Subject of the work

At one time it caused a lot of talk satirical story M. Bulgakov. In “Heart of a Dog” the heroes of the work are bright and memorable; the plot is fantasy mixed with reality and subtext in which harsh criticism is openly read Soviet power. Therefore, the work was very popular in the 60s among dissidents, and in the 90s, after its official publication, it was even recognized as prophetic.

The theme of the tragedy of the Russian people is clearly visible in this work; in “Heart of a Dog” the main characters enter into an irreconcilable conflict with each other and will never understand each other. And, although the proletarians won in this confrontation, Bulgakov in the novel reveals to us the whole essence of the revolutionaries and their type of new man in the person of Sharikov, leading us to the idea that they will not create or do anything good.

There are only three main characters in “Heart of a Dog,” and the narrative is mainly told from Bormenthal’s diary and through the dog’s monologue.

Characteristics of the main characters

Sharikov

A character who appeared as a result of an operation from the mongrel Sharik. A transplant of the pituitary gland and gonads of the drunkard and rowdy Klim Chugunkin turned a sweet and friendly dog ​​into Poligraf Poligrafych, a parasite and a hooligan.
Sharikov embodies all the negative traits of the new society: he spits on the floor, throws cigarette butts, does not know how to use the restroom and constantly swears. But this is not even the worst thing - Sharikov quickly learned to write denunciations and found a calling in killing his eternal enemies, cats. And while he deals only with cats, the author makes it clear that he will do the same with people who stand in his way.

Bulgakov saw this base power of the people and a threat to the entire society in the rudeness and narrow-mindedness with which the new revolutionary government resolves issues.

Professor Preobrazhensky

An experimenter who uses innovative developments in solving the problem of rejuvenation through organ transplantation. He is a famous world scientist, a respected surgeon, whose “speaking” surname gives him the right to experiment with nature.

I was used to living in grand style - servants, a house of seven rooms, luxurious dinners. His patients are former nobles and high revolutionary officials who patronize him.

Preobrazhensky is a respectable, successful and self-confident person. The professor, an opponent of any terror and Soviet power, calls them “idlers and idlers.” He considers affection the only way to communicate with living beings and denies the new government precisely for its radical methods and violence. His opinion: if people are accustomed to culture, then the devastation will disappear.

The rejuvenation operation yielded an unexpected result - the dog turned into a human. But the man turned out to be completely useless, uneducable and absorbing the worst. Philip Philipovich concludes that nature is not a field for experiments and he interfered with its laws in vain.

Dr. Bormental

Ivan Arnoldovich is completely and completely devoted to his teacher. At one time, Preobrazhensky took an active part in the fate of a half-starved student - he enrolled him in the department, and then took him on as an assistant.

The young doctor tried in every possible way to develop Sharikov culturally, and then completely moved in with the professor, as it became more and more difficult to cope with the new person.

The apotheosis was the denunciation that Sharikov wrote against the professor. At the climax, when Sharikov took out a revolver and was ready to use it, it was Bromenthal who showed firmness and toughness, while Preobrazhensky hesitated, not daring to kill his creation.

The positive characterization of the heroes of “Heart of a Dog” emphasizes how important honor and self-dignity are for the author. Bulgakov described himself and his doctor-relatives in many of the same traits as both doctors, and in many ways would have acted the same way as them.

Shvonder

The newly elected chairman of the house committee, who hates the professor, like class enemy. This is a schematic hero, without deep reasoning.

Shvonder completely bows to the new revolutionary government and its laws, and in Sharikov he sees not a person, but a new useful unit of society - he can buy textbooks and magazines, participate in meetings.

Sh. can be called Sharikov’s ideological mentor; he tells him about his rights in Preobrazhensky’s apartment and teaches him how to write denunciations. The chairman of the house committee, due to his narrow-mindedness and lack of education, always hesitates and gives in in conversations with the professor, but this makes him hate him even more.

Other heroes

The list of characters in the story would not be complete without two au pairs - Zina and Daria Petrovna. They recognize the superiority of the professor, and, like Bormenthal, are completely devoted to him and agree to commit a crime for the sake of their beloved master. They proved this at the time of the repeated operation to transform Sharikov into a dog, when they were on the side of the doctors and accurately followed all their instructions.

