About Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail
Bulgakov (1891–1940) was born in Kiev. Schooled as a doctor, he gave up the
practice of medicine in 1920 to devote himself to writing. He went on to write
some of the greatest novels in twentieth-century Russian literature, including White
Guard and Black Snow. Though Bulgakov’s work was often censored,
Stalin showed his personal favor by protecting him from imprisonment and
finding a job for him at the Moscow Art Theatre, where the writer would work as
a director and playwright for many years. He died at the age of forty-nine from
a kidney disorder. His masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, would not
be published until twenty-six years after his death.