, 1928. In an abbreviated form under the title "Ray of Life" story R. Ya. published: Krasnaya Panorama, 1925, Nos. 19-22 (in No. 22 - under the title "Fatal Eggs").

One of the sources of the plot of R. I. served as the novel of the English writer HG Wells (1866-1946) "Food of the Gods" (1904), which deals with a wonderful food that accelerates the growth of living organisms and the development of intellectual abilities in giant people, and the growth of the spiritual and physical capabilities of mankind leads in the novel to a more perfect world order and the collision of the world of the future and the world of the past - the world of giants with the world of pygmies. Bulgakov's giants are not intellectually advanced human individuals, but especially aggressive reptiles. In R. I. Wells' other novel, "The Struggle of the Worlds" (1898), where the Martians who conquered the Earth suddenly die from terrestrial microbes, was also reflected. Bulgakov's reptiles approaching Moscow fall prey to the fantastic August frosts.

Among the sources of R. I. There are also more exotic ones. So, the poet Maximilian Voloshin (Kiriyenko-Voloshin) (1877-1932), who lived in Koktebel in the Crimea, sent Bulgakov a clipping from a Feodosia newspaper in 1921, which said "about the appearance of a huge reptile in the region of Kara-Dag Mountain, to capture which was sent company of the Red Army."

The writer and literary critic Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893-1984), who served as the prototype for Shpolyansky in The White Guard, in his book Sentimental Journey (1923) cites rumors that circulated in Kiev in early 1919 and, perhaps, fueled Bulgakov's fantasy: that the French have a violet ray with which they can blind all the Bolsheviks, and Boris Mirsky wrote a feuilleton "The Sick Beauty" about this ray. Beauty is the old world that needs to be treated with a violet ray. And never before have the Bolsheviks been so feared as then time. They said that the British - they were not sick people - that the British had already landed herds of monkeys in Baku, trained in all the rules of the military system. They said that these monkeys cannot be propagated, that they attack without fear, that they will defeat the Bolsheviks.
They showed with their hands a arshin from the floor the growth of these monkeys. It was said that when one such monkey was killed during the capture of Baku, it was buried with an orchestra of Scottish military music and the Scots wept.
Because the instructors of the monkey legions were the Scots.
A black wind blew from Russia, the black spot of Russia grew, the "sick beauty" was delirious.

In R. I. a terrible violet ray parodic turned into a red ray of life, which also caused a lot of trouble. Instead of marching on the Bolsheviks with miraculous fighting monkeys, allegedly brought from abroad, at Bulgakov's, hordes of giant ferocious reptiles, hatched from eggs sent from abroad, approach Moscow.

In the text of R. I. the time and place of writing the story are indicated: "Moscow, 1924, October". The story existed in the original edition, different from the published one. December 27, 1924 Bulgakov read R. Ya. at a meeting of writers at the cooperative publishing house "Nikitinsky subbotniki". On January 6, 1925, the Berlin newspaper Dni, under the heading Russian Literary News, responded to this event: “The young writer Bulgakov recently read the adventurous story Fatal Eggs. Although it is literary insignificant, it is worth getting acquainted with its plot in order to compose yourself an idea of this side of Russian literary creativity.
The action takes place in the future. The professor invents a method of unusually rapid reproduction of eggs with the help of red solar rays ... A Soviet worker, Semyon Borisovich Rokk, steals his secret from the professor and orders boxes of chicken eggs from abroad. And so it happened that at the border they confused the eggs of reptiles and chickens, and Rokk received eggs of bare-footed reptiles. He spread them in his Smolensk province (where all the action takes place), and boundless hordes of reptiles moved to Moscow, besieged it and devoured it. The final picture is a dead Moscow and a huge snake wrapped around the bell tower of Ivan the Great.
The theme is fun! However, the influence of Wells ("Food of the Gods") is noticeable. Bulgakov decided to rework the end in a more optimistic spirit. The frost came and the bastards died out ... ".

Bulgakov himself, in a diary entry on the night of December 28, 1924, described his impressions "from reading R. Ya. on Nikitinsky Subbotniks" as follows: "When I went there - a childish desire to excel and shine, and from there - a complex feeling. What is this? Feuilleton? Or audacity? Or maybe serious? Then not baked. In any case, there were about 30 people sitting there, and not one of them is not only a writer, but does not even understand what Russian literature is.
I'm afraid that no matter how they put me for all these exploits "in places not so remote" ... These "Nikitinsky subbotniks" are musty, Soviet slave rags, with a thick admixture of Jews.

It is unlikely that the opinions of visitors to "Nikitinsky Subbotniks", which Bulgakov put so low, could force the writer to change the ending of R. Ya. There is no doubt that the first, "pessimistic" end of the story existed. Bulgakov's former neighbor in the Bad Apartment, writer Vladimir Lyovshin (Manasevich) (1904-1984), gives the same version of the ending, as if improvised by Bulgakov in a telephone conversation with the Nedra publishing house, when the text was not yet ready: "... The story ended with a grandiose a picture of the evacuation of Moscow, which is approached by hordes of giant boas."

According to the memoirs of P. N. Zaitsev (1889-1970), secretary of the editorial office of the Nedra almanac, Bulgakov immediately handed R. Ya here. in finished form, and most likely V. Lyovshin's memories of the "telephone improvisation" of the finale are a memory error. About the existence of R. I. with a different ending, an anonymous correspondent informed Bulgakov in a letter on March 9, 1936, in connection with the inevitable removal from the repertoire of the play "The Cabal of the Holy Ones", naming among what "is written by you, but maybe it is attributed and transmitted" "ending option" R. i. and the story "Heart of a Dog" (it is possible that the variant of the ending of R. Ya. was written down by someone present at the reading on December 27, 1924 and later ended up in samizdat).

It is interesting that the real "pessimistic" ending almost literally coincided with the one proposed by the writer Maxim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) (1865-1936) after the publication of the story, which was published in February 1925. On May 8 of the same year, he wrote to the writer Mikhail Leonidovich Slonimsky (1897-1972): "I liked Bulgakov very much, very much, but he did not finish the story. The campaign of reptiles against Moscow was not used, but think what a monstrously interesting picture it is!"

Gorky remained unaware of the note in "Days" on January 6, 1925, and he did not know that the end he proposed existed in the first edition of R. Ya. Bulgakov never recognized this Gorky review, just as Gorky did not suspect that in Bulgakov's diary entry on November 6, 1923, the author R. Ya. spoke very highly of him as a writer and very lowly - as a person: "I read Gorky's masterful book" My Universities ". Gorky is unsympathetic to me as a person, but what a huge, strong writer he is and what terrible and important things he says about the writer ".

The author of "My Universities" (1922), from his Western European "beautiful far away" could not imagine the absolute obsceneness of the variant of the finale with the occupation of Moscow by hordes of giant reptiles. Bulgakov, most likely, realized this and, either under pressure from censorship, or anticipating its objections in advance, remade the ending of R. I.

Luckily for the writer, the censors saw the bastards in R. Ya in the campaign against Moscow. only a parody of the intervention of 14 states against Soviet Russia during the civil war (the bastards are foreign, since they hatched from foreign eggs). Therefore, the capture by hordes of reptiles of the capital of the world proletariat was perceived by the censors only as a dangerous allusion to the possible defeat of the USSR in a future war with the imperialists and the destruction of Moscow in this war. For the same reason, the play "Adam and Eve" was not released later, in 1931, when one of the leaders of Soviet aviation, Ya. .

In the same context, the Curium Mor was perceived, against which neighboring states set up cordons. It meant the revolutionary ideas of the USSR, against which the Entente proclaimed the cordon sanitaire policy. However, in fact, Bulgakov's "impudence" in R. Ya., for which he was afraid to get into "places not so remote", was something else, and the system of images in the story primarily parodied somewhat different facts and ideas.

