Violetta Gudkova is a theatre historian and very well-respected Bulgakov scholar whose engagement with Bulgakov studies dates back to the late 1970s, after the full publication of Master i Margarita in 1973 led to the first surge of interest in the long-forgotten writer. She published an important study, Vremia i teatr Mikhaila Bulgakova (Time and Theater of Mikhail Bulgakov, Moscow, 1988), and has written numerous articles on individual Bulgakov works, worked on definitive editions of his plays, and is an expert on Soviet theatre of the 1920s and 30s.

Gudkova is thus ideally placed to undertake this project, which offers at once a skilfully woven survey of the reception of Bulgakov’s works in his own lifetime and thereafter, and a comprehensive review of key stagings of his plays (or adapted prose works). This endeavor also allows her to chart the complex history of Bulgakov studies, a field that became quite feverish from the 1970s to the 1990s, but has subsided significantly in the present century. Gudkova’s book draws on a deep study of archival sources, allowing her to cite many unpublished discussions as well as a wide range of critical accounts of Bulgakov’s works and their staged productions, right up to the present day. As a scholar whose work flourished in the age of glasnost, she is also comfortable with citing the work of a number of important western scholars.

Gudkova highlights the commanding reputation Bulgakov already enjoyed during the 1920s, before he was silenced during the repressive 1930s and his name disappeared from public discourse. The satirical writer Evgenii Zamiatin and the Bolshevik literary critic Aleksandr Voronskii were equally convinced from the very start of Bulgakov’s exceptional talent as a prose writer; and the sensational 1926 Moskovskii khudozhestvennyi akademicheskii teatr (MKhAT) production of Dni Turbinykh (The Days of the Turbins) only enhanced the admiration of the cognoscenti for his playwriting gifts. His reputation also began to attract the persistent attention not only of the Obʹʹedinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravleni (OGPU), but even of the Politburo. The 1930s saw his multiple attempts to be published or staged stymied by ideological considerations, as reflected in the numerous behind-the-scenes correspondences Gudkova cites. Some letters document Stalin’s well-known admiration for many of Bulgakov’s works, which may have helped save him from the depredations of the Terror. And still, Bulgakov continued to create new works, despite his increasing ill-health, and in the face of a cultural world that seemed to be ghosting him.

Gudkova’s chronicling of Bulgakov’s life and of the fate of his works illuminates political developments in the Soviet era, with first publications—including Master i Margarita—exemplifying the unpredictabilities of the Thaw era. The Brezhnev era saw attempts to restrict access to archives and limit further publications. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, however, full publication of his writings was finally achieved. Gudkova writes amusingly and with some acidity about the rivalries between various Russian scholars that dominated Bulgakov studies for many years. She reserves particular scorn for Viktor Losev, who as the head of the Manuscript Department of Moscow’s Lenin Library presided over the main Bulgakov archive, denying access to others while he himself produced a whole series of somewhat hasty publications. She has praise on the other hand for theatre scholars such as Konstantin Rudnitskii, Anatolii Smelianskii, and Aleksandr Ninov. Gudkova endorses the view that Bulgakov’s prose is characterized by a particular theatricality, and her book also includes a thoughtful chapter on the somewhat neglected question of Bulgakov’s poetics. In the present century interest in Bulgakov studies has significantly diminished, although there has been a renewed focus on the importance of religion in his life and his works, and Elena Kolysheva’s definitive account of the textology of Master i Margarita (Moscow, 2014) is a ground-breaking scholarly publication. Nevertheless, Mikhail Lockshin’s 2025 film adaptation of Master i Margarita was a huge box-office success as Bulgakov’s ever-loyal readers flocked to see this innovative interpretation of the novel.

The bulk of Gudkova’s volume is taken up with detailed accounts of the writing of Bulgakov’s works and their usually unsuccessful fates. It offers a treasure trove of carefully documented and judiciously presented information for historians of theatre and literary culture, and will doubtlessly be used as a resource for much further research into individual plays and their attempted stagings. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the print run of the volume is only 1000 copies, so that in present circumstances it may become something of a bibliographical rarity in the west.