Abstract
The extract from Bulgakov’s diary below was reproduced from a typewritten copy made by the OGPU (forerunner of the KGB) and discovered in the Lubianka secret police headquarters. Bulgakov had demanded the return of his diaries when they were seized – and then promptly destroyed them. So it is, ironically, thanks to the Soviet secret police that the diaries of 1923-25 survive. As Index reported at the time: ‘The diary offers a unique insight into Bulgakov’s mind at a point in his career for which information is otherwise scarce.’
1923
2 September. Sunday
Today I went with [the writer Valentin] Kataev to see Aleksey Tolstoy at his dacha in Ivankovo. He was very pleasant today. The only thing I don’t like about him is the incorrigibly bohemian manner in which he and his wife treat young writers. Everything, however, is redeemed by his truly great talent. When Kataev and I were taking our leave, he accompanied us as far as the weir. A half moon in the sky, a starry evening, quietness. Tolstoy talked about the need to found a school. He even softened a little. ‘Let’s take an oath, looking at the moon.’
He is bold, but he seeks support in me and Kataev. His thoughts about literature are always accurate and apt, sometimes magnificently so. In the midst of my depression and yearning for the past, sometimes, as at the moment, in the absurdly cramped surroundings of this vile room in a vile house, I have surges of confidence in myself and my strength. Even now I can feel my thought soaring and I know that I am immeasurably more gifted as a writer than anyone else around me. But in conditions like the present I might just buckle at the knees.
3 September. Monday
After a dreadful summer we are now having a glorious autumn. The past few days we’ve had sunshine and it’s been warm. Every day I go to work in my Gudok (The Hooter), where I quite pointlessly kill time the whole day. There is not much money and I am living, as always, above my modest means. You eat and drink well, but there’s nothing left for other things. Not a day passes without the accursed swill – beer. Today too I was in a beer parlour on Strastnaya Square with Aleksey Tolstoy, Kalmens, and of course the lame ‘captain’ who follows the Count [Tolstoy] like a shadow.
30 (17 Old Style) September
[At the end of the 16th century when most of Europe adopted the Gregorian or New Style calendar the Russians retained the Julian or Old Style calendar. The New Style calendar was formally adopted by the Soviet government in February 1918, by which time the difference between the two calendars had become 13 days.]
Probably because I am a conservative to … I wanted to write ‘to the marrow of my bones’, but that is cliched, so in a word, a conservative, on the old Church festivals I am drawn to my diary. What a pity I don’t remember the precise date in September on which I arrived in Moscow two years ago. Two years. How much has changed in that time? A lot, of course. But all the same, the second anniversary of my arrival finds me still in the same room and still the same inside myself. I’m ill, to add to everything else.
First, about politics, always those same vile and unnatural politics. Germany is still in turmoil. The mark has begun to rise, however, because the Germans have stopped the passive resistance in the Ruhr, but there is a civil war going on in Bulgaria. There is fighting with the Communists. Wrangel’s troops are defending the government. [Wrangel was Commander-in-Chief of the White armies in the Russian Civil War from April 1920 and subsequently head of the ‘emigre’ movements.] I have no doubt at all that these secondary Slav states, every bit as savage as Russia, offer splendid soil for the seeds of Communism. Our newspapers are exaggerating events every way they can, although, who knows, maybe the world is indeed splitting into two parts – Communism and Fascism. Nobody knows what’s going to happen.
[…]
If I discard my imagined and real fears, I can admit that my life at present suffers from only one major defect: the lack of a flat. In literature I am making slow but definite progress. I know this for sure. The only problem is that I am never absolutely certain of the quality of what I have written. It is as if something films over my brain and cramps my hand when I have to describe … what I know so deeply and genuinely in my thought and feeling.
22 October. Monday. Night
[…]
Today at work in Gudok there was a real joke and no mistake. The ‘Non-party Members’ Initiative Group’ proposed a meeting to discuss help for the German proletariat. When N opened the meeting the Communist R appeared, indignant and threatening, and declared that it was ‘unheard of that non-party members should call their own meetings’. He demanded that the meeting be closed and a general meeting called. N went white and pointed out that the meeting had been – approved by the party cell. From then on it was simple. The non-party members voted as one that the party members should invite party members, and spoke flattering words. In response the party members appeared and put through a motion that they should give twice as much as non-party members – non-party members one day’s pay, party members two days’ pay – thereby spitting right in the face of the non-party nitwits.
