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Historical Context Shapes The Novel
- Stalin's rule combined modernization drives with brutal purges, forced relocations, and the Gulag system, creating a climate of fear and denunciation.
- The hosts link these realities to the novel's themes of disappearances, cramped housing, and people informing on each other.
Reading That Frightened His Friends
- Bulgakov read the finished novel to friends in 1939 and they feared for his safety because the book scared them.
- He did not publish it during his lifetime and it appeared posthumously in 1967.
Devil As Social Mirror
- Woland (the devil) arrives in Moscow and exposes greed, hypocrisy, and the absurdities of Soviet urban life through staged magical chaos.
- His spectacles satirize both officials and ordinary citizens who scramble for wealth and status under the regime.