Fatal eggs analysis of the work briefly. Review of the work "Fatal Eggs" by Bulgakov. "Fatal eggs": analysis

A CITY IN A STATE OF SIEGE - ANALYSIS OF THE STORY "FATAL EGGS" by M.A. BULGAKOVA

Department of History of Modern Russian Literature and Modern Literary Process Philological Faculty Lomonosov Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov Vorobyovy Gory, 1st building, Moscow, Russia, 119991

The article is devoted to the analysis of the image of Moscow in the novel "Fatal Eggs" by M.A. Bulgakov. The time, space and characters of the work recreate the historical and everyday realities of Moscow in the 1920s. For ten years (1919-1929) in the course of the development of the story, Moscow goes through two complete life cycles, consisting of three main stages: complete decline caused by the events of the revolution and the Civil War, post-war restoration and rapid prosperity. At the same time, the urban space is localized in two most important topographic centers, where the main events unfold. A mystical aura (evil spirit) accompanies the description of the entire artistic space and the state of the characters. Bulgakov's fantasy is turned to the future and serves as a warning against catastrophes.

Key words: M. Bulgakov, "Fatal Eggs", the image of Moscow.

The antithesis of Moscow and St. Petersburg is firmly entrenched in Russian culture. AT literature XIX and the twentieth centuries, it was realized in the opposition of two "texts": St. Petersburg and Moscow, the realities of which were formed in the work of various writers - from A.S. Pushkin, L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky to Andrei Bely, A.P. Platonova, M.A. Bulgakov, B.L. Pasternak.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov - the great Russian writer and playwright - "entered Russian and world literature primarily as the author of the novel The Master and Margarita, which many literary critics and thoughtful readers consider the best novel of the 20th century" . However, in addition to the novel "The Master and Margarita", his other works deserve special attention - such as, for example, the cycle of "Moscow stories" of the 1920s ("Deviliad", "Fatal Eggs", " dog's heart»).

Dystopian and fantasy story"Fatal Eggs" - the second part of "Moscow stories" by M.A. Bulgakov. The story was first published in 1925. It was also published in an abridged version under the title "Ray of Life" (1) .

The story takes place in 1928. Brilliant zoologist Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov accidentally discovers an amazing red ray, which contributes to the accelerated development of biological organisms. Just at that time, a chicken plague swept across the country, and the political leadership decides to use Persikov's discovery to restore chicken farming in the country. However, the abuse of science "kills" the city. Bulgakov's fantasy is turned to the future and serves as a warning against catastrophes.

The article examines the image of Moscow in the story "Fatal Eggs", analyzes the myth of a special Moscow space and time. If in the story "Devil-Voliad" the image of Moscow is barely outlined, then in the story "Fatal Eggs" the capital acquires distinct outlines and begins to live a full-blooded and eventful life.

In the story "Fatal Eggs", the urban space is localized in two major topographic centers, where the main events unfold. This is primarily the Zoological Institute on Herzen Street, as well as the apartment of Professor Persikov on Prechistenka Street, which is a kind of "branch" of the center. Similar spatial organization characteristic of Bulgakov: for example, in the novel "The White Guard" central position in the Kiev topos, the apartment of the Turbins is occupied, and in the story "Heart of a Dog" - the Moscow apartment of Professor Preobrazhensky. However, the artistic space of the story "Fatal Eggs" is more complicated and resembles three concentric circles: the central one is defined by the Zoological Institute and the professor's apartment, behind it is the Moscow space, the third includes the space around Moscow, which is dominated by elements hostile to the city. Such a structure partly repeats the structure of space in the novel The White Guard, where Kyiv occupies the position of Moscow.

Moscow, in the course of action, goes through two whole life cycles, consisting of three main stages: complete decline caused by the events of the revolution and civil war, post-war reconstruction, and, finally, rapid prosperity. The development of the first circle of life fits into a small first chapter, although it lasts a little less than ten years (from 1919 to 1928). The events of the second cycle, which fit into a time period of one year (from the spring of 1928 to the spring of 1929), in fact, are devoted to the story itself, the first chapter of which serves as a kind of introduction to the main action. During the summer of 1928, Moscow manages to survive three catastrophic events, which can also be considered as three turns in the development of one big catastrophe.

The first full cycle includes the following stages: the development and growth of the crisis, complete decline, the beginning of recovery and, finally, prosperity. Took this full turn a little less than ten years. The reasons for the decline of 1919-1922 are implied, but still they remain outside the scope of the narrative. The main thing that attracts attention is the huge and vital force inherent in the city, the stubborn will to live. If Petersburg Bronze Horseman”or“ Crimes and Punishments ”contains a hidden threat, always ready to break through the destructive elements, then Moscow in Bulgakov’s story, on the contrary, as an initially healthy organism, contains a powerful mechanism of protection against adversity and the ability to regenerate.

However, at the very end of the first chapter, the seemingly well-established life ends with the words: “And in the summer of 1928 something incredible, terrible happened ...”. This time, the reason for the new descent into chaos is not just named, it becomes the object of close scrutiny. This cause is a man-made disaster. Here the main dividing line is outlined between the classical St. Petersburg myth and the image of Moscow built in Bulgakov's stories "Fatal

eggs" and "Heart of a Dog". In the myth of St. Petersburg, an artificial city is opposed to the natural environment and the natural elements. In Bulgakov's stories, on the contrary, a natural and organic city is opposed to the elements artificially caused by people.

The central event of the second chapter of the story is the discovery of the so-called "ray of life". A discovery made by a brilliant scientist who bears the comical and badly corresponding to his status surname Persikov (perhaps Bulgakov in this case parodies the well-known academic surname of the Abrikosovs). The discovery is made on a spring night under the gradually subsiding noise of the city. First, from the window of the professor’s office at the institute comes the insistent “rumble of spring Moscow”, then the sounds of the city subside, and a brilliant, but terrible discovery is made in complete and ominous silence: “For about five minutes in stone silence, the higher being watched the lower one, out of focus with the drug. All around was silent."

Toward morning, the city begins to invade the closed space of the cabinet. Persikov, pondering his experiment with the beam, either raises or lowers the curtains: “Again the curtains flew up. The sun was there now. Here it flooded the walls of the institute and laid down in a jamb on the ends of Herzen ”; "Halflight was in the corridors of the institute". When did Persikov, who had just committed scientific discovery, the consequences of which cannot be predicted ("After all, this promises the devil knows what it is! .."), expresses the intention to continue the experiment and catch a ray from the sun, the game sunlight also acquires a sinister connotation. The final chord of the second chapter sounds like an omen of catastrophic events: “A solar slit was born on Prechistensky Boulevard, and the helmet of Christ began to glow. The sun is out." The sun, which the professor intends to use as a tool for setting up an experiment, suddenly transforms from a source of life into a source of menace.

The dome of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior becomes a kind of beacon in the space of the second chapter. The paintings depicting this dome, first next to the pale night moon, and then brightly glowing in the rays of the spring sun, frame the story of the discovery of the "ray of life". The “helmet of Christ” illuminated by the fiery light also plays the role of an alarming sign, especially since the brightly blazing light, the flaming fire, is endowed in the context of the story with an ominous mystical shade, symbolizing heavenly wrath, as in the second chapter, or the intervention of hellish forces, as will be shown below.

However, in the next chapter, Professor Persikov establishes that a new beam cannot be obtained from natural sunlight, it arises only from artificial, electric light. Thus, the role of the celestial body in the context of the story changes: it becomes one of the symbols of the natural and the present, as opposed to the done and the unnatural. And this is the main antithesis of the whole story.