The main character is R. i. - Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov, inventor of the red "ray of life". It is with the help of this beam that monstrous reptiles are brought to light, threatening the death of the country. The red ray is a symbol of the socialist revolution in Russia, carried out under the slogan of building a better future, but which brought terror and dictatorship. The death of Persikov during a spontaneous riot of the crowd, excited by the threat of an invasion of Moscow by invincible giant reptiles, personifies the danger that the experiment begun by V. I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks concealed to spread the "red ray" at first in Russia, and then throughout the world .

Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov was born on April 16, 1870, because on the day R. I began to act. in an imaginary future of 1928, he turns 58 on April 16. The main character is the same age as Lenin. April 16 is also not a random date. On this day (according to New Style) in 1917, the leader of the Bolsheviks returned to Petrograd from exile. It is significant that exactly eleven years later, Professor Persikov discovered a wonderful red ray. For Russia, the arrival of Lenin in 1917 became such a ray, the next day he promulgated the famous April Theses calling for the development of the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution into a socialist one.

The portrait of Persikov is also very reminiscent of the portrait of Lenin: “A wonderful head, pusher, with tufts of yellowish hair sticking out on the sides ... Persikov’s face always bore a somewhat capricious imprint. tall, round-shouldered. He spoke in a creaky, thin, croaking voice, and among other oddities had this: when he said something weighty and confident, he turned the index finger of his right hand into a hook and screwed up his eyes. And since he always spoke confidently, for erudition in his field was absolutely phenomenal, the hook very often appeared before the eyes of Professor Persikov's interlocutors. From Lenin here - a characteristic bald head with reddish hair, an oratorical gesture, a manner of speaking, and finally, the famous squint of eyes, which entered the Leninist myth.

The vast erudition, which, of course, Lenin had, also coincides, and even Lenin and Persikov speak the same foreign languages, speaking French and German fluently. In the first newspaper report about the discovery of the red ray, the professor's surname was misrepresented by a reporter from hearing to Pevsikov, which clearly indicates the burriness of Vladimir Ipatievich, like Vladimir Ilyich. By the way, Persikov is named Vladimir Ipatievich only on the first page of the R. Ya., and then everyone around him calls him Vladimir Ipatievich - almost Vladimir Ilyich.

In the Leninist context of the image of Persikov, a foreign explanation finds its own, and specifically: the German, judging by the inscriptions on the boxes, the origin of the eggs of reptiles, which then, under the influence of the red ray, almost captured (and in the first edition of R. Ya. even captured) Moscow. After the February Revolution, Lenin and his comrades were transported from Switzerland to Russia through Germany in a sealed wagon (it is not for nothing that it is emphasized that the eggs that arrived at Rocca, which he takes for chicken, are covered with labels all around). The likening of the Bolsheviks to gigantic reptiles marching on Moscow was already made in a letter from a nameless insightful Bulgakov reader: “Dear Bulgakov, You yourself predicted the sad end of your Molière: among other reptiles, undoubtedly, the non-free press hatched from the fatal egg.

Among the prototypes of Persikov was also the famous biologist and pathologist Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov (1875-1955), whose surname was parodied in the surname of the main character R. Ya. And it is no coincidence that it was parodied, for it was Abrikosov who dissected Lenin's corpse and removed his brain. In R. I. this brain, as it were, was handed over to the scientist who extracted it, a gentle man, and not a cruel one, unlike the Bolsheviks, and carried away to self-forgetfulness by zoology, and not by the socialist revolution.

It is possible that the idea of the ray of life in R. I. Bulgakov was prompted by his acquaintance with the discovery in 1921 by biologist Alexander Gavrilovich Gurvich (1874-1954) of mitogenetic radiation, under the influence of which mitosis (cell division) occurs. In fact, mitogenetic radiation is the same thing that is now called the "biofield". In 1922 or 1923 A. G. Gurvich moved from Simferopol to Moscow, and Bulgakov could even meet with him.

Pictured in R. i. chicken pestilence is, in particular, an image of the tragic famine of 1921 in the Volga region. Persikov is a comrade of the chairman of Dobrokur, an organization designed to help eliminate the consequences of the death of chicken stock in the USSR. Dobrokur clearly had as its prototype the Committee for Assistance to the Starving, created in July 1921 by a group of public figures and scientists who opposed the Bolsheviks. The Committee was headed by former ministers of the Provisional Government S. N. Prokopovich (1871-1955), N. M. Kishkin (1864-1930) and a prominent figure in the Menshevik Party E. D. Kuskova (1869-1958). The Soviet government used the names of the members of this organization to obtain foreign aid, which was often used not at all to help the starving, but for the needs of the party elite and the world revolution. Already at the end of August 1921, the Committee was abolished, and its leaders and many ordinary participants were arrested.

In R. I. Persikov also dies in August. His death symbolizes, among other things, the collapse of the attempts of non-party intelligentsia to establish civilized cooperation with the totalitarian government. An intellectual standing outside of politics is one of Persikov's hypostases, all the more shading the other - the parody of this image in relation to Lenin. As such an intellectual, Bulgakov's acquaintances and relatives could serve as prototypes for Persikov. In her memoirs, the writer's second wife, L. E. Belozerskaya, expressed the opinion that "describing the appearance and some of the habits of Professor Persikov, M. A. started from the image of a living person, my relative, Evgeny Nikitich Tarnovsky", a professor of statistics, who had them at the same time had to live. It is possible that in the figure of the main character R. I. some features of Uncle Bulgakov were also reflected on the part of the mother of the surgeon Nikolai Mikhailovich Pokrovsky (1868-1941), the indisputable prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky in The Heart of a Dog.

There is also a third hypostasis of the image of Persikov - this is a brilliant scientist-creator, who opens a gallery of such heroes as the same Preobrazhensky, Molière in "The Cabal of Saints" and "Moliere", Efrosimov in "Adam and Eve", the Master in "The Master and Margarita". In R. I. Bulgakov, for the first time in his work, raised the question of the responsibility of the scientist and the state for the use of a discovery that could harm humanity. The writer showed the danger that the fruits of the discovery will be appropriated by unenlightened and self-confident people, and even those with unlimited power. Under such circumstances, catastrophe can occur much sooner than general prosperity, as shown by the example of Rocca. This surname itself may have been born from the abbreviation ROKK - the Russian Red Cross Society, in whose hospitals Bulgakov worked as a doctor in 1916 on the Southwestern Front of the First World War - the first catastrophe that humanity experienced before his eyes in the 20th century. And, of course, the name of the unlucky director of the Krasny Luch state farm indicated fate, an evil fate.