You have become acquainted with the characteristics of the heroes of Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog,” a fantastic satire that anticipated the collapse of Soviet power immediately after its emergence - the author, back in 1925, showed the whole essence of those revolutionaries and what they were capable of.

Work test

What is the meaning of the “speaking” names of the characters in the context of the story?

Main character The story is named Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky.

Philip" in Greek means "lover of horses", i.e. lover of riding horses, driving horses, hence - ruler. And “Philip Philipovich” is a doubly ruler who has a passion for political power deep in the blood.

The professor's surname - Preobrazhensky - is also symbolic. Preobrazhensky performs the operation in the afternoon of December 23, and the humanization of the dog is completed on the night of January 7, since the last mention of his canine appearance in the observation diary kept by Bormental’s assistant is dated January 6. Thus, the entire process of turning a dog into a human covers the period from December 24 to January 6, from Catholic to Orthodox Christmas Eve. A Transfiguration is taking place, but not the Lord's. The new man Sharikov is born on the night of January 6th to 7th - in Orthodox Christmas. But Poligraf Poligrafovich is not the incarnation of Christ, but the devil, who took his name in honor of a fictitious “saint” in the new Soviet “saints” that prescribe the celebration of Printer’s Day. Sharikov is, to some extent, a victim of printing products - books outlining Marxist dogmas, which Shvonder gave him to read. From there " new person“I only came up with the thesis about primitive leveling - “take everything and divide it.” During his last quarrel with Preobrazhensky and Bormental, Sharikov’s connection with otherworldly forces: “Some kind of unclean spirit possessed Poligraf Poligrafovich, obviously, death was already watching over him and fate stood behind him.

Sharikov himself invited his death. He raised left hand and showed Philip Philipovich a bitten pine cone with an unbearable cat smell. And then right hand at the address of the dangerous Bormental, he took a revolver out of his pocket.” Shish is the standing “hair” on the devil’s head. Sharikov’s hair is the same: “coarse, like bushes in an uprooted field.” Armed with a revolver, Poligraf Poligrafovich is a unique illustration of the famous saying of the Italian thinker Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527): “All armed prophets have won, but the unarmed ones have perished.” Here Sharikov is a parody of V.I. Lenina, L.D. Trotsky and other Bolsheviks, who ensured the triumph of their teachings in Russia by military force. By the way, the three volumes of the posthumous biography of Trotsky, written by his follower Isaac Deutscher (1906-1967), were called: “The Armed Prophet”, “The Disarmed Prophet”, “The Expelled Prophet” (1954-1963). Bulgakov's hero is not a prophet of God, but of the devil.

Ivan Arnoldovich Bormental is Jewish by patronymic and surname. His surname "Bormenthal" consists of two parts: "Bormen-", which resembles "Bron-" from real name Trotsky (Bronstein), and “-tal”, in which there are “t” and “l”, i.e. initials of the pseudonym and name of L. Trotsky. The name from which Bormental's patronymic is derived - "Arnold" - ends with the letters "l" and "d", i.e., the initials of the first and patronymic L.D. Trotsky.

House manager Shvonder, a fierce and caustic opponent of Preobrazhensky, is L.B. Kamenev-Rozenfeld, Chairman of the Moscow City Council (hence the house manager). "Rosenfeld" in German means "field of roses", and "schwand" means "hillside". Bulgakov simultaneously hints at the semantic similarity of the words “field” and “hill” and at Kamenev’s political bias.

Two of Shvonder's companions are easily identified. Blonde in a hat - P.K. Sternberg (born 1865), prominent Bolshevik, party member since 1905, professor-astronomer. His mistress Vyazemskaya - V.N. Yakovleva (born 1884, 19 years difference), secretary of the Moscow Committee at that time, party member since 1904, etc. They met when Yakovleva was a student and Sternberg was a professor at Moscow University. She was very beautiful woman, a real Russian beauty. Such beauties were depicted on Vyazemsk gingerbread, hence her surname Vyazemskaya.

S. Ioffe. Secret writing in “Heart of a Dog”

“Published as a matter of discussion.”