[…]
26 October. Friday. Evening
[…]
At moments of ill-health and loneliness I fall prey to sad and envious thoughts. I bitterly regret that I gave up medicine as a career and condemned myself to an uncertain existence. But God is my witness that I did it out of love for literature and for no other reason. Literature now is a hard profession. For me with my views … it is hard to publish and make a living. My ill-health in these conditions is in the highest degree inopportune. But let’s not lose heart. Today I looked through The Last of the Mohicans, which I bought recently for my library. What charm there is in that sentimental old Fennimore Cooper. David, who is always singing psalms, led me to the thought of God. Perhaps the strong and the bold do not need Him, but people like me find life easier with the thought of Him. My ill health has complications and is prolonged.
I am in very low spirits. Ill-health may prevent me from working and that is why I fear it, that is why I hope in God. As regards people, my presentiments never deceive me. Never. Some real scum is grouping round Nakanune (On the Eve). I can congratulate myself on being in their company. Oh, it’s going to be very hard for me in the future when I have to scrape the dirt from my name. But I give honest account to myself of one thing: it was iron necessity that made me publish in Nakanune. If it had not been for Nakanune I could not have published Zapiski na manzhetakh (Notes on Shirt-Cuffs) nor many other pieces in which I was able to utter a truthful literary word. You have to be an exceptional hero to keep silent throughout four years, and keep silent without any hope that you will ever be able to open your mouth in the future. I, alas, am no hero. But now I have more courage. Oh, much more courage than in 1921. And were it not for my ill-health I would be looking with more confidence into my misty black future.
[…]
6 November (24 October). Tuesday. Evening
Kolya G has just left. He is treating me for my illness. After he went I read Mikhail Chekhov’s badly written, untalented book about his great brother. Am reading Gorky’s masterly book Moi universitety [My Universities]. Now I am full of meditations and have begun to understand clearly: I have to stop laughing. Also: literature is now my whole life. I shall never return to medicine. I don’t like Gorky as a person, but he is a hugely strong writer and what dreadful and important things he says about writing.
Today, at about five o’clock, I was at Lezhnev’s. He told me two important things: first, that my story Psalm (in Nakanune) is a splendid miniature (‘I would have published it’); second, that Nakanune is an object of general contempt and hatred. That does not frighten me. What frighten me are the facts of my 32 years, the years thrown away on medicine, and my illness and weakness. I have a stupid tumour behind my ear, which has been operated on twice. I am afraid that blind illness will cut short my work. If it does not, I shall do better than Psalm. Now I shall study to learn. The voice that disturbs me has to be prophetic. It has to be. I can become nothing other than one thing: a writer. So let us wait and see, and learn, and keep silent.
1924
8 January
Today the papers are carrying a bulletin on the health of Trotsky. It begins: ‘Leo Trotsky fell ill on 5 November last year …’ and ends: ‘He has been given leave and has been completely freed of all responsibilities for a period of not less than two months.’ This historical bulletin needs no commentary. And so on 8 January 1924 Trotsky has been removed from power. What will happen to Russia, Lord alone knows. May He help her!
This evening at Boris’s. My wife and I have just returned. We enjoyed ourselves. I drank wine, and my heart is not sore. The chervonets [unit of currency, backed by gold, introduced in 1922] is now worth 36 thousand million roubles …
22 January
Just now (5.30pm) Semka told me that Lenin has died. He says there’s an official announcement.
25 February. Monday
This evening I received from Petr Nikanorovich the latest issue of [the almanac] Nedra [The Depths]. It contains my story Diavoliada [Diaboliad]. This was during my reading – I was reading extracts from [the novel] The White Guard at Vera Oskarovna’s. It seems to have made an impression in this circle too. VO has asked me back to continue with it. And so I have been published for the first time not on the pages of a newspaper and not in a slim journal but in an almanac volume. Yes indeed. How much torment it costs! Notes on Shirt-Cuffs are dead and buried.
15 April. Tuesday
Many people with ‘good surnames’ have been arrested in Moscow. People are being exiled again. DK was here today. As usual he is full of fantastic rumours. According to him, there is a manifesto circulating in Moscow released by [the Grand Duke] Nikolay Nikolayevich. Devil take all the Romanovs! They’re all we need!
There’s a campaign to re-run the elections for the management of house associations (to throw out the bourgeois, replace them with workers). The only house where this is impossible is ours. With not a single bourgeois on the management there’s no one to replace. ❒
This diary extract first appeared in Index on Censorship, August/September 1991, Vol 20 No 8