Criticism after the release of R. i. quickly figured out the political hints hidden in the story. A typewritten copy of an excerpt from an article by critic M. Lirov (M. I. Litvakov) (1880-1937) about Bulgakov's work, published in 1925 in No. 5-6 of the journal Print and Revolution, has been preserved in Bulgakov's archive. In this passage, it was about R. I. Bulgakov emphasized here the most dangerous places for himself: "But the real record was broken by M. Bulgakov with his" story "Fatal Eggs". This is really something remarkable for a "Soviet" almanac.
Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov made an extraordinary discovery - he discovered a red sunbeam, under the influence of which the eggs of, say, frogs instantly turn into tadpoles, tadpoles quickly grow into huge frogs, which immediately multiply and immediately begin mutual extermination. And also about all living creatures. Such were the amazing properties of the red ray discovered by Vladimir Ipatievich. This discovery was quickly learned in Moscow, despite the conspiracy of Vladimir Ipatievich. The nimble Soviet press was greatly agitated (here is a picture of the customs of the Soviet press, lovingly copied from nature ... the worst tabloid press of Paris, London and New York) (we doubt that Lirov had ever been to these cities, and even more so was familiar with the customs local press). Now "gentle voices" from the Kremlin rang on the phone, and the Soviet ... confusion began.
And then a disaster broke out over the Soviet country: a devastating epidemic of chickens swept through it. How to get out of a difficult situation? But who usually brings the USSR out of all disasters? Of course, agents of the GPU. And then there was one Chekist Rokk (Rock), who had a state farm at his disposal, and this Rokk decided to restore chicken breeding at his state farm with the help of Vladimir Ipatievich's discovery.
From the Kremlin came an order to Professor Persikov, so that he would lend his complex scientific apparatus to Rocca for the needs of restoring chicken breeding. Persikov and his assistant, of course, are outraged and indignant. And, indeed, how can such complex devices be provided to the profane. After all, Rokk can do disasters. But the "gentle voices" from the Kremlin are relentless. Nothing, Chekist - he knows how to do everything.
Rokk received devices operating with the help of a red beam, and began to operate on his state farm. But a catastrophe came out - and here's why: Vladimir Ipatievich wrote out reptile eggs for his experiments, and Rokk - chicken eggs for his work. Soviet transport, of course, mixed everything up, and Rokk instead of chicken eggs received "fatal eggs" of reptiles. Instead of chickens, Rokk spread huge reptiles that devoured him, his employees, the surrounding population and rushed in huge masses to the whole country, mainly to Moscow, destroying everything in their path. The country was declared under martial law, the Red Army was mobilized, the detachments of which died in heroic but fruitless battles. Danger already threatened Moscow, but then a miracle happened: in August, terrible frosts suddenly struck, and all the bastards died. Only this miracle saved Moscow and the entire USSR.
But on the other hand, a terrible riot took place in Moscow, during which the "inventor" of the red ray, Vladimir Ipatievich, also died. Crowds of people burst into his laboratory and shouted: "Beat him! World villain! You dismissed the reptiles!" tore him apart.
Everything fell into place. The assistant of the late Vladimir Ipatievich, although he continued his experiments, failed to open the red beam again.

The critic M. Lirov stubbornly called Professor Persikov Vladimir Ipatievich, also emphasizing that he was the inventor of the red ray, i.e. as if the architect of the October socialist revolution. Those in power were clearly given to understand that behind Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov, the figure of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was peeping, and R. I. - a libelous satire on the late leader and the communist idea in general. M. Lirov drew the attention of possible biased readers of the story to the fact that Vladimir Ipatievich died during a popular uprising, that they kill him with the words "world villain" and "you dismissed the reptiles." Here one could see an allusion to Lenin as the proclaimed leader of the world revolution, as well as an association with the famous "hydra of revolution", as the opponents of Soviet power expressed it (the Bolsheviks, in turn, spoke of the "hydra of counterrevolution"). It is interesting that in the play "Running" (1928), completed in the year when the action takes place in the imaginary future of R. Ya., the "eloquent" messenger Krapilin calls the hangman Khludov "the world beast."

The picture of the death of the protagonist R. Ya., parodying the already mythologized Lenin, from the indignant "crowds of people" (this lofty pathetic expression is an invention of a critic, it is not in Bulgakov's story) could hardly please those who were in power in the Kremlin. And neither Wells nor Lirov, nor other vigilant readers could deceive. Elsewhere in his article on Bulgakov, the critic argued that "from the mention of the name of his progenitor Wells, as many are now inclined to do, Bulgakov's literary face is not at all cleared up. And what kind of Wells, really, when here is the same courage of fiction accompanied completely different attributes? The resemblance is purely external..." But the connection here can be even more direct: G. Wells visited our country and wrote the book Russia in the Dark (1921), where, in particular, he spoke about meetings with Lenin called the Bolshevik leader, who spoke with inspiration about the future fruits of the GOELRO plan, a "Kremlin dreamer" - a phrase that was widely used in English-speaking countries, and later played up and refuted in the play "Kremlin Chimes" (1942) by Nikolai Pogodin (Stukalov) (1900-1962). In R. I. a similar "Kremlin dreamer" depicts Persikov, detached from the world and immersed in his scientific plans. True, he does not sit in the Kremlin, but he constantly communicates with the Kremlin leaders in the course of action.

M. Lirov, who became adept at literary denunciations (is it only literary?), Incidentally, he himself perished in the next wave of repressions in the 30s, sought to read and show "who should" even what is in R. I. there was no stopping at outright rigging. The critic claimed that Rokk, who played the main role in the tragedy, was a Chekist, an employee of the GPU. Thus, a hint was made that in R. I. the real episodes of the struggle for power that unfolded in the last years of Lenin’s life and in the year of his death are parodied, where the Chekist Rock (or his prototype F.E. The Kremlin and leads the country to disaster with their inept actions. Actually in R. i. Rokk is not a Chekist at all, although he conducts his experiments in the "Red Luch" under the protection of agents of the GPU. He is a participant in the civil war and revolution, into the abyss of which he throws himself, "changing his flute for a destructive Mauser", and after the war "edits a" huge newspaper "in Turkestan", having managed to become famous as a member of the "higher economic commission" "for his amazing work on irrigating the Turkestan the edges".

The obvious prototype of Rocca is the editor of the Kommunist newspaper and the poet G.S. Astakhov, one of the main persecutors of Bulgakov in Vladikavkaz in 1920-1921. and his opponent in the debate about Pushkin (although the resemblance to F. E. Dzerzhinsky, who headed the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the country from 1924, can also be seen if desired). In "Notes on Cuffs" a portrait of Astakhov is given: "bold with an eagle face and a huge revolver on his belt." Rokk, like Astakhov, has as his attribute a huge revolver - a Mauser, and edits a newspaper, only not in the native outlying Caucasus, but in the native outlying Turkestan. Instead of the art of poetry, which Astakhov considered himself involved in, who denounced Pushkin and considered himself clearly superior to the "sun of Russian poetry", Rokk is committed to the art of music. Before the revolution, he was a professional flutist, and then the flute remains his main hobby. That is why he tries at the end, like an Indian fakir, to bewitch the giant anaconda by playing the flute, but without any success. In the novel Girl from the Mountains (1925), Bulgakov's friend from Vladikavkaz, Yuri Slezkin (1885-1947), G.S. revolver.

If we accept that one of the prototypes of Rocca could be L. D. Trotsky, who really lost the struggle for power in 1923-1924. (Bulgakov noted this in his diary as early as January 8, 1924), one cannot but marvel at the completely mystical coincidences. Trotsky, like Rokk, played the most active role in the revolution and civil war, being chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. At the same time, he was also engaged in economic affairs, in particular, the restoration of transport, but switched entirely to economic work after leaving the military department in January 1925. Rokk arrived in Moscow and received a well-deserved rest in 1928. With Trotsky, this happened almost at the same time. In the autumn of 1927 he was taken out of the Central Committee and expelled from the party, at the beginning of 1928 he was exiled to Alma-Ata, and literally a year later he was forced to leave the USSR forever, to disappear from the country. Needless to say, all these events took place after the creation of R. I.! M. Lirov wrote his article in the middle of 1925, during a period of further intensification of the intra-party struggle, and, it seems, in the calculation that readers would not notice, he tried to attribute to Bulgakov its reflection in R. Ya., written almost a year earlier.