Let's imagine that we are writers, we live in Moscow, it is March 1925, and we need to come up with a satirical surname for Stalin. One of us suggested the surname “Chugunkin”. Not noble steel, but black, rough cast iron.

Everyone was happy, but in our company was the first Bulgakov scholar at that time, a great friend of Bulgakov, who said that Mikhail Afanasyevich had recently written a memoir satire “ dog's heart", in which Stalin is the most main character. And he was named Chugunkin.

Not only the Bulgakov scholar in our company was familiar with Bulgakov’s satire; Several other avid readers have already read it in manuscript. Everyone unanimously declared that there is no smell of Stalin in Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog”, that Chugunkin is artistic image tavern balalaika player, some of whose organs, when he died, were used by Professor Preobrazhensky to transplant the dog Sharik.

The Bulgakov scholar got a little excited and stated that not only Stalin is camouflaged in “Heart of a Dog” in such a transparent way, with the help of the telling surname “Chugunkin,” but another famous figure is also covered with a completely transparent first and surname. Maid Zina Bunina is Grigory Evseevich Zinoviev, member of the Politburo, Chairman of the Comintern and Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet: Zina-Zinoviev. The surname “Bunin” is connected with the fact that “Zinoviev” is a pseudonym, and Grigory Evseevich’s real surname is Apfelbaum. Apfelbaum, as we know, means “apple tree” in German; Bunin has a famous story “Antonov Apples”, hence the surname for Zinoviev - Bunin.

Avid readers barely allowed the Bulgakov scholar to finish, accusing him of excessive imagination and reminding him that Zina is a girl, and Zinoviev is a man, and besides, Zina is the maid and nurse of the famous surgeon professor Preobrazhensky, and not a member of the Politburo, etc.

The Bulgakov scholar was offended by this criticism and stated that, as he himself guessed and as Bulgakov confirmed to him, Preobrazhensky is Lenin, who transformed Russia from a monarchy into God knows what; his assistant Dr. Bormental - Lev Davydovich Trotsky-Bronstein, member of the Politburo, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, People's Commissar for Military Affairs, organizer of the October coup and leader of the Red Army in the Civil War; the cunning, vindictive, evil sycophantic dog Sharik is also Stalin, like Chugunkin, but in a different form and at a different time; and Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov, the result of Preobrazhensky’s experimental operation to transplant the gonads and Chugunkin’s pituitary gland to the mongrel Sharik - also Stalin, already in the third incarnation, when he was elected general secretary of the RCP (b) (secretaries write a lot, “polygraph” in Greek “write a lot” ").

Meanwhile, the Bulgakov scholar could no longer be stopped. He argued that Bulgakov writes all his works in such a secret manner, creating a satirical-memoir picture of his time. With many philological and historical details, the Bulgakov scholar proved that Preobrazhensky’s cook Daria is the famous first chief of the Cheka F. E. Dzerzhinsky (and his name was chosen this way because in the name “Daria” and in the surname “Dzerzhinsky” there are “d” and “ p”, as in “tear, rip off”) that the chairman of the house committee Shvonder is Lev Borisovich

Kamenev-Rosenfeld member of the Politburo, Chairman of the Moscow Soviet, Lenin's deputy in the Council of People's Commissars (again there were explanations why Kamenev-Rosenfeld was given the surname Shvonder), that the owl that the cunning and evil licking dog Sharik loved to scold so much is the owl-like Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, which Comrade Stalin loved to vilify so much...

But let's try to cool down from the imaginary game of 1925. Let's remember what we know about “Heart of a Dog.” Bulgakov began writing “The Heart of a Dog” in January 1925; on February 14, some version was already ready, which he read to N. S. Angarsky, a Leninist party member with pre-revolutionary experience, editor of the almanac “Nedra”, in which Bulgakov published “ Fatal eggs" (The plot of "Fatal Eggs" is remarkably similar to "Heart of a Dog", there are also echoes: in "Fatal Eggs" Persikov invented a red ray, the same ray is mentioned in "Heart of a Dog" as a punishment that will overtake Preobrazhensky; Preobrazhensky lives in an apartment with Persian carpets: Persikov-Persian.)