In the third chapter, an event occurs that anticipates the coming large-scale catastrophe. As a result of the experiments carried out by Professor Persikov and his assistant Ivanov, a mini-cataclysm occurs in the institute building: “Experiments ... gave amazing results. Within 2 days, the eggs hatched

thousands of tadpoles drank. But this is not enough, within one day the tadpoles grew unusually into frogs, and so angry and gluttonous that half of them were immediately slaughtered by the other half... In the scientist's office, the devil knows what began: the tadpoles spread from the office all over the institute.. Pankrat, who had already been so afraid of Persikov like fire, now felt one feeling towards him: deathly horror. A week later, the scientist himself felt that he was going crazy. The institute was filled with the smell of ether and potassium cyanide, which almost poisoned Pankrat, who took off his mask at the wrong time. The overgrown swamp generation finally managed to be killed with poisons, to air the offices. Thus, on the pages of the story, for the first time, a catastrophic scenario of the development of events is realized on a reduced scale.

There are several points of interest in this regard. First, a miniature catastrophe unfolds in the center of Moscow, within the walls of the Institute. There was a chance that it was Moscow that would become the epicenter of the disaster. However, later on, the catastrophe unfolds on a full scale outside Moscow and begins to approach the city like an external enemy. Secondly, within the walls of the institute, the process launched as a result of the experiments can be kept under control and eventually curtailed. But at the same time, it is essential that it is not Persikov who keeps him under control, and it is not he who stops him. This is due to Pankrat. And Persikov, already at this stage, obviously gives in to the phenomenon that the experiments he conducted gave rise to: "the scientist himself felt that he was going crazy." At this stage, it becomes clear that if Persikov remains alone in the face of the threat he has created, he will not be able to oppose it.

Unlike the story "The Diaboliad", as well as the novel "The Master and Margarita", the story "Fatal Eggs" seems to be devoid of mysticism. However, the mystical aura is undoubtedly present here. The author calls the experiment carried out by Persikov an "important and mysterious" work. The ringing silence, twilight, disturbing sunrise, the flaming dome of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior - all this contributes to the fact that the science fiction narrative is imbued with a mystical spirit, what happens in the story turns out to be connected with another, higher dimension. The existence of this other dimension is not shown in the story as clearly as, for example, in the novel The Master and Margarita, but its breath is felt here as well.

A number of characters in the story act as a kind of substitute for evil spirits. The first of them is Alfred Arkadyevich Bronsky, "an employee of the satirical magazine" Krasny Raven ", a publication of the GPU." This is evidenced by the way he describes his appearance: The young man was dressed impeccably and fashionably in a narrow and knee-length jacket, wide bell-shaped trousers and unnaturally wide patent leather boots with noses like hooves. the young man was holding a cane, a pointed hat and a notepad." Agate eyes, wide trousers, hoof-like boots - all this is not so much frightening as it seems slightly ominously strange. These details are ironic.

an allusion to evil spirits, especially since then, in the course of a conversation with this “journalist,” Persikov calls what he writes “devilry.”

We also note that the man-made catastrophe, which is the central event of the story, is not the result of anyone's malicious intent. In this work, as well as later in the story "Heart of a Dog", there are no characters or any forces that embody deliberate evil. The figures, bearing some barely perceptible imprint of something sinister and otherworldly, are not conscious supporters and bearers of evil. Rather, they are tools in the hands of an invisible force that directs circumstances.

The disaster happened due to the confluence of several such circumstances. The first is the scientific discovery of Professor Persikov. The second is chicken pestilence. Thirdly, confusion with the parcels addressed to Persikov and Rokk, the representative of the new government, who called on Persikov to revive chicken breeding in the country. At the same time, neither Persikov, nor Rokk, nor anyone else has sought to use the so-called ray of life for evil.

So, the discovery took place - the first step towards disaster has been taken.

The second unfortunate circumstance that led to the tragic development of events is the chicken pestilence. Here again we are dealing with the will of chance or some other force beyond the control of man. The reasons for the chicken pestilence are not named in the story.

The action of the story is transferred outside of Moscow, where the focus of a potential disaster had just been suppressed, to the small county town of Steklovsk. Kostroma province. It is here that the first act of the drama itself begins, which turned into an invasion of giant reptiles. If in the classical version the event first occurs in the form of a tragedy, and then repeats itself in the form of a farce, then with Bulgakov it is the other way around - a semblance of a farce precedes a genuine tragedy. Chicken pestilence can be perceived as a lowered and ironic version of the cataclysm, which, however, in Bulgakov's work anticipates the real cataclysm.

The story of the chicken plague in general terms repeats the scenario of the development of events that took place at the Moscow Zoological Institute, and also anticipates the main event of the story. Here, too, there is an epicenter - the poultry yard of the widow Drozdova, which in general context is a kind of parallel to Persikov's office at the institute. And there, and there, uncontrollable and undesirable phenomena begin and gain momentum - frogs and snakes breed at Persikov, chickens die at Drozdova. Further, there is a discrepancy, we note - a temporary discrepancy. At the institute in Moscow, the undesirable phenomenon is managed to be dealt with, in Steklovsk it continues to develop and gain momentum, acquiring an increasingly menacing scale: “The next morning the city got up as if struck by thunder, because history took on strange and monstrous dimensions. On Personal Street, by noon, only three hens remained alive ... but even those died by one o'clock in the afternoon. Thus, the chicken plague overcomes the boundaries of its hearth and spills into the city.

Feverish, excessive intensity and tension of life borders on insanity. The city is likened to a fever living organism,

and its streets - foci of inflammation: "Teatralny passage, Neglinny and Lubyanka burned with white and purple stripes, splashed with rays, howled with signals, swirled with dust."

Through this absurd fuss with a touch of madness, through the comic situation in separate fragments, the other world begins to peep through, the image of hell itself rises, the devilry invades the phantasmagoric reality: and sparkling, kerosene was poured over them from hoses.Then red waves walked across the screen, the inanimate smoke swelled and dangled in shreds, crawled in a stream, a fiery inscription jumped out: "The burning of chicken corpses at Khodynka."

There is generally a lot of fire here, too bright, blazing light, electric radiance (“shimmering and shining”, “shining posters”, “fiery hours”, etc.), in which the City burns like in the flames of the underworld.

The sounds that fill the space of the City also evoke associations with a kind of diabolical coven: “newsboys growled and howled between the wheels of motors”, “Ga-ha-ha-ha,” the circus laughed”, “A-up!” the clowns shrieked piercingly”, ““Ah, damn it!” Persikov squeaked”, etc.

Subsequently, these techniques, having passed the path of transformation, will be used by the author when describing the Great Ball with Satan in the novel The Master and Margarita.

The next phase of the catastrophe, the invasion of giant reptiles, will really disrupt the course of Moscow life. Under the threat of destruction, Moscow will completely change both its appearance and way of existence.

The story "Fatal Eggs" develops the theme of fate, a premonition of the apocalypse. A chain of accidents will lead to a full-blown disaster. The surname of one of the key characters, Rokk, will become a peculiar symbol of these accidents. The direct culprit of the disaster - Rokk - is endowed with the features of a representative of evil spirits. Bearing in mind the name of this character, we can say that Bulgakov’s evil fate approaches a petty demon.

The mystical aura accompanies the description not only of the state of the characters, but of the entire artistic space. Let us turn to that chapter of the story, in which one of the key events for the development of the plot that caused the catastrophe takes place - the transfer of the chamber for experiments by Persikov to Rocca. This happens in the second part of the seventh chapter. It is here that the famous lines sound: “Rock has come” and “Rock with paper? A rare combination."