Bulgakov's story did not go unnoticed by the informers of the OGPU either. On February 22, 1928, one of them reported: “The implacable enemy of the Soviet government is the author of The Days of the Turbins and Zoya’s Apartment, Mikh. Afanasyevich Bulgakov, a former Smenovekhovite. Bulgakov's book (ed. "Nedra") "Fatal Eggs". This book is a brazen and outrageous slander against the Red authorities. It vividly describes how, under the influence of the red ray, bastards gnawing each other were born, who went to Moscow. There is a vile place , a vicious nod towards the late comrade LENIN, who lies a dead toad, which even after death has an evil expression on its face (here we mean a giant frog, bred by Persikov with a red beam and killed with potassium cyanide because of its aggressiveness, moreover "Even after her death, her muzzle had an evil expression" - a hint at the body of Lenin, preserved in the mausoleum.) It is impossible to understand how this book of his roams freely. It is read avidly. Bulgakov is loved by young people, he is popular. His earnings reach 30,000 rubles. in year. One tax he paid 4,000 rubles.
Because he paid that he was going to go abroad.
These days he was met by Lerner (famous Pushkinist I. O. Lerner (1877-1934). Bulgakov is very offended by the Soviet government and very dissatisfied with the current situation. It is impossible to work at all. There is nothing certain. War communism or complete freedom is necessary either again. The coup, says Bulgakov, should be made by a peasant who finally spoke his real native language. In the end, there are not so many communists (and among them are "such"), but tens of millions of offended and indignant peasants. Naturally, during the first war communism will be swept out of Russia, etc. Here are the thoughts and hopes that are swarming in the head of the author of "Fatal Eggs", who is about to take a walk abroad. in a conversation with Lerner, Bulgakov touched on the contradictions in the policy of the Soviet authorities: "On the one hand, they shout - save. And on the other: if you start saving, they will consider you a bourgeois. Where is the logic."

One cannot vouch for the literal accuracy of the transmission by an unknown agent of Bulgakov's conversation with Lerner. But, it is quite possible that it is the tendentious interpretation of R. I. scammer contributed to the fact that Bulgakov was never released abroad. On the whole, what the writer said to the Pushkinist agrees well with the thoughts embodied in his diary Under the Heel. There are arguments about the likelihood of a new war and the inability of the Soviet government to withstand it. In a note dated October 26, 1923, Bulgakov cited his conversation on this topic with a neighbor baker: “He considers the actions of the authorities to be fraudulent (bonds, etc.). He said that two Jewish commissars in the Krasnopresnensky Soviet were beaten by those who came to the mobilization for arrogance and threats with a revolver. I don’t know if it’s true. According to the baker, the mood of the mobilized is very unpleasant. He, the baker, complained that hooliganism among young people is developing in the villages. In the head of the little one is the same as in everyone else - in his own mind, he understands perfectly well that the Bolsheviks are crooks, they don't want to go to war, they have no idea about the international situation. We are a wild, dark, unhappy people."

Obviously, in the first edition of R. I. the capture of Moscow by foreign bastards symbolized the future defeat of the USSR in the war, which at that moment the writer considered inevitable. The invasion of reptiles also personified the ephemerality of the NEP prosperity, drawn in a fantastic 1928 rather parodic. The same attitude towards NEP is the author of R. Ya. expressed in a conversation with N. O. Lerner, information about which reached the OGPU.

On R. I. There were interesting responses from abroad as well. Bulgakov kept in his archives a typewritten copy of a TASS report dated January 24, 1926, entitled "Churchill is afraid of socialism." It said that on January 22 British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill (1874-1965), in a speech in connection with the strikes of workers in Scotland, pointed out that "the terrible conditions that exist in Glasgow give rise to communism", but "We do not want to see on Moscow crocodile eggs on our table (emphasized by Bulgakov) I am sure that the time will come when the Liberal Party will render every possible assistance to the Conservative Party in the eradication of these doctrines I am not afraid of the Bolshevik revolution in England, but I am afraid of the attempt of the socialist majority to introduce socialism without authorization One tenth of socialism, which ruined Russia, would finally ruin England ... "

There are in R. I. and other parody sketches. For example, the one where the fighters of the First Cavalry, at the head of which "in the same raspberry hood, like all riders, rides who became legendary 10 years ago, aged and gray-haired commander of the equestrian bulk" - Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny (1883-1973), - perform in a campaign against reptiles with a thieves' song, performed in the manner of the "Internationale":
No ace, no queen, no jack,
We will beat the bastards, no doubt,
Four on the side - yours are not there ...

A real case (or, at least, a rumor widely spread in Moscow) found its place here. On August 2, 1924, Bulgakov entered in his diary the story of his acquaintance, the writer Ilya Kremlev (Sven) (1897-1971), that "the regiment of the GPU went to a demonstration with an orchestra that played" These girls all adore ". In R. I. The GPU was replaced by the First Cavalry, and such foresight, in the light of the above-cited article by M. Lirov, turned out to be not superfluous at all. The writer was familiar with the testimonies and rumors about the customs of the Budyonnovsk freemen, distinguished by violence and robberies. They were captured in the book of stories "Konarmiya" (1923) by Isaac Babel (1894-1940) (albeit in a slightly softened form against the facts of his own cavalry diary). It was quite appropriate to put a thug song in the rhythm of the "International" into the mouths of the Budyonnovites. It is curious that in Bulgakov's diary the last entry made more than six months after the release of R. Ya., on December 13, 1925, it is dedicated specifically to Budyonny and characterizes him quite in the spirit of Cavalry fighters singing the thieves "Internationale" in R. Ya.: "I heard in passing that Budyonny's wife had died. Then the rumor that suicide, and then, it turns out, he killed her. He fell in love, she interfered with him. Remains completely unpunished. According to the story, she threatened him that she would expose his cruelty to the soldiers in tsarist times, when he was a sergeant-major. "The degree of reliability of these rumors is difficult to assess even today.

On R. I. There were critical and positive responses. So, Yu. Sobolev in "Dawn of the East" on March 11, 1925 assessed the story as the most significant publication in the 6th book of "Nedr", stating: "Only Bulgakov with his ironically fantastic and satirically utopian story" Fatal Eggs " unexpectedly falls out of the general, very well-intentioned and very decent tone. "Utopian" R. Ya. the critic saw “in the very drawing of Moscow in 1928, in which Professor Persikov again receives an “apartment with six rooms” and feels his whole life as it was ... before October.”

But in general, Soviet criticism reacted to R. Ya. negatively as a phenomenon that contradicts the official ideology. Censorship became more vigilant towards the novice author, and Bulgakov's next story, The Heart of a Dog, was never published during his lifetime. The secretary of the American embassy in Moscow, Charles Boolen, who was friends with Bulgakov in the mid-1930s and became ambassador to the USSR in the 1950s, according to the author R. Ya. it was the appearance of this story in his memoirs that he called as a milestone, after which criticism seriously fell on the writer: "Coup de grace (decisive blow) was directed against Bulgakov after he wrote the story "Fatal Eggs." A small literary magazine "Nedra" printed story in its entirety before the editors realized that it was a parody of Bolshevism, which turns people into monsters that destroy Russia and can only be stopped by the intervention of the Lord.When the real meaning of the story was understood, a campaign of accusation was unleashed against Bulgakov.

R. i. enjoyed great reader success and even in 1930 remained one of the most requested works in libraries. On January 30, 1926, Bulgakov signed an agreement with the Moscow Chamber Theater to stage R. Ya. However, sharp criticism of R. I. in the censored press made the prospects of staging R.ya. not too encouraging, and instead of R. i. "Crimson Island" was staged. The contract for this play, concluded on July 15, 1926, left the staging of R. Ya. as a fallback: "In the event that "Crimson Island" cannot, for any reason, be accepted for production by the Directorate, then M.A. Bulgakov undertakes instead of him, on account of the payment made for "Crimson Island", to provide the Directorate with a new a play based on the plot of the story "Fatal Eggs" ...

"Crimson Island" appeared on stage at the end of 1928, but was already banned in June 1929. Under those conditions, the chances of staging R. I. disappeared completely, and Bulgakov never returned to the idea of staging.

The attachment:

"Fatal Eggs" Bulgakov M.A.