In March 1925, “Heart of a Dog” was published in the almanac. Attempts to get it past the censors were unsuccessful. Moreover, in the summer of 1926, GPU agents came to search Bulgakov, the manuscript of “Heart of a Dog” was taken from him, and after a few years it was returned with great difficulty thanks to the assistance of Gorky. After the search, it seems that Bulgakov himself was taken to the Lubyanka and interrogated.

A copy of “Heart of a Dog”, given to Angarsky, was preserved in his archive with the inscription, clearly in case of unpleasant questions: “This thing is not of great value either in design or in artistic execution.”

In 1926, the Moscow Art Theater, which was already rehearsing a play called “Days of the Turbins,” offered Bulgakov to stage “Heart of a Dog,” but censorship intervened here too.

Gone long years. In 1968, this work was published twice in the West in Russian. Then Bulgakov’s widow Elena Sergeevna came to Paris to visit his relatives. She brought back the edited manuscript, which was published by YMCA-Press in 1969. This edition is considered canonical. In the Soviet Union, until 1987, “Heart of a Dog” was never published. The content of the work boils down to the fact that the professor-surgeon Preobrazhensky, who is involved in transplanting the gonads of monkeys to patients for rejuvenation, decides to experimentally transplant the gonads and pituitary gland of a 25-year-old man into a two-year-old dog “to clarify the question of the survival of the pituitary gland, and in the future, its influence on rejuvenation of the human body." The rejuvenation did not work, a new person was obtained, retaining the worst features of the dog and the person whose organs were transplanted. The new creature lives in the professor’s apartment and with his impudence, bad manners, alcoholism, thievery, and hooligan aggressiveness makes the professor’s life completely unbearable. In the fight, the professor's assistant appears to kill a laboratory creature. The professor is even accused of murder, but he unexpectedly produces a dog with human signs disappearing before our eyes.

Already in this presentation two oddities are visible. First: why, in order to clarify the issue of human rejuvenation, is it necessary to take a young two-year-old dog and transplant into him the organs of a young 25-year-old man? The second oddity: it remains unclear whether the dog-man was killed or whether the professor and his assistant transplanted the preserved gonads and pituitary gland of the dog into the monster, returning him to a dog state. However, these two oddities are not the only ones in “The Heart of a Dog.” Bulgakov scholar also said that the relationship between native speakers

surnames - in terms of allusion - this is the relationship between Lenin and Stalin since 1917, and maybe even earlier.

Lenin-Preobrazhensky first brought Stalin-Sharik closer, hoping to rejuvenate and renew the circle of people on whom he relied. Old comrades were either actively against him (Kamenev-Shvonder), or prone to hesitation and not large enough as individuals (Zinoviev-Zina and Dzerzhinsky-Daria). But, cleverly maneuvering, Stalin-Shaarik-Chugunkin-Sharikov became close to Kamenev-Shvonder, Zinoviev-Zina, Dzerzhinsky-Daria, as a result of which Lenin had to call his old rival, Trotsky-Bormenthal, for help. Together they managed to win a temporary victory over Stalin-Sharikov. It can be assumed that at the end of “Heart of a Dog,” written in January-March 1925, we are talking about recent months activity of Preobrazhensky-Lenin, until March 10, 1923, in which Sharik-Stalin was quite firmly entrenched in the Prechistensky-Kremlin apartment of Preobrazhensky-Lenin.

But in the text of “Heart of a Dog” there are other oddities besides the similarity with the political events of that time, in which the intellectual Bulgakov could rather be on the side of “people with university education,” Preobrazhensky-Lenin and Bormental-Trotsky, than on the side of the criminal Sharik-Chugunkin-Sharikov -Stalin.

So, it is strange that before meeting Professor Preobrazhensky, a lover of the opera “Aida,” the dog Sharik had already met some kind of grimza who sings “dear Aida” in a meadow under the moonlight. It seems that this grymza and Preobrazhensky are one person, Lenin. The aria perhaps hints at Lenin’s affair with Inessa Armand (the first and last letters of the first and last name “Inessa Armand” are included in the word “Aida”), but Sharik’s earlier acquaintance with Preobrazhensky fits perfectly into Stalin’s long-standing acquaintance with Lenin - long before how Lenin decided to bring Stalin closer to him in 1921.