Here, in this chapter, Persikov's office becomes nothing less than an entrance to hell itself. Because of the experiments with the beam, the room becomes hot, dark and unclean: “slightly warming up the already stuffy and unclean air in the office, the red sheaf of the beam lay quietly” . The beam itself is directly connected with the infernal vision and begins to be perceived as a kind of gift from Satan: “chambers in which, as in hell, a crimson beam swollen in the glasses flickered”. Having accepted the satanic gift, Persikov also acquires some demonic features: “And Persikov himself, in the semi-darkness at the sharp needle of the beam that fell out of the reflector, was quite strange and majestic in a screw chair.” This short description allows us to correlate the image of Persikov

not only with the figure of Preobrazhensky from the story "Heart of a Dog", but partly with the image of Woland from the novel "The Master and Margarita".

The name of the state farm headed by Rokk - "Red Ray" - plays the same role, correlating what is happening not only with communist symbols, but also with symbols denoting hell and the underworld.

Persikov's meeting with Rokk, which ends with Rokk handing over the camera with the beam, is an interesting dramatic event. Both characters are in some way likened to evil spirits, and both images are built using the techniques that Bulgakov repeatedly resorted to when drawing minions of the devil of various calibers. But what is interesting: two, relatively speaking, demons do not sympathize with each other. When they meet, they are frightened of each other in their own way, somehow unpleasantly surprised by each other. The professor even shows Rocca his contemptuous attitude. Persikov and Rokk are not like-minded and do not act in concert and at the same time, as, for example, characters from Woland's retinue. However, the result of their actions is such, as if it was precisely by evil spirits and rigged. It is not for nothing that Bulgakov accompanies the description of the activities of both of them with the remark “on the mountain of the republic”: “Not mediocre mediocrity, on the mountain of the republic, was sitting at the microscope. No, Professor Persikov was sitting!” ; “On the mountain of the republic, Alexander Semenovich’s seething brain did not go out, in Moscow Rokk encountered Persikov’s invention, and in the rooms on Tverskaya “Red Paris” Alksander Semenovich had an idea how to revive chickens in the republic with the help of Persikov’s beam within a month.

Recall: neither Rokk nor Professor Persikov had any bad, evil intentions. None of them intended to use the beam to achieve power, wealth or other selfish goals. Therefore, we can say that they are the minions of Satan, without realizing it. They are an instrument of some kind of evil will, they bear the corresponding external signs, but they themselves do not realize this. Each of them notices these signs in his interlocutor, but does not realize that he himself is also their carrier. This property is partly then transferred to the main characters of the story "Heart of a Dog".

The tragic events, the description of which begins with the chapter "History at the State Farm", are preceded by a kind of symbolic artistic gesture: Bulgakov, as it were, turns off the light and sound. Gradually. First comes twilight, midnight: “Late in the evening, already closer to midnight, Pankrat, sitting barefoot in the poorly lit vestibule ...”, and then complete silence and darkness envelop the space of the story: “Not a sound was heard from the scientist’s office. And there was no light in it. There was no strip in front of the door.

So, the development of the action comes to a climax - the invasion of giant reptiles. At this stage, the plot of the story begins to be clearly built according to the laws of the genre, which in the framework of modern mass culture is called "thriller". Its origin goes back, as you know, to the classic gothic novel. The necessary components of works of this type are such a technique as suspense - forcing anxious expectation. General confusion, depression, seemingly unreasonable anxiety seized everyone, bad forebodings, fading in the end in silent darkness,

from which the outlines of something terrible and unexpected are about to appear, just create this anxious expectation.

The final scene of the eighth chapter will remind the modern reader of the darkest episodes of the most popular horror films. First of all, “Jurassic Park” and “Jaws”: “A snake about fifteen arshins and thick as a man, like a spring, jumped out of the mugs ... The snake waved past the head of the state farm right to where there was a white blouse on the road. Rokk saw quite clearly: Manya turned yellow-white, and her long hair, like wire, rose half an arshin above her head. In front of Rokk’s eyes, the snake, opening its mouth for a moment, from which something resembling a fork emerged, grabbed Manya, who was settling into dust, by the shoulder with her teeth, so that she lifted her a yard above the ground. Then Manya repeated the cutting death cry. The snake twisted itself with a five-yard propeller, its tail was swept up by a whirlwind, and began to crush Manya. She didn't make another sound, and only Rokk heard her bones cracking. Mani's head shot up high above the ground, gently pressing against the snake's cheek. Blood spattered from Mani's mouth, a broken arm popped out, and fountains of blood spurted from under her nails. Then the snake, dislocating its jaws, opened its mouth and at once put its head on Mani's head and began to fit on her like a glove on a finger. This is followed by a reminiscence from Gogol's Viy: “Such a hot breath beat from the snake in all directions that it touched Rokk's face, and the tail almost swept him out of the way ... It was then that Rokk turned gray. First, the left and then the right half of his black, like a boot, head was covered with silver. The chapter ends with the flight of Rocca from the place of terrible events: “In mortal nausea, he finally broke away from the road and, seeing nothing and no one, announcing the surroundings with a wild roar, rushed to run ...” .

As the researchers rightly point out, “in Bulgakov’s work, as early as the early 1920s, units of text appeared, including stable word-images, key words, characters and event patterns, which, as they unfolded, creative biography Bulgakov acquire the qualities of repetition and variability and form a single motivic structure - Bulgakov's meta-text" . Numerous autoquotations, roll calls and analogies contribute to the creation of an integral and unified artistic world. “Korotkov’s dream in The Diaboliad echoes the dream of Petka Shcheglov from The White Guard... In The Fatal Eggs, a familiar surname flashes by - Pestrukhin, referring to the Diaboliad.” A city exposed to an external natural threat is Moscow in the "Fatal Eggs" and Kyiv in the "White Guard". Professor Persikov, who lived on Prechistenka Street "in an apartment of five rooms," and his closest assistant, Privatdozent Ivanov, anticipate Professor Preobrazhensky and Dr. Bormental from the story "Heart of a Dog." The home environment of Professor Preobrazhensky - the janitor in the house, Daria Petrovna and Zina - have their counterparts in the story "Fatal Eggs" - the housekeeper Marya Stepanovna, who went "for the professor like a nanny" and the watchman of the Pankrat Institute. A fragment of the second chapter of the story "Fatal Eggs", which describes an experiment conducted by Professor Persikov and his assistant on a frog, echoes a fragment of the story "Heart of a Dog". "Fatal eggs": "The frog is hard

moved her head, and in her fading eyes the words were clear: “You bastards, that's what ... ". "Heart of a dog": “Zina instantly became the same vile eyes as a bitten one. She went up to the dog and obviously falsely stroked him. He looked at her with anguish and contempt. "Well ... there are three of you. Take it if you want. Only shame on you ...".

In the immediate vicinity of the artistic space of Bulgakov is the space of Gogol. In the story "Fatal Eggs", the bridge is outlined in the first lines, when the name of the main character of the story, Persikov, becomes known. Let us recall Bulgakov's feuilleton, in which we are talking about how the heads of a certain stall, one after another, ended up in the dock. One of the many directors bore the surname Peach, and the feuilleton itself was called "The Enchanted Place."

In the story "Fatal Eggs" for the first time there is a motive of patronage provided to the protagonist by an unnamed high-ranking and influential figure: "The professor can be calm ... no one will disturb him anymore, either at the institute or at home ... measures will be taken"; “Here Persikov went a little limp, because a well-known person called from the Kremlin, questioned Persikov for a long time and sympathetically about his work and expressed a desire to visit the laboratory.” This motif will continue in the story “Heart of a Dog”, where Professor Preobrazhensky will resort to the protection of a certain influential person named Vitaly Alexandrovich: “But only one condition: by anyone, anything, anytime, but that it be such a piece of paper, in the presence of which no Shvonder, no one else could even come to the door of my apartment. Final paper. Actual. Real. Armor. My name isn't even mentioned. It's over."