"Fatal Eggs", written, according to M. Gorky, "witty and deft", was not just, as it might seem, a caustic satire on the Soviet society of the NEP era. Bulgakov here makes an attempt to put an artistic diagnosis of the consequences of a gigantic experiment that was carried out on the “progressive part of humanity”. In particular, we are talking about the unpredictability of the intrusion of reason, science into the endless world of nature and human nature itself. But didn’t the wise Valery Bryusov speak about this a little earlier than Bulgakov, in the poem “The Riddle of the Sphinx” (1922)?

The World Wars under microscopes silently tell us about other universes.

Ho we are among them - in the forest calves,

And it's easier for thoughts to sit under the windows ...

All in the same cage guinea pig

All the same experience with chickens, with reptiles ...

Ho before Oedipus the solution of the Sphinx,

Prime numbers are not all solved.

It is the experience “with chickens, with reptiles”, when giant reptiles come to life instead of elephant-like broilers under the miraculous red ray, accidentally discovered by Professor Persikov, that allows Bulgakov to show where the road paved with the best intentions leads. In fact, the result of Professor Persikov's discovery is (to use the words of Andrei Platonov) only "damage to nature." But what is this discovery?

“In the red band, and then in the entire disk, it became crowded, and the inevitable struggle began. The reborn lashed out at each other furiously and tore and swallowed. Among the born lay the corpses of those who died in the struggle for existence. The best and strongest won. And those best ones were terrible. Firstly, they were approximately twice as large as ordinary amoebas, and secondly, they were distinguished by some special malice and agility.

The red ray discovered by Persikov is a kind of symbol that is repeated many times, say, in the titles of Soviet magazines and newspapers (“Red Light”, “Red Pepper”, “Red Journal”, “Red Searchlight”, “Red Evening Moscow” and even organ of the GPU "Red Raven"), whose employees are eager to glorify the feat of the professor, in the name of the state farm, where the decisive experiment should be carried out. Bulgakov in passing here parodies the teaching of Marxism, which, as soon as it touches something living, immediately causes the class struggle to boil in it, "malice and agility." The experiment was doomed from the outset and burst at the behest of predestination, fate, which in the story was personified in the person of the communist-ascetic and director of the Red Luch state farm Rocca. The Red Army must enter into a deadly battle with the reptiles crawling towards Moscow.

“- Mother ... mother ... - rolled over the rows. Packets of cigarettes jumped in the lighted night air, and white teeth grinned at the stunned people from the horses. Through the ranks a muffled and heart-stinging chant flowed:

No ace, no queen, no jack,

We will beat the bastards without a doubt,

Four on the side - yours are not there ...

Buzzing peals of “hurrah” floated over all this mess, because a rumor spread that ahead of the ranks on a horse, in the same raspberry hood, like all the riders, was riding the legendary 10 years ago, aged and gray-haired commander of the equestrian bulk.

How much salt and hidden rage in this description, which certainly brings Bulgakov back to painful memories of the lost Civil War and its winners! In passing, he is an impudence unheard of in those conditions! - poisonously mocks the holy of holies - the anthem of the world proletariat "The Internationale", with its "No one will give us deliverance, neither God, nor the tsar and nor the hero ...". This story-pamphlet ends with a blow of a sudden, in the middle of summer, frost, from which reptiles die, and the death of Professor Persikov, with whom the red ray is lost, forever extinguished.

The World Wars under microscopes silently tell us about other universes.

Ho we are between them - in the forest calves,
And it's easier for thoughts to sit under the windows ...
All in the same cage guinea pig
All the same experience with chickens, with reptiles ...
Ho before Oedipus the solution of the Sphinx,
Prime numbers are not all solved.

... Neither ace, nor queen, nor jack,
We will beat the bastards without a doubt,
Four on the side - yours are not there ...

M.A. Bulgakov (1891-1940). Life and destiny. Writer's satire. Analysis of satirical works ("Heart of a Dog", "Fatal Eggs").

The whole life of this restless and brilliant writer was, in essence, a merciless battle with stupidity and meanness, a struggle for the sake of pure human thoughts, for the sake of what a person should be and dare not not be reasonable and noble. K.Paustovsky

Andrey Sakharov

Lesson Objectives:

show the complexity and tragedy of the life and career of M. A. Bulgakov , arouse interest in the personality and work of the writer;

reveal the diversity of the problems of Bulgakov's stories, identify the principles of combining everyday reality and fantasy in the writer's work,show the relevance of satirical works, develop the skills and abilities of analyzing a prose work , helpunderstand what Bulgakov's stories warn us about;

develop the ability of ideological-compositional and stylistic analysis of the text;

continueto form the ability to choose the main thing in the development of action , express your thoughts clearly and consistently, argue your statements, prepare a report; to develop the ability of students to draw up main ideas in a summary.

Lesson objectives:

Educational:

1. Give a brief overview of the life and career of M.A. Bulgakov; to acquaint with the peculiarities of the fate of Bulgakov as a writer and a person, to note the diversity of the writer's work, to acquaint with the author's methods of creating satirical works; improve the skill of searching for information about the life and work of the writer; improve the skill of monologue speech.

2. Introduce the stories "Heart of a Dog" and "Fatal Eggs", understand the meaning of the works, help understand what Bulgakov's stories warn us about, evaluate the topicality of the works; to prove that the satirical works of the writer are modern and relevant.

3. In the process of working on works, develop the ability of ideological-compositional and stylistic analysis of the text, continue to form the ability to choose the main thing in the development of action, express your thoughts clearly and consistently, argue your statements; improve the ability to analyze a literary work

Developing: contribute to the formationindependent cognitive activity, development of skillscarry out reflective activities; develop the ability to correctly generalize reflexive activity; develop the ability to correctly summarize data and draw conclusions.

Educational: to cultivate love and respect, respect for the national heritage, to promote the formation of patriotic feelings,rejection of hypocrisy, cruelty, arrogance and lack of culture.

Educational Resources: Literary dictation, lecture material, slide films about the life and work of M.A. Bulgakov, stories "Heart of a Dog", "Fatal Eggs", assignments for group work. Video by V.V. BortkABOUT "Dog's heart".

Stage 1

1 . Organizing time.

II. Knowledge update .

Today we are starting to study the work of the Russian writer, playwright, theater director of the 1st floor. 20th century. Author of novels and short stories, many feuilletons, plays, dramatizations, screenplays, opera libretto (Libretto- verbal text of a theatrical musical and vocal work),

Let's get acquainted with his difficult and tragic fate).

Before we start talking about it, let's first watch a slide film,and then we'll continue talking.(No. 1 Viewing a slide - film about the writer from 00.00 - 0.40)

Goal setting.

So ... what associations did you have after what you saw? Who will be discussed? Look at the blackboard. You see a portrait of the writer. The date below is 1935. This is practically his last years of life. In five years, the writer will be gone ... He was only49 years old. (see epigraph), + (Class board)

So, we will talk about M.A. Bulgakov.

1. And now, acquaintance with the work and life path of M.A. Bulgakov(№2Slide film "Biography of the writer" up to.030; before 1.03; up to 1.36; until 2.09); textbook, p.118

- What biography facts made an impression on you? Name the works of the writer known to you.

(Famous works of Bulgakov: « Master and Margarita », « %A%D%BE%D%B%D%B%D%87%D%C%D%B_%D%81%D%B%D%80%D%B%D%86%D%B », « %97%D%B%D%BF%D%B%D%81%D%BA%D%B_%D%E%D%BD%D%BE%D%B%D%BE_%D%B %D%80%D%B%D%87%D%B », « %A%D%B%D%B%D%82%D%80%D%B%D%BB%D%C%D%BD%D%B%D%B_%D%80%D%BE %D%BC%D%B%D », « %91%D%B%D%BB%D%B%D%F_%D%B%D%B%D%B%D%80%D%B%D%B%D%F_%28%D %80%D%BE%D%BC%D%B%D », « %98%D%B%D%B%D%BD_%D%92%D%B%D%81%D%B%D%BB%D%C%D%B%D%B%D%B %D%87_%28%D%BF%D%C%D%B%D%81%D%B ”,“ Notes on cuffs ”,“ Fatal eggs ”,“ Diaboliad ”).

