Censorship

The Master's novel is rejected by the editorial board, and critics write scathing reviews against its
"Pilatism." Since he is unable to publish the novel into which he has poured his entire life and all his
energy, the Master becomes depressed, and is committed to a mental institution. This situation satires
the censorship that was so prevalent against authors by the Soviet Union while Bulgakov himself was
writing. It plagued him and limited his artistic inspiration and careerr. The Master is thus a reflection of
Bulgakov himself.
The censhorship of Christian morals creates a hole in the Soviet society, and Woland's appearance fills
that hole. He and his henchmen take advantage of the censorship of religion, drawing attention to it in
the process.
fear is one of the most persistent themes in The Master and Margarita: many characters experience
fear in some degree. For example, the Master explains that after his novel about Pontius Pilate was
rejected by the publisher fear became his "constant companion" (124).
In the context of The Master and Margarita, fear is a byproduct of the authoritative pressures in the
Muscovites' everyday lives. Bulgakov illuminates this ideological pressure by portraying Bengalsky's
eagerness in assuring the educational value of the show and the audience's overall nonresponsiveness. Despite the fact that Bengalsky lies, his timid spectators resist laughter;
32

Bulgakov was one of the victims of the censorship, and even wrote a letter to Stalin asking to be
allowed to leave the country because he could not survive if he could not write. Instead, Stalin
reassigned him to the Moscow Art Theater, where he spent the end of his life as an assistant director
and literary consultant.

Bulgakov worked on The Master and Margarita continuously from 1928 until his death in 1940, even
dictating changes to his wife when he became too ill to write. His widow, Yelena Shilovskaya,
preserved his work after his death. The Master and Margarita first appeared in the magazine Moskva in
1966.
Since most of the characters in the novel are tied to Pilate in some way, the prevalance of evil in
human nature is apparent. Pilate suffers for his sins for two thousand years before finally achieving
redemption. The Master is especially tied to Pilate, in that he wrote a novel entirely about the man and
also in his idiosyncrasies as a character, such as not being able to find peace in the moonlight.
The morale of the Muscovites is tested when Woland's accomplices tempt them with scarce foreign
goods-French outfits and rare perfumes. The test is followed by the carnivalesque apotheosis when the
streets of Moscow are flooded with half-naked citizens, whose foreign clothes vanish together with the
"foreign" performers. By exposing the Muscovites as not changed and possibly not changeable (they
are sinful and still hold onto their petty bourgeois values and habits), Woland exposes the official
discourse-discourse that makes unrealistic claims-as deceitful. The purpose of carnival is not to subvert
the existing power relations permanently, but to improve the ability of a given society to view itself as a
diverse, dialogic community andto look critically at the official discourse. 11
In the remainder of
this essay, I will discuss the implications of carnival in two chapters: chapter 12 ("Black Magic and Its
Expose") and chapter 28 ("The Final Adventures of Korovyov and Behemoth").