Mikhail Bulgakov

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-30

Mikhail Bulgakov was born on May 15, 1891, in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire, the eldest of seven children in an intellectual family; his father taught theology and his mother taught at a women's school. He studied medicine at Kiev University from 1909, graduating in 1916, and worked as a venereologist and later as a field physician during the First World War, experiences that later shaped his fiction about rural doctoring, before abandoning medicine for writing in 1920. He moved to Moscow in 1921 and supported himself writing newspaper feuilletons while producing the novel The White Guard (1923-1927) and the satirical novella Heart of a Dog (1925), about a dog transplanted with human organs. Many of his works were banned under Stalin's government, though the Soviet leader personally admired his play The Days of the Turbins. His novel The Master and Margarita, begun around 1928, was left unfinished at his death and published only in 1967, and is now regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth-century fiction. Bulgakov died on March 10, 1940, in Moscow, of the same kidney disorder that had killed his father, and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Master and Margarita (1967) · The Master and Margarita Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

← All authors