The story (addition) of the teacher about the life and work of M.A. Bulgakov.

Bulgakov the writer and Bulgakov the man are still largely a mystery. His political views, attitude to religion are unclear…. His life consisted, as it were, of three parts, each of which is remarkable for something.

- Before 1919 he is a doctor, only occasionally trying his hand at literature.

- In the 20s Bulgakov is already a professional writer and playwright.

In the 30s Mikhail Afanasyevich -theater worker.

Hisdid not print , plays were not staged, they were not allowed to work in their beloved Moscow Art Theater.

He had a special relationship with Stalin. The leader criticized many of his works, directly alluding to anti-Soviet agitation in them. But despite this, Mikhail Afanasyevich did not experience what was called a terrible wordGulag (Main Department of Camps and Places of Detention – subdivision %D%D%B%D%80%D%BE%D%B%D%BD%D%B%D%B_%D%BA%D%BE%D%BC%D%B%D%81 %D%81%D%B%D%80%D%B%D%B%D%82_%D%B%D%BD%D%83%D%82%D%80%D%B%D %BD%D%BD%D%B%D%85_%D%B%D%B%D%BB_%D%A%D%A%D%A%D%A , %C%D%B%D%BD%D%B%D%81%D%82%D%B%D%80%D%81%D%82%D%B%D%BE_%D%B %D%BD%D%83%D%82%D%80%D%B%D%BD%D%BD%D%B%D%85_%D%B%D%B%D%BB_%D %A%D%A%D%A%D%A" who managed the places of mass forced imprisonment and detention in 1930-1956. ). And diednot on the bunk (although in those days they were taken away for much smaller sins), and in their own bed (fromnephrosclerosis inherited from the father).(No. 3 see film from 00.51).

Robbed to the skinE Removed from readers and viewers, "sealed" in his apartment with government seals, terminally ill, knowing that his days were numbered, Bulgakov remained himself: he did not lose his sense of humor and sharpness of language. So, he didn't lose his freedom.

This was M. A. Bulgakov . A doctor, journalist, prose writer, playwright, director, he was a representative of that part of the intelligentsia, which, without leaving the country in difficult years, sought to preserve itself even in the changed conditions. He had to go through an addiction to morphine (when he worked as a zemstvo doctor), a civil war (which he experienced in its two burning centers - his native city of Kiev and in the North Caucasus), severe literary persecution and forced silence, and in these conditions he managed to create such masterpieces that are read all over the world.

Anna Akhmatova called Bulgakov succinctly and simply - a genius, and dedicatedhis memory poem(student reads):

Here I am for you, instead of grave roses,

Instead of incense smoking;

You lived so harshly and brought it to the end

Great contempt.

You drank wine, you joked like no one else

And suffocated in stuffy walls,

And you yourself let in a terrible guest

And he was alone with her.

And there is no you, and everything around is silent

About the mournful and high life,

And on your silent feast...

2. Blitz Poll

“Life and work of M.A. Bulgakov"

When and where was M.A. Bulgakov? (05/15/1891 in Kyiv)

III. stage Analytical conversation .

2. Satire writer

Teacher: Today, the focus of our attention is the satirical works of the writer.

Question: Let's Let us recall the theory of literature: what is satire and its types.

Satire - kind of comic.

Image Subject - vices.

Source - the contradiction between universal human values and the reality of life.

Types of satire:

Humor is a good laugh.

Irony is a joke.

Sarcasm is a caustic, caustic mockery, the highest degree of irony.

Means of satire:

Hyperbole is an exaggeration

Grotesque - a combination of fantastic and real

Contrast - opposition

The satirical stories of M.A. Bulgakov, written in1925 ., sounded very timely, became a reflection of the mindset of a number of scientists and cultural figures who felt alarmed by the changes taking place in Russia.

Question: What worried the writer himself? This is where we will look into it.

Teacher: The stories are satirical and therefore today we will talk about what ? (ABOUT satirical skill of the writer - the successor of the best traditions of Russian satire of the 19th century in the person of N.V. Gogol, M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin).

- What are the main problems the author poses in his works? (Eternal struggle good and evil , morality and immorality , freedom and unfreedom the issue of human responsibility for one's actions - these are all eternal, basic problems of human life.)

- What are the names of such works in which universal human problems are affected? (Such works are called philosophical )

- What is the peculiarity of the creative manner of the writer Bulgakov? (In his works - combination of real and fantasy , monstrous grotesque and real norm; the speed of the plot; flexibility of lively colloquial speech.)

Why did Bulgakov write satirical works at this particular time? To answer this question, remember how Bulgakov perceivedOctober Revolution.
(Everything that happened around, which was called the construction of socialism, was perceived by the writer as dangerous and huge experiment . Bulgakov believed that the situation that developed in the first decades after the October Revolution, tragic . People are turned into gray, homogeneous, featureless mass . Perverted concepts of eternal values. Stupidity, wretchedness, lack of spirituality, primitiveness prevail. All this causes the writer a feeling of hostility, indignation. Apparently, this contributed to the fact that in the first decades after the October Revolution, satirical works .)

So what kind of works will we talk about today? ( "Fatal Eggs" (1925), "Heart of a Dog" (1925).
In literature, Bulgakov first acted as a newspaperman, wrote feuilletons.

Until the mid 20s he is a satirist writer, author of the stories "Diaboliad" (1923), "Fatal Eggs" (1925), "Heart of a Dog" (1925) complete the cycle of the author's satirical works.

Teacher: We have seen more than once that writers react very sensitively to the slightest changes in public life: they reflect the mindset of people, predict the course of social development, and try to warn of any alarming consequences of certain events.

Question: What event is the 1st floor. The 20th century can be considered decisive for the development of Russian art, incl. literature? ( October Revolution of 1917 ) . ( October Revolution (full official name in 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 - Great October Socialist Revolution , other names:"October Revolution" %E%D%BA%D%82%D%F%D%B%D%80%D%C%D%81%D%BA%D%B%D%F_%D%80%D%B %D%B%D%BE%D%BB%D%E%D%86%D%B%D%F" ] , "October uprising", "Bolshevik coup" ) - one of the largest political events of the 20th century, which influenced the further course of%92%D%81%D%B%D%BC%D%B%D%80%D%BD%D%B%D%F_%D%B%D%81%D%82%D%BE %D%80%D%B%D% , literature and art.

One can treat this event in different ways, but it is impossible to deny that it became a fateful event not only for Russia, but also for other countries of the world.

After all, M.A. Bulgakov was not the first to turn to the topic of revolutionary changes in the country.

A. Blok, S. Yesenin, V. Mayakovsky, A. Fadeev, E. Zamyatin - these are just some of the names of writers who tried to comprehend what was happening, each in his own way. The intonations were different: both enthusiastic, and cautious, and glorifying, and pessimistic…

IV. Analysis of satirical works ("Heart of a Dog", "Fatal Eggs").

I could not part with the idea that I was involved in

unrighteous and terrible deeds. I had a terrible sense of powerlessness.

Andrey Sakharov

Question: Why do you think these words of Academician Sakharov were taken as an epigraph to the lesson about the stories "Heart of a Dog" and "Fatal Eggs"?

