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Commentary 339






that in the 1920s and 1930s in Russia, in the name of Communism, there was a well-developed propaganda campaign to discredit all religious belief. In most ways this campaign was successful. In the intellectual Marxist world, faith seemed old-fashioned, retrograde, something allowed only the uneducated country folk. It is typical that the editor has ordered a poem on this subject just in time for what would be Easter—this was one way propaganda dealt with the persistence of religious holidays.

Berlioz's remarks on the subject of Jesus are quite close to the real views espoused by many journalists of the time who published in such real journals as The Atheist and The Godless One. Although a number of real figures have been proposed as the single prototype for Berlioz (named for Hector Berlioz, composer of a number of works which have resonance here, including the Symphonie fantastique and The Damnation of Faust), he seems to be an amalgam of a number of well-known Soviet hacks, including the famed journalist Mikhail Koltsov. The careful reader will notice that Berlioz can be seen as a Christ parody, having, among other things, twelve disciples who sit around the MASSOLIT table waiting for him, etc. When Berlioz (who shows off his erudition by citing a number of gods of ancient cultures, ranging from the Egyptian Osiris to the Aztec Uitzilopochtli) discusses god myths he is on solid ground, in terms of what the mythological school, as it was called, thought about the story of Jesus. When he turns to historical references, however, he is often in error, which Bulgakov leaves the reader to find out—the reference to Jesus in Tacitus, for example, was not considered fraudulent by all scholars of the times. The conflict between the historical school (Jesus really existed) and the mythological school (just another virgin birth, another creation legend, etc.) which was raging in biblical studies' circles from the eighteenth century onward, is here submerged in a greater theme: what happens when an entire culture is forced to deny belief in God—but meets up with the devil in the flesh.

Kant's proof —the philosopher Immanuel Kant postulated three proofs of the existence of God, rejected them and came up with the one least likely to convince either the devil or a Muscovite of the 1930s: that God is to be postulated for the moral will. Bulgakov is either joking or miscounting here. Woland mentions five proofs, which makes Kant's own the sixth—and the proof Woland provides, the seventh. This entire discussion, indeed this entire chapter, is the nucleus of the philosophical and thematic structure of the novel.

Strauss—refers to David Strauss (1808-74), the famed German Bible scholar whose Ufe of Jesus was used by Bulgakov in his work on this novel. Strauss belonged to the historical school, which attempted to separate historical fact from mythic elements in the Gospels.

Solovki —the nickname given to a famous prison in the north of Russia on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. Originally it was famous for its monastery, but in the 1920s a famous and terrifying prison was established there and it became shorthand for the worst possible fate. There is another level to this reference, one which fits in with one of the main subtexts of this novel: as a monaster)', it had a bloody history in Old Russia. At the time of the liturgical reforms in the sixteenth century, the monks of this monastery refused to accept the changes which were to bring the Russian Orthodox Church into compliance with Greek Orthodox forms of worship—such people were called Old Believers—and the monks were massacred after a ten-year siege.

Your relatives start lying to you—readers of Russian literature will see in this brief narrative of how one loses control and dies a clear echo of Tolstoy's story " The Death of Ivan Ih/ich."

a member of the Komsomol—the Komsomol was the youth organization run by



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