Another oddity is the typist Vasnetsova, who first appears in front of the dog Sharik, and he knows absolutely everything about her party lover-chairman, down to the smallest bed details. At the same time, the typist tries to caress Sharik. And later, after Sharik transformed into Sharikov, the head of the MKH subdepartment (Moscow Communal Economy, i.e., communist economy, secretariat of the Central Committee), he appears with his mistress, the same typist. From which it follows that the dog Sharik-Stalin, also known as Sharikov-Stalin, has known the typist for a long time and that the lover-chairman is also Stalin.

Vasnetsova's typist is MX typist Olga Sergeevna Bokshanskaya (née Nurenberg), secretary of Nemirovich-Danchenko, elder sister of Elena Sergeevna Nurenberg-Shilovskaya-Bulgakova, the last of Bulgakov's three wives. She is Toropetskaya (that is, she does everything quickly) in “Notes of a Dead Man” (“Theatrical Novel”), whom Ivan Vasilyevich (Stanislavsky) was so afraid of. Born in Riga in 1891 in the family of a tax inspector and theatergoer. In 1909, the family moved to St. Petersburg, and in 1916 O.S. moved to Moscow. In August 1919, she began working at the Moscow Art Theater as a typist. In 1921 she married a former officer tsarist army, who served in the Red Army. The marriage soon broke up; Bokshansky, it seems, was familiar with Lenin and Stalin.

O. S. Bokshanskaya herself, probably at the Moscow Art Theater, met Stalin, then already married to Nadezhda Alliluyeva, and became his mistress.

Arriving in Moscow in September 1921, Bulgakov made many useful acquaintances, among them with Bokshanskaya, whose romance with Stalin was on the wane or had already ended. Stalin, having broken ties with Bokshanskaya, did not end his friendly relations with her; she was a woman of great intelligence and charm. Bokshanskaya lived with her younger sister Elena Sergeevna Nuremberg. Bulgakov himself became Bokshanskaya’s lover (he was then married to Tatyana Lappa), and through her he met Stalin. At Bokshanskaya, Bulgakov also met his future, last and third wife, E. S. Nurenberg, before marrying Bulgakov, Shilovskaya.

Bokshanskaya contributed literary career Bulgakov. It can be assumed that she helped Bulgakov with the magazine publication of “The White Guard”, that she advised him to start remaking “The White Guard” into the play “Days of the Turbins” before Bulgakov received an official offer from MX Ta to stage the novel.

Later between the sisters there was serious conflict because of Bulgakov, but it ended with Bokshanskaya remaining Bulgakov’s friend. She read everything that Bulgakov wrote - she had the talent of a critic and editor. She reprinted all his works. But the main thing is that in intelligence and character she was Elena Sergeevna’s true older sister. And without Elena Sergeevna, we might even now know as much about Bulgakov as we knew in the 50s, that is, almost nothing. In fact, we need to talk about two sisters in the life and fate of Bulgakov. Fortunately for us, Bulgakov himself took sufficient care of this in his secret writings.

In the 30s, Bokshanskaya married the actor of the Moscow Art Theater Kaluzhsky.” In the Committee for the Award of Stalin Prizes, created on the eve of the war, the first chairman of which was Nemirovich-Danchenko, she was a secretary.

Bokshanskaya enjoyed great influence in the Moscow Art Theater. Her relationship with Stalin was probably never a secret for many Muscovites, one way or another close to the Kremlin and MX Tu. She died in Moscow on May 3, 1948. The Moscow Art Theater yearbook dedicated a large obituary article to her. Obituaries were also published in Moscow newspapers.

IN scientific literature about Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog,” the allegorical allusion plan of this work is not excluded, although research speaking names and in general no one has studied linguistic signs that speak allegorically. Yes, Prof. Ellendea Proffer, a leading expert on Bulgakov, the author of many articles and a large book about him, publisher and editor of the 10-volume collected works of Bulgakov in Russian in the USA, in the preface to volume 3, where “Heart of a Dog” is published, comes to the following conclusion : “The allegory with which he (Bulgakov. - S.I.) is dealing is very delicate. In the image of a brilliant surgeon undertaking a risky operation, it is easy to recognize Lenin as a representative of the intelligentsia with his characteristic scholarly air. And it is difficult to doubt that Sharik, this charming and original dog, represents certain type a small-minded Russian worker or peasant, whom the Bolshevik revolution turned into the vile Sharikov. Heredity makes Sharikov what he is - no environment, be it communist or any other, can change him.”