(Andrey Dmitrievich Sakharov - %A%D%A%D%A%D%A %A%D%B%D%B%D%B%D -theorist, academician%90%D%D_%D%A%D%A%D%A%D%A , was one of the founders of the first Soviet%92%D%BE%D%B%D%BE%D%80%D%BE%D%B%D%BD%D%B%D%F_%D%B%D%BE%D%BC %D%B%D%B . Laureate%D%D%BE%D%B%D%B%D%BB%D%B%D%B%D%81%D%BA%D%B%D%F_%D%BF%D%80 %D%B%D%BC%D%B%D%F_%D%BC%D%B%D%80%D%B ). The discovery of weapons of mass destruction made him, like Bulgakov's professor Preobrazhensky, think about the responsibility of a scientist and science as a whole to society, to history.

20th century - the time of all kinds of revolutions, the century of world wars and unprecedented changes in the way of life and way of thinking of billions of people. The search for truth, the search for truth has become a fundamental search for the best representatives of the intelligentsia.

IN"Notes on cuffs" M.A. Bulgakov says with bitter irony:“Only through suffering does truth come... That's right, be calm! But they don't pay money for knowing the truth, they don't give rations. Sad but true."

Being in the center of a rapid cycle of events, people and opinions, Bulgakov asks himself and his readers the eternal question of the gospelPontius Pilate : "What is truth?"

Already in the 20s, the difficult years of the 20th century, the writer tried to answer this question with his satirical works, raising in themthe following problems :

1. Merciless condemnation of the "pure" science of its priests.

2. The problem of personal responsibility of a person of culture before life.

3. The problem of human self-government.

Let's try to trace how the writer reveals theseProblems.

But first, let's recall the content of satirical works ("Heart of a Dog" and "Fatal Eggs")

Literary quiz.

The story "Heart of a Dog"

2. What song does Sharikov play on the balalaika? ("The moon shines")

3. Whom does the main character hate the most? (cats)

4. The first word that Sharikov uttered? ("Abyr" - "Fish")

5. For what purposes did Sharikov take 7 rubles from the house committee? (For the purchase of textbooks)

6. How does Sharikov explain to the bride that he has a scar on his forehead? (Wounded on

on the Kolchak fronts)

The story "Fatal eggs"

a) Abrikosov

b) Yablochkin

c) Peaches

5. What were the consequences of the unexpected frost?

1. A satirical condemnation of "pure" science and its priests, who imagined themselves to be the creators of a new life.

Teacher:

M. Bulgakov's stories "Heart of a Dog" and "Fatal Eggs" are about professors of the old school, brilliant scientists who made brilliant discoveries in a new era that they did not quite understand. Both of them came to Bulgakov's prose from Prechistenka (now Kropotkinskaya Street in Moscow). Bulgakov knew this area well and loved its inhabitants. Therefore, probably, he considered it his duty to “depict the intelligentsia as the best layer in our country”

Question: Why did the classical intellectuals from Prechistenka suddenly become the object of satire? ( But because Bulgakov's satire is a clever and sighted satire. The writer saw that the talent of a scientist, impeccable honesty, combined with loneliness can lead to tragic and unexpected consequences. This is what happens with Professor Persikov, dear to Bulgakov's heart, almost the same thing happens with Professor Preobrazhensky).

Question: What discoveries did they make?

So, "Fatal Eggs" (See the presentation "Fatal Eggs") 1-4 frame.

1 . student performance with individualh giving"Scientific discovery of Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov" 5 frame.

“In the red stripe, life was in full swing. Gray amoebas, releasing their pseudopods, stretched with all their might into the red stripe and in it (as if by magic) came to life. Some force breathed into them the spirit of life. They climbed in a flock and fought with each other for a place in the beam. There was a frenzied, no other word for it, reproduction. Breaking and overturning all the laws... they budded before his eyes with lightning speed. ... In the red stripe, and then in the entire disk, it became crowded, and the inevitable struggle began. The reborn lashed out at each other furiously and tore and swallowed. Among the born lay the corpses of those who died in the struggle for existence. The best and strongest won. And those best ones were terrible."

This is the brilliant discovery of Professor Persikov , which would bring him fame, world fame, which, obviously, could somehow be used in the national economy. The professor did not think about this, because he had to make a series of experiments and experiments.

Teacher: And now the story"Dog's heart". You met this story in 9th grade. The story was filmed in1988 ( 1987 printed ). Film directorVladimir Vladimirovich Bortko ) is a Russian film director, screenwriter and producer. The film adaptation of the story brought the director recognition of the world film community - the film was awarded the Grand Prix of the Perugia Film Festival (Italy).

2. student performance with an individual task"Professor Preobrazhensky's unique operation in his pituitary transplant experience."

( Pituitary - a brain appendage in the form of a rounded formation located on the lower surface of the brain in a bone pocket called the Turkish saddle, produces hormones that affect growth, metabolism and reproductive function )».

Philip Filippovich Preobrazhensky (60 years old) - a luminary in medicine. He produces a unique experience in transplanting the pituitary gland of a deceased person (Klim Chugunkin) to a homeless dog Sharik. This operation was carried out by Prof.December 22 , AJanuary 2 recorded indiary of Dr. Bormental, this humanized dog got out of bed, which "... confidently kept on its hind legs for half an hour." And on the same day, according to the testimony of Professor Dr. Bormenthal's assistant: "In my presence and Zina's presence, the dog (if you can call it a dog, of course) cursed Professor Preobrazhensky for his mother."

This operation of the professor is a truly scientific discovery: “He looks strange. The hair remained only on the head, on the chin and on the chest. He is otherwise bald, with loose skin. In the genital area - an emerging man. The skull is greatly enlarged. The forehead is sloping and low.

Teacher: It would seem that the scientific discoveries of Persikov and Preobrazhensky should have shocked the world scientific community and brought certain benefits to humanity. What happens in reality?

- What is same withfate of the "red ray" discovered by Professor Persikov?

Someone came to the professorAlexander Semenovich Rokk “with government papers from the Kremlin”, surprisingly reminiscent of Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov: “Little eyes looked at the whole world in amazement and at the same time confidently, there was something cheeky in short legs with flat feet.”6 frame.

The great discovery of a talented scientist led to disaster.

People flew out of the doors, howling:

Beat him! Kill!..

World Villain!

You unleashed the bastards!

…A short man, on monkey crooked legs, in a torn jacket, in a tornshirtfront strayed to the side, ahead of the others, reached Persikov and cut his head open with a terrible blow of a stick.

A man remarkably similar to Sharikov kills a brilliant scientist.8-9 frame.

Conclusion: So andHELL. Sakharov saw the consequences of his invention, after he proposed to use an electric charge inplasma placed in a magnetic field to produce a controlled thermonuclear reaction. It is not known in whose hands the scientific discovery will fall, for what purposes it will be used. So, following from the first, the second theme of the satiricaldilogy M.A. Bulgakov.

2. The theme of the personal responsibility of a person of science, culture before life, before history.

- And what happened to the real Sharikov?

The dog Sharik was smart in his own way, like a dog, observant and not even alien to the satirical gift. The life that he saw from the doorway was really aptly captured by him. He knew how to highlight the typical details in it.

And now Sharik turns into Sharikov.

What techniques does the author use?

Grotesque. Realization of the metaphor : who was nothing, he will become everything. Uses a fantasy situation. Helps to understand the absurdity of the idea.

How did the life of Preobrazhensky change with the advent of Sharikov?

The house turns into HELL . The theme of the house is cross-cutting in Bulgakov. Home is the center of human life. The Bolsheviks destroyed the house as the basis of the family, the basis of human society.

The appearance of Sharikov in the professor's house is a nightmare...(No. 6 slide film “Who killed the cat of Madame Polosukhina ...).

Teacher: When did it come "Star Hour" Sharikov?

