The Master and Margarita Summary: Bulgakov's Devil in Soviet Moscow
What it is about
Mikhail Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. He did not live to see it published. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, appeared posthumously in the Moscow magazine in 1966 and 1967, put forward by his widow Elena Bulgakova. The first book edition came out in Paris in 1967. A samizdat version carrying the censored material circulated unofficially, and those passages were restored in a 1969 edition published in Frankfurt.
The novel runs on two tracks. The first is Moscow in the 1930s, where Satan arrives in the guise of Professor Woland, accompanied by a small and extremely strange retinue. The second is ancient Jerusalem, where Pontius Pilate tries a prisoner named Yeshua Ha-Notsri, senses a deep affinity with him, and reluctantly allows his execution to go ahead. The Jerusalem chapters turn out to be the novel written by the Master, one of the book's two title characters.
Book One opens with a conversation about whether God exists. Mikhail Berlioz, chairman of the literary association Massolit, and a young poet called Ivan "Homeless" Ponyrev meet Woland, who tells them the story of Pilate and Yeshua and then predicts Berlioz's imminent death. The prediction comes true. Homeless tries to report Woland and is disbelieved, then confined to a psychiatric clinic. There he meets the Master, an author whose real name is never given, whose novel about Pilate was shunned by Moscow's literary establishment. Broken by the rejection, the Master committed himself to the clinic and left his mistress behind.
Meanwhile Woland and his retinue book a show at the Variety Theatre, advertising themselves as black magicians. They conjure money and luxury clothing and hand it out to a delighted audience. The money and the clothes later vanish, and the resulting chaos and humiliation are the point. Woland observes the pettiness of Muscovites and notes how little moral progress has accompanied all that technological advance. The retinue go on to torment theatre staff, Berlioz's acquaintances and assorted unlucky citizens.
Book Two turns to Margarita, the Master's lover, who has been left bereft by his disappearance. Azazello approaches her with a magical ointment and an invitation to meet Satan. The ointment gives her flight and invisibility. She agrees to act as hostess at Satan's great ball, receiving dark historical figures as they arrive from Hell, and is promised one wish in return.
The main characters
Woland is the devil as visiting professor: courteous, amused, and interested in testing what Soviet citizens actually believe. His retinue includes Koroviev, a grotesquely dressed valet; Behemoth, a large black cat; Azazello, a hitman; and Hella, a succubus. Together they function as a travelling moral audit.
The Master is the wounded artist, defined by his unpublished book and his collapse. Margarita is the engine of the second half, braver and more decisive than the man she loves. Berlioz is the establishment atheist, Homeless the young poet whose certainties are demolished. In the Jerusalem thread, Pilate carries the weight of a decision he knows is wrong, and Yeshua is the prisoner whose plain speech he cannot dismiss.
The themes
Satire is the most visible layer. Massolit is a nest of corrupt social climbers, bureaucrats, profiteers and cynics, and Bulgakov takes aim squarely at Soviet officialdom and its enforced atheism. The book sets supernatural events loose in a society that has officially abolished the supernatural, which is funny and pointed at once.
Underneath that sit the harder questions. Cowardice and complicity, in the figure of Pilate. The cost of making art under a system that can simply refuse to let it exist. Love as the only force in the book that moves anything: Margarita bargains with the devil and gets what she wants. Bulgakov blends dark comedy, fantasy and Christian philosophy, which is why the novel sits awkwardly in any single genre.
How it ends (spoilers)
Margarita uses her wish to be reunited with the Master, who is taken out of the clinic, and the pair return to his apartment. Yeshua, having read the Master's novel, judges that the couple should be granted peace rather than light, and Woland is told to arrange it. Azazello brings poisoned wine. Their souls travel with the retinue through the afterlife, meeting Pilate in purgatory, where the Master releases him to join Yeshua at last. The Master and Margarita settle into their eternal home.
In the epilogue, Moscow explains everything away as mass hysteria and hypnosis. Life returns to normal, except that those who crossed paths with Woland, Ponyrev among them, feel a strange unease every May at the full moon.
Why it still matters
It is widely acknowledged by critics as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and its publication history is part of its meaning. A book about a suppressed manuscript was itself suppressed, then smuggled out in typescript, then printed abroad. It suits readers who want satire with real teeth, anyone drawn to fantasy that carries moral weight, and anyone interested in what writers do when the state is reading over their shoulder.