Note that both in the story "Fatal Eggs" and in the story "Heart of a Dog", patronizing persons are endowed with the features of an omnipotent, and therefore close to the highest, power. This will finally take shape in the novel The Master and Margarita, where Satan himself will play the role of patron.

NOTE

(1) "Fatal Eggs" - a story. Published: Nedra, M., 1925, No. 6. Included in the collections: Bulgakov M. Diaboliad. Moscow: Nedra, 1925 (2nd ed. - 1926); and Bulgakov M. Fatal eggs. Riga: Literature, 1928. In an abbreviated form under the title "Ray of Life" story R. Ya. published: Red Panorama, 1925, Nos. 19-22 (in No. 22 - under the title "Fatal Eggs".

LITERATURE

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CITY UNDER SIEGE -ANALYSIS OF M. BULGAKOV "S SHORT NOVEL "THE FATAL EGGS"

Department of History of Modern Russian Literature and contemporary literary process Lomonosov Moscow State University Vorobiovy Hills, the 1st humanitarian building, Moscow, Russia, 119991

This article is devoted to analysis of Moscow "s image, created by M. Bulgakov in his short novel "The Fatal Eggs". Time, space and characters depict historical and social realities of Moscow in the 1920s. For ten years Moscow lives two full life cycles, consisting of three main stages: breakdown caused by the events of the revolution and the civil war, post-war reconstruction and rapid flowering.In "The Fatal Eggs" the urban space is localized in two major topographical centers where the main events take place. Mystical aura (evil spirit) fills the description of narration and characters. Bulgakov's fiction foretells the future and serves as a warning of disaster.

Key words: M. Bulgakov, "The Fatal Eggs", the image of Moscow.

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Reflections of M. Bulgakov in the story "Fatal Eggs"

To be human, to have such a high status means to feel responsible for your actions and not let go of thoughts about the consequences. Mikhail Bulgakov created the dystopia "Fatal Eggs" in order to warn people against mistakes. The writer deftly alternates fantastic work satire, irony and philosophical conclusions.

From the lines of the story it becomes clear that M. Bulgakov main theme defines responsibility. Persikov, an intellectual, educated person, opens the "red ray", which contributes to the active reproduction of organisms, and their sizes reach gigantic. At the same time, the country is suffering a chicken pestilence that has destroyed all the chickens. The government finds a solution to the problem in a zoologist's experiment and asks him for help. Bulgakov draws our attention to the fact that Persikov's drugs end up in the hands of ignorant and short-sighted people, which entails catastrophic consequences. From this we can draw the following conclusions: one should not take up a matter thoughtlessly, and even more so interfere with human nature. Human nature is a substance that cannot be invaded. bulgakov dystopia satire philosophical

Such an invasion leads to death. The inexplicable phenomena in the story, mainly eighteen degrees of frost in mid-August, make it clear to us that nature is much stronger than us, and neither the Red Army nor other troops will save humanity from its networks. The very composition of the work is saturated with a paradoxical phenomenon. The heroes, following good intentions, wanted to do the best - breed chickens and provide food for the whole country, but it turned out the other way around. Rokk, in whose hands the professor's preparations fell, is only a bold experimenter.

He does not have the necessary knowledge that would serve to achieve positive results, but this does not stop him. The haste of the experiment and negative reviews from foreign countries are stronger, and the hero goes against nature. Because of his ignorance, monsters appear from eggs that destroy everything around. Failure to install them leads to the murder of a scientist. There is another story line in the story. Bulgakov parodies the path of the Napoleonic invasion. The snakes represent the French, who once advanced on Moscow. The author in "Fatal Eggs" managed to display both time, and tones, and pictures that were printed on the pages of history after the Napoleonic battles.

Bulgakov wants to draw our attention to the impossibility of changing the course of evolution. It shows that when planning the future, we have to live only in the present. People are building a “new ideal life”, being sure that it will be much better, but, unfortunately, they forget that there can be no bright future in the absence of sound thinking and meaningfulness of all consequences. Nature will not allow someone to decide the fate of people without having the right to do so.

I want to sum up with the words, accurately said by Silovan Ramishvili: “People make the biggest mistake when they imagine the desired reality.” This statement perfectly reflects the essence of the story "Fatal Eggs", because a person is endowed with a mind that should warn against such tragedies.

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"FATAL EGGS"

Tale. Published: Nedra, M., 1925, No. 6. Included in the collections: Bulgakov M. Diaboliad. Moscow: Nedra, 1925 (2nd ed. - 1926); and Bulgakov M. Fatal eggs. Riga: Literature, 1928. In an abbreviated form under the title "Ray of Life" story R. Ya. printed: Krasnaya Panorama, 1925, .No. 19-22 (in No. 22 - under the title "Fatal Eggs"). One of the sources of the plot of R. I. served as the novel of the English writer HG Wells (1866-1946) "Food of the Gods" (1904), which deals with wonderful food that accelerates the growth of living organisms and the development of intellectual abilities in giant people, and the growth of the spiritual and physical capabilities of mankind leads in the novel to a more perfect world order and the collision of the world of the future and the world of the past - the world of giants with the world of pygmies. In Bulgakov, however, the giants are not intellectually advanced human individuals, but especially aggressive reptiles. In R. I. Wells' other novel, "The Struggle of the Worlds" (1898), where the Martians who conquered the Earth suddenly die from terrestrial microbes, was also reflected. Bulgakov's reptiles approaching Moscow fall prey to the fantastic August frosts.

Among the sources of R. I. There are also more exotic ones. So, the poet Maximilian Voloshin (Kiriyenko-Voloshin) (1877-1932), who lived in Koktebel in the Crimea, sent Bulgakov a clipping from a Feodosia newspaper in 1921, which said “about the appearance of a huge reptile in the region of Kara-Dag Mountain, to capture which was sent company of Red Army soldiers. The writer and literary critic Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893-1984), who served as the prototype for Shpolyansky in The White Guard, in his book Sentimental Journey (1923) cites rumors that circulated in Kyiv in early 1919 and, perhaps, fueled Bulgakov's fantasy:

“They said that the French had a violet ray with which they could blind all the Bolsheviks, and Boris Mirsky wrote a feuilleton “The Sick Beauty” about this ray. Gorgeous - old world to be treated with a violet ray. And never before had the Bolsheviks been so feared as at that time. They said that the British - they were not sick people - that the British had already landed herds of monkeys in Baku, trained in all the rules of the military system. It was said that these monkeys cannot be propagated, that they attack without fear, that they will defeat the Bolsheviks.

They showed with their hands a arshin from the floor the growth of these monkeys. It was said that when one such monkey was killed during the capture of Baku, it was buried with an orchestra of Scottish military music and the Scots wept.

Because the instructors of the monkey legions were the Scots.

A black wind was blowing from Russia, the black spot of Russia was growing, the “sick beauty” was delirious.”

In R. I. a terrible violet ray parodic turned into a red ray of life, which also caused a lot of trouble. Instead of marching on the Bolsheviks with miraculous fighting monkeys, allegedly brought from abroad, at Bulgakov's, hordes of giant ferocious reptiles, hatched from eggs sent from abroad, approach Moscow.

In the text of R. I. the time and place of writing the story are indicated: "Moscow, 1924, October." The story existed in the original edition, different from the published one. December 27, 1924 Bulgakov read R. Ya. at a meeting of writers at the cooperative publishing house "Nikitinsky subbotniki". On January 6, 1925, the Berlin newspaper Dni responded to this event in the column Russian Literary News: “The young writer Bulgakov recently read the adventurous story Fatal Eggs. Although it is literary insignificant, it is worth getting acquainted with its plot in order to get an idea of this side of Russian literary creativity.

