Eilenden Proffer

A crucial dream (left out of the English translation) in White Guard, written when the Civil War was still very much a recent memory, contains the same sentiment, although no one but the narrator is able to voice iL In the dream a character named Zhilin is in heaven and asks God why He is willing to welcome even the Bolsheviks who don't even believe in Him. God's answer is curious. He says that it is all the same to him whether the soldiers believe in Him or not: " Zhilin, here you have to understand that for me you are all identical—killed on the field of balde. This, Zhilin, must be understood, but not everyone does." The characters in While Guard, who at first divide the world into the categories of good and evil based on what army they fight for, are just as unaware of the meaning of their sufferings as the Master is, and partial understanding is available only through their dreams.

In an early draft of The Master and Margarita Bulgakov planned to have a major scholarly character write a work about the " secularization of ethics." This was an essential concern of Bulgakov's generation, including those who were committed Marxists. Bulgakov's much-loved stepfather was an atheist, who demonstrated that such beliefs were not incompatible with the highest ethics. To Bulgakov's mind, however, the Soviet era seemed to abound in disturbing examples of what happens when ethics are divorced from the religious impulse and attached to the vagaries of political expediency. Pilate, as he struggles with his conscience and his fear, solidly based in what he knows awaits him if he allows a man who talked against the emperor to go free, in this way seemed quite contemporary. Bulgakov's entire novel is in a sense a polemic with the dominant force of his time, the belief in enlightened rationalism which in his country ended in a totalitarian structure.

The key to this aspect of the novel is Berlioz, who, as the novel begins, represents the smugness of the ideologically orthodox literary world. The editor is clearly educated and possesses a certain degree of intelligence. Berlioz's world is rational, he feels safe and in control, and his belief system protects him against the unknown. The rigidly rationalist and materialist nature of the philosophical-political system he lives under makes him quite unprepared to deal with even Bezdomny's degree of imagination (we must remember that this work opens, significantly, with a discussion of literary talent and censorship) as Berlioz explains to the poet that he has somehow made Jesus come alive, as if he had actually existed, which is ideologically incorrect All of the things the Soviet ideology denied—the irrational and the unconscious—are about to inundate Berlioz in the person of Woland.

How is it that Bulgakov came to the desire for the philosophical reconciliation of opposites which we see in The Master and Margarita, an idea so unacceptable to his limes? The answer lies more in life than in literature. No matter how flexible his intelligence, I do not think Bulgakov would have ever conceived of a universe in which Yeshua and Woland are working toward the same end if he had not lived through a remarkable era, enduring experiences which powerfully affected his point of view on politics and life. Born into the monarchist family of a lecturer in theology, Bulgakov received a good scientific education and went to medical school. When World War I came he went to the front as a young medic with the Red Cross, where he saw firsthand what the human results of modem war were. After the revolution Bulgakov lived through twelve changes of government in his native Kiev. In the course of a year he joined the White Army to defend Kiev against the Ukrainian Republican troops; in February 1919, he was forcibly mobilized by the Ukrainian army as well, but managed to escape at the risk of his life; finally, in autumn of 1919 he was again mobilized by the Whites, and sent to the Caucasus as an army doctor. These are the events we are sure of—it is quite likely that there are others Bulgakov told no one about. When he