Why Use Jungian Archetypal Theory to Investigate The Master and Margarita?

My examination of The Master and Margarita is propelled by the following thoughts: Bulgakov was not shy about expressing his anti-Bolshevik sentiments nor his dislike of the ideology behind socialist realism (and the expectations they created for artists). While scholars read The Master and Margarita as an anti-Soviet work, the question remains: why would Bulgakov…

Introduction: Born from Regression

The catalyst for Bulgakov’s investigation into Christianity, and his desire to write about Christ and the devil, appears to be a May 1926 incident during which the Soviet secret police known as the OGPU (Obyedinyonnoye gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye or Joint State Police Directorate) searched his apartment and confiscated three notebooks of journals and his manuscript…

Overview

On 24 August 1929, Soviet playwright and author Mikhail Afansievich Bulgakov (1891-1940), who wanted nothing more than success as an artist, wrote his brother that his “destruction as a writer had been accomplished [moe pisatel’skoe unichtozhenie]” [1]. Only three years before, after initial Soviet censorship clamped down on his work, Bulgakov began researching Christianity and…