The action takes place in the future. The professor invents a method of unusually rapid reproduction of eggs with the help of red solar rays ... A Soviet worker, Semyon Borisovich Rokk, steals his secret from the professor and orders boxes of chicken eggs from abroad. And so it happened that at the border they confused the eggs of reptiles and chickens, and Rokk received eggs of bare-footed reptiles. He spread them in his Smolensk province (where all the action takes place), and boundless hordes of reptiles moved to Moscow, besieged it and devoured it. The final picture is a dead Moscow and a huge snake wrapped around the bell tower of Ivan the Great.

The theme is fun! Noticeable, however, is the influence of Wells (Food of the Gods). Bulgakov decided to rework the end in a more optimistic spirit. The frost came, and the bastards died out ... ".

Bulgakov himself, in a diary entry on the night of December 28, 1924, described his impressions of reading R. Ya. on "Nikitinsky subbotniks" as follows: "When I went there - a childish desire to excel and shine, and from there - a complex feeling. What's this? Feuilleton? Or audacity? Or maybe serious? Then not baked. In any case, there were about 30 people sitting there, and not one of them is not only a writer, but does not even understand what Russian literature is.

I’m afraid that no matter how they put me for all these exploits “in places not so remote” ... These “Nikitinsky Subbotniks” are musty, Soviet slave rags, with a thick admixture of Jews.” It is unlikely that the opinions of visitors to Nikitinskiye Subbotniks, whom Bulgakov put so low, could force the writer to change the ending of R. Ya. There is no doubt that the first, “pessimistic” end of the story existed. Bulgakov's former neighbor in the Bad Apartment, writer Vladimir Lyovshin (Manasevich) (1904-1984) gives the same version of the finale, allegedly improvised by Bulgakov in telephone conversation with the publishing house "Nedra", when the text was not yet ready: "... The story ended with a grandiose picture of the evacuation of Moscow, which is approached by hordes of giant boas." It should be noted that, according to the memoirs of P. N. Zaitsev (1889-1970), secretary of the editorial office of the Nedra almanac, Bulgakov immediately transferred R. Ya. in finished form, and most likely V. Lyovshin's memories of the "telephone improvisation" of the finale are a memory error. About the existence of R. I. with a different ending, an anonymous correspondent reported to Bulgakov in a letter on March 9, 1936 in connection with the inevitable removal of the play “The Cabal of the Holy Ones” from the repertoire, naming among what “is written by you, but maybe. and is attributed and transmitted”, “ending option” R. i. and the story "Heart of a Dog" (it is possible that the variant of the ending of R. Ya. was written down by someone present at the reading on December 27, 1924 and later ended up in samizdat).

It is interesting that the real “pessimistic” ending almost literally coincided with the one proposed by the writer Maxim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) (1865-1936) after the publication of the story, which was published in February 1925. On May 8 of the same year, he wrote to the writer Mikhail Leonidovich Slonimsky (1897-1972): “I liked Bulgakov very much, very much, but he did not finish the story. The march of reptiles to Moscow has not been used, but think what a monstrously interesting picture it is! Obviously, Gorky remained unaware of the note in Dnya on January 6, 1925, and he did not know that the end he proposed existed in the first edition of R. Ya. Bulgakov never recognized this Gorky review, just as Gorky did not suspect that in Bulgakov's diary entry on November 6, 1923, the author R. Ya. spoke of him very highly as a writer and very low as a person: “I read Gorky’s masterful book “My Universities” ... Gorky is unsympathetic to me as a person, but what a huge, strong writer he is and what terrible and important things he says about the writer.

Obviously, the author of My Universities (1922) from his Western European “beautiful distance” did not imagine the absolute obsceneness of the final version with the occupation of Moscow by hordes of giant reptiles. Bulgakov, most likely, realized this and, either under pressure from censorship, or anticipating its objections in advance, remade the ending of R. I.

There is no doubt that, fortunately for the writer, censorship saw in the campaign of reptiles against Moscow in Russia. only a parody of the intervention of 14 states against Soviet Russia during the civil war (the bastards are foreign, since they hatched from foreign eggs). Therefore, the capture by hordes of reptiles of the capital of the world proletariat was perceived by the censors only as a dangerous allusion to the possible defeat of the USSR in future war with the imperialists and the destruction of Moscow in this war. For the same reason, the play “Adam and Eve” was not released later, in 1931, when one of the leaders of Soviet aviation, Ya. . In the same context in R. I. could be perceived curium mor, against which neighboring states establish cordons. It meant the revolutionary ideas of the USSR, against which the Entente proclaimed the cordon sanitaire policy. However, in fact, Bulgakov’s “impudence” in R. Ya., for which he was afraid to get into “places not so remote”, was different, and the system of images in the story primarily parodied somewhat different facts and ideas.

The main character is R. i. - Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov, inventor of the red "ray of life". It is with the help of this beam that monstrous reptiles are brought to light, threatening the death of the country. The red ray is a symbol of the socialist revolution in Russia, carried out under the slogan of building a better future, but which brought terror and dictatorship. The death of Persikov during a spontaneous riot of the crowd, excited by the threat of an invasion of Moscow by invincible giant reptiles, personifies the danger that was hidden by the experiment begun by V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks to spread the "red ray" at first in Russia, and then throughout the world .

Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov was born on April 16, 1870, because on the day R. I began to act. in an imaginary future of 1928, he turns 58 on April 16. In this way, main character- the same age as Lenin. April 16 is also not a random date. On this day (according to New Style) in 1917, the leader of the Bolsheviks returned to Petrograd from exile. It is significant that exactly eleven years later, Professor Persikov discovered a wonderful red ray. For Russia, the arrival of Lenin in 1917 became such a ray, the next day he promulgated the famous April Theses calling for the development of the “bourgeois-democratic” revolution into a socialist one. The portrait of Persikov is also very reminiscent of the portrait of Lenin: “A wonderful head, a pusher, with bunches of yellowish hair sticking out on the sides ... Persikov's face always bore a somewhat capricious imprint. On the red nose are old-fashioned small glasses in a silver frame, the eyes are shiny, small, tall, stooping. He spoke in a creaky, thin, croaking voice and, among other oddities, had this: when he said something weightily and confidently, he turned the index finger of his right hand into a hook and screwed up his eyes. And since he always spoke confidently, because his erudition in his field was absolutely phenomenal, the hook very often appeared before the eyes of Professor Persikov's interlocutors. From Lenin here - a characteristic bald head with reddish hair, an oratorical gesture, a manner of speaking, and finally, the famous squint of eyes, which entered the Leninist myth. The extensive erudition also coincides, which, of course, Lenin had, and even foreign languages Lenin and Persikov speak the same language, speaking French and German fluently. In the first newspaper report about the discovery of the red ray, the professor's surname was misrepresented by a reporter from hearing to Pevsikov, which clearly indicates the burriness of Vladimir Ipatievich, like Vladimir Ilyich. By the way, Persikov is named Vladimir Ipatievich only on the first page of the R. Ya., and then everyone around him calls him Vladimir Ipatievich - almost Vladimir Ilyich.

Hidden allusion to the February and October revolution is also contained in that episode of R. Ya., where Professor Persikov "in the 25th, in the spring, became famous for cutting off 76 students during exams, and all of them on naked bastards: "How, you don't know how naked bastards differ from reptiles? - Asked Persikov ... Be ashamed. You are probably a Marxist?" - "Marxist," the stabbed one answered, fading away. "So, please, in the fall." This contains a clear allusion to the fact that the Bolsheviks, who lost in the March "days of freedom", came to power in the autumn " . And the similarity of "naked reptiles" and "reptiles" is seen by the writer in that the poorest sections of the peasantry and the working class, and the intelligentsia ("naked"), who supported the October Revolution, began to grovel before the new government with ease.