-P retreat to service. “Yesterday cats were strangled, strangled” - the persecution of one's own is a characteristic feature of all ball cats. Destroy their own, covering the traces of their own origin . Deceived the girl. Shame, conscience, morality are alien. There is hatred, malice . He is really dangerous ( №7 . Cm . slide-film Benefis Sharikov… ); … Cats were strangled, strangled;+ 2min.37.

Teacher : Professor Preobrazhensky, who decided to improve nature, took the liberty of competing with life by creating an informer, an alcoholic and a demagogue, who sat on his neck. The professor realized his mistake.

Conclusion: So a person, even a genius, intruding into the laws of nature, imagining himself the Creator, enduresfiasco.

In The Master and Margarita, whom we will meet later, Woland asks two Moscow writers Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny, who claim that there is no God: “If there is no God, then, one asks, who controls human life and the whole order on earth?” To which Ivanushka replies: The man himself manages!

This is how Bulgakov poses the most real and most acute problem in the 20th century.

3. The problem of human self-government

This is the 3rd most important theme of the story "Heart of a Dog".

20th century became a time of destruction, disintegration of the former thousand-year order of human life. This is the time of the destruction of the old human ties, the old ways of managing human behavior. The old type of government rested on the veneration of Christian commandments, on the authority of the king, class morality. Now the leading idea of the era has become the words:“No one will give us deliverance: neither a god, nor a king, nor a hero. We will achieve liberation with our own hand."

This is where block freedom came from"no cross". Having freed himself from his former dependence, a person fell into a more difficult submission to his uterine, selfish, selfish interest. Bulgakov leads usto the conclusion : where the natural course of life is spurred on by ignorance, self-interest, nothing good can be expected there.

Question : Is it possible to entrust the management of life to the Sharikovs, Shvonders, Rokku?

Clever Professor Preobrazhensky understood this (No. 8 cm . slide film); 35.32-37.17.

But the Shvonders, Sharikovs, Rocky will never understand this truth.

Sharikovs breed quickly, and no one is going to fight them (unlike the naked reptiles). Professor Preobrazhensky talks about it(№9 . Cm . slide film Shvonder is the most important fool ... ); 38.18 – 38.51.

An interesting conversation of Professor Preobrazhensky about devastation(№10 . Cm . slide-film … Devastation… ch.3)+

Bulgakov repeatedly callsexperience Professor Preobrazhensky "crime". So, the author, developing Dostoevsky's theme "Crime and Punishment", did not believe that in an instant it was possible to make a person sinless and righteous, and leads the hero to the famous conclusion:(№11 . Cm . slide-film... Never commit a crime...). 37.50-38.17

This idea will be the main one in The Master and Margarita.

Conclusion. Perhaps,more crime - under the guise of revolutionary renewal, to commit violence over the entire course of history, over the destinies of people. Professor Preobrazhensky talks about such experiments: “They should not think that terror will help them. Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system.

Isn't it a bold story! But it was not published during the life of the author. On the faceterror over literature, culture, Bulgakov was right:terror over culture has led to paralysis, stagnation and death.

Conclusion:

In everythingtimes of satire served the ideas of humanism, enlightenment and the ideals of beauty, to which the authors of satirical works called, revealing the underside of reality by various means of humor and calling for the virtue of morality, spirituality, education, and intellectual development.

Writers - classics of the 19th century, represented byA. S. Griboedova, N.V. Gogol (poem "Dead Souls") A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, I. A. Krylova in fables , and especially "biting "satire by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin , expressed disgust for tyranny, serfdom, capital orders with the help of satire, because satire - this is a fine line between humorous and comic, which boldly reveals the essence in an accessible and understandable form, stigmatizing social vices, gives hope and uplifts the spirit even in the most bitter moments of life, precisely because it helps to turn the usual picture of the world, turning it from tragic into unimaginably tenacious and inspiring joke.

These can rightly be attributed to the satirical works of M.A. Bulgakov, which we talked about today in the lesson.

7. Reflection.

Bulgakov did not change his views on fashion or profit. But he thought hard about everything he saw before him. And his thought ... was inclined towards the analysis of the living, not confused by dogma or prejudice, and supported by the responsibility of a witness and chronicler of great and tragic events in the life of the motherland. In all the rifts of fate, Bulgakov remained true to the laws of dignity...

V.Ya. Lakshin

Resource material for the lesson

Literary quiz based on the story "Fatal Eggs"

1. What is the main character's last name?

a) Abrikosov

b) Yablochkin

c) Peaches

2. What scientific discovery does Professor Persikov make?

a) It opens the "ray of life", under the influence of which bacteria begin to multiply wildly

b) He finds an antidote for cancer

c) He managed to clone a sheep

3. What is the difference between individuals that appeared with the help of the "ray of life"?

a) They age much more slowly

b) They have increased stamina

c) They become incredibly aggressive and destroy weaker relatives with a frenzy

4. What is happening in the USSR in the meantime?

a) A general “chicken disease” begins, and all chickens on the territory of the USSR die

b) Some fungus settles on grain crops, and cereals begin to die in huge quantities

c) Cattle begin to die from an unknown disease

5. What happens after Professor Persikov and Rokk discharge eggs from abroad?

a) Rokk, with the help of a beam and chicken eggs discharged from abroad, restores the number of poultry

b) Snake eggs and chicken eggs get mixed up on delivery and Rokk gets snake eggs

c) The eggs prescribed by Rock are broken

6. What happens after Rokk places the reptile eggs in the chambers?

a) All cameras fail at the same time

b) Birds and frogs take off, and dogs howl, anticipating trouble

c) Having carefully examined them, Rokk understands that these are not chicken eggs

7. What happens after the reptiles hatch from their eggs?

a) The room in which they are located can be isolated, and the reptiles themselves can be killed

b) Terrible chaos begins in the country, and hordes of reptiles are approaching Moscow

c) An unknown disease begins to mow down the hatched monsters

8. What happened on the night of August 19-20?

a) Hordes of monsters attacked Moscow

b) An eighteen-degree frost suddenly hit

c) Moscow was recaptured from the monstrous reptiles

9. What were the consequences of the unexpected frost?

a) Frost destroyed all reptiles and their embryos in eggs

b) He plunged the monsters into suspended animation

c) He weakened the animals, and people partly took them out of the country, partly exterminated them

10. What happens to the magic beam technology after the disaster?

a) It is sold abroad for a lot of money

b) No one else can get the beam

c) The beam is beginning to be used for military purposes

Answers: 1-in; 2-a; 3-in; 4-a; 5 B; 6-in; 7-b; 8-b; 9-a; 10-b.

Literary dictation. “The life and fate of M.A. Bulgakov. The story "Heart of a Dog"

I. “The life and fate of M.A. Bulgakov"

When and where was Mikhail Bulgakov born? (05/15/1891 in Kyiv)

Where did you study? (Alexander Gymnasium, Faculty of Medicine, Kyiv University).

The most famous works of the writer ("Master and Margarita", "White Guard", "Running", White Guard.)

What role did women play in life? (Inspired, helped in life's difficulties, served as his ideal).

Where and when did Bulgakov die? (03/10/1940)

II. The story "Heart of a Dog"

1. In what year was the story written? (1925). Printed? (1987)

2. Remember the lines of Professor Preobrazhensky's favorite romance.

(“From Seville to Grenada…”, “To the banks of the sacred Nile…”)

3. What song does Sharikov play on the balalaika? ("The moon shines")

4. Who does the main character hate the most? (cats)

5. The first word that Sharikov uttered? ("Abyr" - "Fish")

6. How old is Professor Preobrazhensky? (60)

7. How much money did Sharikov steal from the professor? (2 chervonets)

8. For what purposes did Sharikov take 7 rubles from the house committee? (For the purchase of textbooks)

9. How does Sharikov explain to the bride that he has a scar on his forehead? (Wounded on

on the Kolchak fronts)

10. What, according to Sharikov, will the cats killed by him go to? ("To the poles").