As the reader has already guessed, I am not going to argue with the fact that Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky is Lenin. Moreover, I believe that not only the last name, but also the first and patronymic names of the professor are telling. “Philip” in Greek means “horse lover,” that is, a lover of riding horses, driving horses, hence the word “ruler.” And “Philip Philipovich” is a doubly ruler, whose passion for political power is deep in his blood. That's how it was

political ambitious Lenin. So F. F. Preobrazhensky is the squared ruler and transformer Lenin. Preobrazhensky’s counter-revolutionary remarks, his dislike for the working class, etc., are the exact meaning of Lenin’s statements in his printed works recent years, which says that the proletariat did not live up to the hopes of the party and the party will lead the country on its own. Five years after the October Revolution, the revolutionary Lenin turned into a counter-revolutionary evolutionist, a supporter of education and culture.

Let us note one important feature in E. Proffer’s analysis. She is absolutely right in drawing attention to the fact that Bulgakov is familiar with the art of speaking surnames: Preobrazhensky is a transformer. It is a pity that “Preobrazhensky” is the only example of her analysis of speaking linguistic signs in “Heart of a Dog.”

But if Bulgakov believed that the Shariki-Chugunkins-Sharikovs, the new ruling class of Russia, were a cross between a mongrel dog and a clever criminal, then could he hope to get such a thing through censorship? Could he so openly and frivolously oppose the sacred concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Bulgakov could have allowed Preobrazhensky to confront, which he did, but Bulgakov himself could hardly have been so frivolous in the seventh year of Soviet power and the Cheka.

And if this was the meaning of “Heart of a Dog,” then how could Angarsky, a Leninist party member with pre-revolutionary experience, try to publish such a work? I do not want to say that Lenin, Angarsky and many other Bolshevik intellectuals could not think so about the Soviet nominees from the workers and peasants. They thought even worse about these Pugachevites; it is no coincidence that Preobrazhensky, in a conversation about Sharikov, repeats the word “criminalism.” But it is unlikely that they could express their opinion so openly.

This means that both Bulgakov and Angarsky had a different interpretation of “Heart of a Dog.” And for this interpretation they hoped to find understanding and sympathy from the censors, as they found it with “Fatal Eggs.”

Let's try to formulate this understanding. In the struggle for power in Soviet Russia 192-22 there were only three contenders: Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, two intellectuals and the son of a drunken shoemaker, a half-educated seminarian with a very modest education, a criminal type. At the end of 1922 - beginning of 1923, the sick Lenin, although he tried to do something, wrote letters from Gorki, but actually left the game. Let us remember Preobrazhensky at the end of “Heart of a Dog,” who turned gray, suffered a deep faint from which he almost died (that is, a blow, Bulgakov writes: “I hit my head when I fell”), but still with slippery gloves he takes out the brains from the vessels . This is Lenin, trying by any means, even slippery ones, to regain what was lost, to drive Sharik-Stalin out of his Kremlin-Prechistenka apartment. Without Lenin, Angarsky and Bulgakov had to choose between Stalin and Trotsky.

There is no doubt that the Jew by patronymic and surname Ivan Arnoldovich Bormental is Trotsky-Bronstein, although the surname, first name and patronymic of Bulgakov’s Trotsky are not as straightforward as those of Stalin-Chugunkin and Zinoviev-Zina. However, his surname “Bormenthal” consists of two parts: “Bormen-”, which resembles “Bron-” from Trotsky’s real surname (Bronstein), and “-tal”, which has “t” and “l”, t . e. initials of the pseudonym and name of L. Trotsky. The name from which Bormental's patronymic is derived - "Arnold" - ends with the letters "l" and "d", i.e., the initials of the name and patronymic of L. D. Trotsky. The name “Ivan” is the name of John the Baptist, which in the Bolshevik calendar was Trotsky, who headed the Petrograd Workers’ Council

deputies in the revolution of 1905 (Lenin's role in this revolution was much more modest) and organized the October revolution for Lenin. Let us note that Bulgakov’s Bormental is a rather sympathetic figure. Let us only note that Bulgakov’s attitude towards Trotsky was different in different years. Thus, he was introduced in “The Diaboliad” under the name of the passive Jan Sobieski, in “Fatal Eggs” under the name of the impudent journalist Bronsky, in “The Master and Margarita” - under the name of the stupid Likhodeev.