In the Leninist context of the image of Persikov, a foreign, and specifically German, explanation finds its explanation - judging by the inscriptions on the boxes, the origin of the eggs of reptiles, which then, under the influence of the red ray, almost captured (and in the first edition of R. Ya. even captured) Moscow. It is known that after the February Revolution, Lenin and his comrades were transported from Switzerland to Russia through Germany in a sealed wagon (it is not for nothing that it is emphasized that the eggs that arrived at Rocca, which he takes for chicken, are covered with labels all around). It is curious that the likening of the Bolsheviks to gigantic bastards marching on Moscow was already made in a letter from a nameless insightful Bulgakov reader in a letter on March 9, 1936: “Dear Bulgakov! You yourself predicted the sad end of your Moliere: among other reptiles, undoubtedly, the non-free press hatched from the fatal egg.

Among the prototypes of Persikov was also the famous biologist and pathologist Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov (1875-1955), whose surname was parodied in the surname of the main character R. Ya. And it is no coincidence that it was parodied, for it was Abrikosov who dissected Lenin's corpse and removed his brain. In R. I. this brain, as it were, was transferred to the scientist who extracted it, unlike the Bolsheviks, a gentle man, and not a cruel one, and carried away to self-forgetfulness by zoology, and not by the socialist revolution.

It is possible that the idea of the ray of life in R. I. Bulgakov was prompted by his acquaintance with the discovery in 1921 by biologist Alexander Gavrilovich Gurvich (1874-1954) of mitogenetic radiation, under the influence of which mitosis (cell division) occurs. In fact, mitogenetic radiation is the same thing that is now called the fashionable term "biofield". In 1922 or 1923 A. G. Gurvich moved from Simferopol to Moscow, and Bulgakov could even meet with him.

Pictured in R. i. chicken pestilence is, in particular, a parody of the tragic famine of 1921 in the Volga region. Persikov is a comrade of the chairman of Dobrokur, an organization designed to help eliminate the consequences of the death of chicken stock in the USSR. Dobrokur clearly had as its prototype the Committee for Assistance to the Starving, created in July 1921 by a group of public figures and scientists who opposed the Bolsheviks. The Committee was headed by former ministers of the Provisional Government S. N. Prokopovich (1871-1955), N. M. Kishkin (1864-1930) and a prominent figure in the Menshevik Party E. D. Kuskova (1869-1958). The Soviet government used the names of the participants in this organization to obtain foreign aid, which, however, was often used not at all to help the starving, but for the needs of the party elite and the world revolution. Already at the end of August 1921, the Committee was abolished, and its leaders and many ordinary participants were arrested. It is indicative that in R. I. Persikov also dies in August. His death symbolizes, among other things, the collapse of the attempts of non-party intelligentsia to establish civilized cooperation with the totalitarian government. An intellectual standing outside of politics is one of Persikov's hypostases, all the more shading the other - the parody of this image in relation to Lenin. As such an intellectual, Bulgakov's acquaintances and relatives could serve as prototypes for Persikov. In her memoirs, the second wife of the writer L. E. Belozerskaya expressed the opinion that “describing the appearance and some of the habits of Professor Persikov, M. A. started from the image of a living person, my relative, Evgeny Nikitich Tarnovsky”, a professor of statistics, who at the same time had to live. It is possible that in the figure of the main character R. I. some features of Uncle Bulgakov were also reflected on the part of the mother of the surgeon Nikolai Mikhailovich Pokrovsky (1868-1941), the indisputable prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky in The Heart of a Dog.

There is also a third hypostasis of the image of Persikov - this is a brilliant scientist-creator, who opens a gallery of such heroes as the same Preobrazhensky, Molière in The Cabal of the Saints and Molière, Efrosimov in Adam and Eve, the Master in The Master and Margarita. In R. I. Bulgakov, for the first time in his work, raised the problem of the responsibility of a scientist and the state for the use of a discovery that could harm humanity. The writer showed the danger that the fruits of the discovery will be appropriated by unenlightened and self-confident people, and even those with unlimited power. Under such circumstances, catastrophe can occur much sooner than general prosperity, as shown by the example of Rocca. This surname itself may have been born from the abbreviation ROCK - Russian Society Red Cross, in whose hospitals Bulgakov worked as a doctor in 1916 on Southwestern Front the first world war - the first catastrophe that humanity experienced before his eyes in the 20th century. And, of course, the name of the unlucky director of the Krasny Luch state farm indicated fate, an evil fate.

Criticism after the release of R. i. quickly figured out the political hints hidden in the story. A typewritten copy of an excerpt from an article by the critic M. Lirov (M. I. Litvakov) (1880-1937) about Bulgakov's work, published in 1925 in No. 5-6 of the journal Print and Revolution, has been preserved in Bulgakov's archive. In this passage, it was about R. I. Bulgakov emphasized here the most dangerous places for himself:

“But the real record was broken by M. Bulgakov with his “story” “Fatal Eggs”. This is really something remarkable for the "Soviet" almanac.

Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov made an extraordinary discovery - he discovered a red sunbeam, under the influence of which the eggs of, say, frogs instantly turn into tadpoles, tadpoles quickly grow into huge frogs, which immediately multiply and immediately begin mutual extermination. And the same is true of all living creatures. Such were the amazing properties of the red ray discovered by Vladimir Ipatievich.

This discovery was quickly learned in Moscow, despite the conspiracy of Vladimir Ipatievich. The nimble Soviet press was greatly agitated (here is a picture of the customs of the Soviet press, lovingly copied from life ... the worst tabloid press of Paris, London and New York) (I doubt that Lirov had ever been to these cities, and even more so was familiar with the customs local press. - B. S.). Now the “gentle voices” from the Kremlin rang on the phone, and the Soviet ... confusion began.

And then a disaster broke out over the Soviet country: a devastating epidemic of chickens swept through it. How to exit plight? But who usually brings the USSR out of all disasters? Of course, agents of the GPU. And then there was one Chekist Rokk (Rock), who had a state farm at his disposal, and this Rokk decided to restore chicken breeding at his state farm with the help of Vladimir Ipatievich's discovery.

From the Kremlin came an order to Professor Persikov, so that he would lend his complex scientific apparatus to Rocca for the needs of restoring chicken breeding. Persikov and his assistant, of course, are outraged and indignant. And indeed, how can such complex devices be provided to the profane. After all, Rokk can do disasters. But the "gentle voices" from the Kremlin are relentless. Nothing, Chekist - he knows how to do everything.

Rokk received devices operating with the help of a red beam and began to operate on his state farm. But a catastrophe came out - and here's why: Vladimir Ipatievich wrote out reptile eggs for his experiments, and Rokk - chicken eggs for his work.

The Soviet transport, of course, mixed everything up, and instead of chicken eggs, Rokk received the “fatal eggs” of reptiles. Instead of chickens, Rokk spread huge reptiles that devoured him, his employees, the surrounding population and rushed in huge masses to the whole country, mainly to Moscow, destroying everything in their path. The country was declared under martial law, the Red Army was mobilized, the detachments of which died in heroic but fruitless battles. Danger already threatened Moscow, but then a miracle happened: in August, terrible frosts suddenly struck, and all the bastards died. Only this miracle saved Moscow and the entire USSR.

But on the other hand, a terrible riot took place in Moscow, during which the “inventor” of the red ray, Vladimir Ipatievich, also died. Crowds of people burst into his laboratory and shouted: “Beat him! World Villain! You unleashed the bastards!" - tore him apart.

Everything fell into place. The assistant of the late Vladimir Ipatievich, although he continued his experiments, he failed to open the red beam again.

The critic M. Lirov stubbornly called Professor Persikov Vladimir Ipatievich, also emphasizing that he was the inventor of the red ray, i.e. as if the architect of the October socialist revolution. Those in power were clearly given to understand that behind Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov, the figure of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was peeping, and R. I. - a libelous satire on the late leader and the communist idea in general. M. Lirov focused the attention of possible biased readers of the story on the fact that Vladimir Ipatievich died during a popular uprising, that they kill him with the words "world villain" and "you dismissed the reptiles." Here one could see an allusion to Lenin as the proclaimed leader of the world revolution, as well as an association with the famous "hydra of the revolution", as opponents put it. Soviet power(The Bolsheviks, in turn, spoke of the "hydra of the counter-revolution"). It is interesting that in the play The Run (1928), completed in the year when the action takes place in the imaginary future of R. Ya., the “eloquent” messenger Krapilin calls the hangman Khludov “the world beast”. The picture of the death of the protagonist R. Ya., parodying the already mythologized Lenin, from the indignant "crowds of people" (this lofty pathetic expression is an invention of a critic, it is not in Bulgakov's story) could hardly please those who were in power in the Kremlin. And neither Wells nor Lirov, nor other vigilant readers could deceive. Elsewhere in his article on Bulgakov, the critic argued that “from mentioning the name of his progenitor Wells, as many are now inclined to do, Bulgakov’s literary face is not at all cleared up. And what is Wells, really, when here the same boldness of fiction is accompanied by completely different attributes? The resemblance is purely external ... "We note that in fact the connection here can be even more direct: G. Wells visited our country and wrote the book Russia in the Dark" (1921), where, in particular, he spoke about meetings with Lenin and called the Bolshevik leader, who spoke with inspiration about the future fruits of the GOELRO plan, a "Kremlin dreamer" - a phrase that was widely used in English speaking countries, and later played up and refuted in the play by Nikolai Pogodin (Stukalov) (1900-1962) "Kremlin Chimes" (1942). In R. I. a similar "Kremlin dreamer" depicts Persikov, detached from the world and immersed in his scientific plans. True, he does not sit in the Kremlin, but he constantly communicates with the Kremlin leaders in the course of action.

M. Lirov, who became adept at literary denunciations (only literary ones?), Incidentally, he himself disappeared safely in another wave of repressions in the 1930s, sought to read and show “who should” even what R. I. there was no stopping at outright rigging. The critic claimed that Rokk, who played the main role in the tragedy, was a Chekist, an employee of the GPU. Thus, a hint was made that in R. I. real episodes of the struggle for power that unfolded in last years Lenin's life and in the year of his death, where Chekist Rock (or his prototype F. E. Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926), head of the punitive organs) finds himself at one with some "gentle voices" in the Kremlin and leads the country to disaster with his inept actions. Actually in R. i. Rokk is not a Chekist at all, although he conducts his experiments in the Krasny Luch under the protection of GPU agents. He is a participant in the civil war and revolution, into the abyss of which he throws himself, “changing his flute for a destructive Mauser,” and after the war, “edits a“ huge newspaper ”in Turkestan, having managed to become famous as a member of the“ supreme economic commission ”for his amazing work on irrigating the Turkestan the edges". The obvious prototype of Rocca is the editor of the Kommunist newspaper and the poet G.S. Astakhov, one of the main persecutors of Bulgakov in Vladikavkaz in 1920-1921. and his opponent in the debate about Pushkin (although the resemblance to F. E. Dzerzhinsky, who headed the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the country from 1924, can also be seen if desired). In "Notes on the Cuffs" a portrait of Astakhov is given: "bold with an eagle face and a huge revolver on his belt." Rokk, like Astakhov, has as his attribute a huge revolver - a Mauser, and edits a newspaper, only not in the native outlying Caucasus, but in the native outlying Turkestan. Instead of the art of poetry, to which Astakhov considered himself involved, who reviled Pushkin and considered himself clearly superior to the "sun of Russian poetry", Rokk is committed to the art of music. Before the revolution, he was a professional flutist, and then the flute remains his main hobby. That is why he tries at the end, like an Indian fakir, to bewitch the giant anaconda by playing the flute, but without any success. We also note that in the novel by Bulgakov’s friend from Vladikavkaz Yuri Slezkin (1885-1947) “The Girl from the Mountains” (1925), G. S. Astakhov is depicted in the guise of the poet Avalov, a member of the revolutionary committee and editor of the main city newspaper of the Ossetian revolutionary committee, a young man with a beard , in a cloak and with a revolver.

If we accept that one of the prototypes of Rocca could be L. D. Trotsky, who really lost the struggle for power in 1923-1924. (Bulgakov noted this in his diary as early as January 8, 1924), one cannot but marvel at the completely mystical coincidences. Trotsky, like Rokk, played the most active role in the revolution and civil war, being chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. At the same time, he was also engaged in economic affairs, in particular, the restoration of transport, but switched entirely to economic work after leaving the military department in January 1925. In particular, Trotsky briefly headed the main committee on concessions. Rokk arrived in Moscow and received a well-deserved rest in 1928. With Trotsky, this happened almost at the same time. In the autumn of 1927 he was taken out of the Central Committee and expelled from the party, at the beginning of 1928 he was exiled to Alma-Ata, and literally a year later he was forced to leave the USSR forever, to disappear from the country. Needless to say, all these events took place after the creation of R. I. M. Lirov wrote his article in the middle of 1925, during a period of further intensification of the internal party struggle, and, it seems, in the calculation that readers would not notice, he tried to attribute to Bulgakov its reflection in R. Ya., written almost a year earlier.

Bulgakov's story did not go unnoticed by the informers of the OGPU either. On February 22, 1928, one of them reported: “The implacable enemy of the Soviet government is the author of The Days of the Turbins and Zoya’s Apartment, Mikh. Afanasyevich Bulgakov, former Smenovekhovets. One can simply be amazed at the patience and tolerance of the Soviet government, which still does not prevent the distribution of Bulgakov's book (ed. "Nedra") "Fatal Eggs". This book is a brazen and outrageous slander against the Red authorities. She vividly describes how, under the influence of a red ray, reptiles gnawing each other were born, who went to Moscow. There is a vile place there, a vicious nod towards the late comrade LENIN, who lies a dead toad, which, even after death, has an evil expression on its face (here we mean a giant frog, bred by Persikov with the help of a red beam and her aggressiveness, and “even after her death there was an evil expression on her muzzle” - a hint at the body of Lenin, preserved in the mausoleum - B.S.). How this book of his walks freely is impossible to understand. It is read avidly. Bulgakov is loved by young people, he is popular. His earnings reach 30,000 rubles. in year. One tax he paid 4,000 rubles.

Because he paid that he was going to go abroad.

These days he was met by Lerner (we are talking about the famous Pushkinist N. O. Lerner (1877-1934. - B. S.). Bulgakov is very offended by the Soviet government and is very dissatisfied with the current situation. You can't work at all. Nothing is certain. Need necessarily or again war communism or complete freedom. The coup, says Bulgakov, should be made by a peasant who finally spoke his real native language. In the end, there are not so many communists (and among them are “such”), and there are tens of millions of offended and indignant peasants. Naturally, during the first war, communism will be swept out of Russia, etc. Here are the thoughts and hopes that are swarming in the head of the author of "Fatal Eggs", who is now about to take a walk abroad. It would be quite unpleasant to release such a "bird" abroad... By the way, in a conversation with Lerner, Bulgakov touched on the contradictions in the policy of the Soviet authorities: - On the one hand, they shout - save. And on the other hand: if you start saving, they will consider you a bourgeois. Where is the logic?