Of course, among non-party and party intellectuals, among the Bulgakovs and Angarskys, who were interested in Kremlin secrets and the future of Russia, there were many opponents of Trotsky, but unlike the Kamenevs and Zinovievs, who believed that Stalin would bark and growl at their political opponents, and they would to rule Russia, the Bulgakovs and Angarskys understood the stupidity of the political line of Kamenev and Zinoviev. No wonder Preobrazhensky-Lenin says that all that remains of Shvonder will be horns and legs. Having the criminal Stalin-Sharik-Chugunkin-Sharikov as the owner of the Kremlin-Prechistensk apartment was a scary prospect.

Naturally, Bulgakov and Angarsky could have some illusions about the outcome political struggle Trotsky and Stalin. Lenin’s “Testament” and the postscript to it about Stalin seemed to them to be a particularly strong trump card. When publishing “The Heart of a Dog,” they hoped for the assistance of censors oriented towards Trotsky. But events clearly did not develop in Trotsky’s favor, which is why Bulgakov earlier, and Angarsky a little later, renounced “Heart of a Dog.” Bulgakov, in particular, did not write a tearful letter to the censorship, as Angarsky advised him, and probably reacted coolly to the Moscow Art Theater's proposal to write a dramatization. “The Heart of a Dog” was written in a code too simple for contemporaries to break spears over.

The fact that Sharik is Stalin is evidenced not only by the surname “Chugunkin”. Sharik is a small ball, but Stalin was vertically challenged and of very humble, “mongrel” origin. It is remarkable that Bulgakov gives the most detailed description of Stalin’s appearance and personality in the world’s memoir literature. Let us present some details of this description in the sequence in which they are given by Bulgakov.

“How much ... fildepers she (typist Vasnetsova-Bokshanskaya, Stalin’s mistress. - S.I.) must endure. After all, he does not expose her in any ordinary way, but exposes her to French love”; “I’m tired of my Matryona (the wife of Chairman Stalin. - S.I.), I’m tired of flannel pants, now my time has come. I am now the chairman, and no matter how much I steal, it’s all female body, on cancer necks, on Abrau-Durso. Because I was hungry enough when I was young*..”; “Kissed on the boot” (Preobrazhensky); “Let me lick the boot” (Preobrazhensky); “If I... start urinating past the toilet...” (Preobrazhensky, hinting at Sharikov); “The dog stood (in front of Preobrazhensky) on hind legs and chewed his jacket, the dog studied Philip Philipovich’s call... and flew out barking to meet him in the hallway”; “suck-up dog”, “scoundrel”, “had some secret to win people’s hearts”; “affectionate, although cunning”; “the forehead is sloping and low”; “...gives the impression of a small and poorly built man”; “His smile is unpleasant and as if artificial”; “I swore (swearing). This swearing is methodical, continuous” (Stalin was a great expert in Russian and Georgian swearing); “He eats herring with enthusiasm” (in the 30s, Stalin was prescribed special varieties of herring from Scandinavia); “conditional hard labor for 15 years” (before his death at the age of 25, Chugunkin commits a crime for which he should have received 15 years of hard labor, but he turned out and the sentence was suspended. How not to remember the famous robbery of the Tiflis bank, when

Stalin was a little over 25 years old); “small head”; “a person... of unattractive appearance. The hair... on my head... was coarse... and my face was covered with unshaven fluff. The forehead was striking in its small height. A thick head brush began almost directly above the black tassels of scattered eyebrows”; “he looked with dull eyes”; “His voice was extraordinary, dull and at the same time booming”; "Savage! ... I have positively never seen a more impudent creature than you” (Preobrazhensky); “You stand at the lowest stage of development... you are still a nascent, mentally weak creature, all your actions are purely bestial, and you... allow yourself, with a completely unbearable swagger, to give some advice of cosmic proportions and cosmic stupidity ..." (Preobrazhensky); “In the words (of Preobrazhensky about Sharikov) the word “criminalism” was heard several times.