Of course, one cannot vouch for the literal accuracy of the transmission by an unknown agent of Bulgakov's conversation with Lerner. However, it is quite possible that it was precisely the tendentious interpretation by the scammer R. i. contributed to the fact that Bulgakov was never released abroad. In general, what the writer said to the Pushkinist is in good agreement with the thoughts captured in his diary "Under the heel." There, in particular, there are arguments about the probability new war and the inability of the Soviet government to withstand it. In a note dated October 26, 1923, Bulgakov cited his conversation on this topic with a neighbor baker: “He considers the actions of the authorities to be fraudulent (bonds, etc.). He said that two Jewish commissars in the Krasnopresnensky soviet had been beaten up by those who came to the mobilization for arrogance and threats with a revolver. I don't know if it's true. According to the baker, the mood of the mobilized is very unpleasant. He, a baker, complained that hooliganism among young people was developing in the villages. In the head of the little one is the same as in everyone else - in his own mind, he understands perfectly well that the Bolsheviks are swindlers, they don’t want to go to war, they have no idea about the international situation. We are a wild, dark, unfortunate people. Obviously, in the first edition of R. I. the capture of Moscow by foreign bastards symbolized the future defeat of the USSR in the war, which at that moment the writer considered inevitable. The invasion of reptiles also personified the ephemerality of the NEP prosperity, drawn in a fantastic 1928 rather parodic. The same attitude towards NEP is the author of R. Ya. expressed in a conversation with N. O. Lerner, information about which reached the OGPU.

On R. I. There were interesting responses from abroad as well. Bulgakov kept in his archives a typewritten copy of a TASS report dated January 24, 1926, entitled "Churchill is afraid of socialism." It said that on January 22, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill (1874-1965), in a speech in connection with labor strikes in Scotland, pointed out that "the terrible conditions that exist in Glasgow give rise to communism", but "we do not want to see on Moscow crocodile eggs on our table (underlined by Bulgakov - B.S.). I am sure that the time will come when the liberal party will render all possible assistance to the conservative party in the eradication of these doctrines. I am not afraid of a Bolshevik revolution in England, but I am afraid of an attempt by the socialist majority to arbitrarily introduce socialism. One tenth of socialism, which ruined Russia, would completely destroy England ... ”(It is difficult to doubt the validity of these words today, seventy years later).

In R. I. Bulgakov parodied V.E. Meyerhold, mentioning "the theater named after the late Vsevolod Meyerhold, who died, as you know, in 1927, when staging Pushkin's Boris Godunov, when trapezes with naked boyars collapsed." This phrase goes back to one joke conversation in the editors of Gudok, which is reported by the head of the fourth page of this newspaper, Ivan Semenovich Ovchinnikov (1880-1967): “The beginning of the twenties ... Bulgakov is sitting in the next room, but for some reason he has his sheepskin coat every morning brings to our hanger. The sheepskin coat is one of a kind: it has no fasteners and no belt. He put his hands in the sleeves - and you can consider yourself dressed. Mikhail Afanasyevich himself certifies the sheepskin coat as follows:

Russian goof. Fashion of the late seventeenth century. In the annals for the first time it is mentioned under 1377. Now at Meyerhold's, in such shocks, Duma boyars are falling from the second floor. The injured actors and spectators are taken to the Sklifosovsky Institute. I recommend to see…”

Obviously, Bulgakov suggested that by 1927 - exactly 550 years after the first mention of ohabny in the annals, Meyerhold's creative evolution would come to the point that the actors playing the boyars would be removed from the okhabny and left in what their mother gave birth, so that only directing and acting technique replaced all historical scenery. After all, Vsevolod Emilievich said at one of his lectures in February 1924 about the production of Godunov: to all the tragedy ... "

There are in R. I. and other parody sketches. For example, the one where the fighters of the First Cavalry, at the head of which "in the same raspberry hood, like all riders, rides who became legendary 10 years ago, aged and gray-haired commander of the equestrian bulk" - Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny (1883-1973), - perform in a campaign against reptiles with a thieves' song, performed in the manner of the "Internationale":

No ace, no queen, no jack,

We will beat the bastards, no doubt,

Four on the side - yours are not there ...

Found a place here real case(or, at least, a widely spread rumor in Moscow). On August 2, 1924, Bulgakov entered in his diary the story of his acquaintance, the writer Ilya Kremlev (Sven) (1897-1971), that “the GPU regiment went to a demonstration with an orchestra that played “These girls all adore”.” In R. I. The GPU was replaced by the First Cavalry, and such foresight, in the light of the article by M. Lirov cited above, turned out to be not superfluous at all. The writer, undoubtedly, was familiar with the testimonies and rumors about the customs of the Budyonnovsk freemen, who were distinguished by violence and robberies. They were captured in the book of short stories Cavalry (1923) by Isaac Babel (1894-1940) (albeit in a slightly softened form against the facts of his Cavalry diary). It was quite appropriate to put a thieves' song in the rhythm of the "Internationale" into the mouths of the Budyonnovites. It is curious that in Bulgakov's diary the last entry, made more than six months after the publication of R. Ya., on December 13, 1925, is dedicated specifically to Budyonny and characterizes him quite in the spirit of Cavalry fighters singing the thieves "Internationale" in R. Ya.: I heard that Budyonny's wife had died. Then the rumor that suicide, and then, it turns out, he killed her. He fell in love, she interfered with him. Remains completely unpunished. According to the story, she threatened him that she would come out with the exposure of his cruelties with the soldiers in tsarist times, when he was a sergeant-major. The degree of reliability of these rumors is difficult to assess today.

On R. I. There were critical and positive responses. So, Yu. Sobolev in "Dawn of the East" on March 11, 1925, assessed the story as the most significant publication in the 6th book of "Nedr", stating: "Only Bulgakov with his ironically fantastic and satirically utopian story" Fatal Eggs " unexpectedly falls out of the general, very well-intentioned and very decent tone. "Utopian" R. Ya. the critic saw “in the very drawing of Moscow in 1928, in which Professor Persikov again receives an “apartment with six rooms” and feels his whole life as it was ... before October.” However, in general, Soviet criticism reacted to R. Ya. negatively as a phenomenon that counteracts the official ideology. Censorship became more vigilant towards the novice author, and Bulgakov's next story, The Heart of a Dog, was never published during his lifetime. Also, the secretary of the American embassy in Moscow, Charles Boolen, who in the mid-30s was friends with Bulgakov, and in the 50s became ambassador to the USSR, according to the author R. Ya. it was the appearance of this story in his memoirs that he called as a milestone, after which criticism seriously fell upon the writer: “Coup de grace” (decisive blow (French) - B.S.) was directed against Bulgakov after he wrote the story “Fatal eggs ”(As we have already seen, the author often called R. I. not a story, but a story. - B.S.) ... The small literary magazine Nedra printed the story in its entirety before the editors realized that it was a parody of Bolshevism, which turns people into monsters that destroy Russia and can only be stopped by the intervention of the Lord. When the real meaning of the story was understood, an accusatory campaign was unleashed against Bulgakov. R. i. enjoyed great reader success and even in 1930 remained one of the most requested works in libraries.

On January 30, 1926, Bulgakov entered into an agreement with the Moscow Chamber Theater to stage R. Ya. However, sharp criticism of R. I. in the censored press made the prospects of staging R. Ya. not too encouraging, and instead of R. i. "Crimson Island" was staged. The contract for this play, concluded on July 15, 1926, left the staging of R. Ya. as a fallback: “In the event that Crimson Island cannot, for any reason, be accepted for production by the Directorate, then M.A. Bulgakov undertakes instead of him, at the expense of the payment made for Crimson Island, to provide the Directorate with a new a play based on the plot of the story "Fatal Eggs" ... "" Crimson Island "appeared on stage at the end of 1928, but was already banned in June 1929. Under those conditions, the chances of staging R. I. disappeared completely, and Bulgakov never returned to the idea of staging.

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