The name of Chugunkin-Sharik-Sharikov-Stalin is Klim Chugunkin. As you know, that was the name of Klim Voroshilov, in those years one of the prominent figures of the Red Army. It was on the troops led by Voroshilov and Budyonny that Stalin relied in his fight against Lenin. As is known, the command staff of the Red Army consisted, on the one hand, of the Voroshilovs, Budyonnys, Chapaevs, Dybenkos, i.e., from the workers and peasants of the Pugachev freemen, and on the other, of former tsarist officers. Since the 1919 debate about military specialists, Lenin and Trotsky relied on former officers, and Stalin on the Pugachevites. At the decisive moment of the struggle between Lenin and Stalin, the Pugachevites turned out to be stronger than the officers.

The final oddity of “Heart of a Dog” can now be explained. Bormenthal seemed to have strangled Sharik-Sharikov, but he turned out to be alive and well, firmly settled in Preobrazhensky’s apartment, of whom a shadow of his former self remained, moreover, Bormenthal was not visible in the apartment. The explanation is simple. Attempts by Lenin and Trotsky to stop Stalin, who was striving for power, were crowned with temporary success, but then Lenin and Trotsky were defeated, and Stalin settled in the Kremlin.

The scene in which Sharik pulled Bormental's leg is a hint at the famous conflict between Trotsky and Stalin during civil war in 1919. Trotsky's commander-in-chief was Colonel of the Tsarist Army I. I. Vatsetis. Stalin sought the appointment of his then protege S.S. Kamenev, also a colonel in the tsarist army, to this post. When Lenin gave in to Stalin, Trotsky resigned. But Lenin persuaded him to refuse to resign. So Stalin-Sharik pulled Trotsky-Bormenthal by the leg, so Trotsky had to swallow the pill.

Sharikov’s hiring as head of a subdepartment of the Moscow Public Utilities is, of course, Stalin’s appointment to the post of General Secretary of the RCP (b) on April 3, 1921. It was unclear to historians on whose initiative the appointment took place. Stalin later claimed, of course, that it happened on Lenin's initiative. The issue has been discussed by historians without concrete results. Bulgakov tells us quite unequivocally that the appointment of Sharikov-Stalin took place on the initiative of Shvonder-Kamenev without the knowledge of Preobrazhensky-Lenin.

Why Zinaida Bunina - Zinoviev-Apfelbaum, we have already said. The name for her patronymic, “Prokofievna,” was not chosen by chance. “Prokofy” means “persistent, purposeful”: this could then be considered Zinoviev, who had ambitious plans. Zina is a maid, sometimes involved in operations by Preobrazhensky, but afraid of blood. As a political figure, Zinoviev could not be compared with Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Zina-Zinoviev is nothing more than a servant, sometimes opposed to Sharik-Stalin, sometimes for him.

It has already been said above that Dzerzhinsky is the cook Daria Petrovna Ivanova. Her middle and last names are common, run-of-the-mill names. In the Bolshevik leadership under Lenin, Dzerzhinsky was always second class; he was never elected to the Politburo. We are even more convinced that Daria - Dzerzhinsky, looking into Daria Petrovna’s kitchen, where she “like a furious executioner” “with a sharp narrow knife ... cut off the heads and paws of helpless hazel grouse”, “tore the meat off the bones”; “the damper bounced back with thunder, revealing a terrible hell”; her “face... burned with torment and passion, everything except her deathly nose.” After this, one cannot help but understand that the kitchen is Lubyanka, and the cook is Iron Felix.

By the way, Daria-Dzerzhinsky’s deathly nose is by no means a fetus creative imagination Bulgakov. Robert Payne, the author of a book about Lenin, describing Dzerzhinsky’s appearance, speaks of “bloodless wings of the nose.” The surname “Vasnetsova” was given to Olga Bokshanskaya in honor of famous artist V. M. Vasnetsov and his painting “Alyonushka”. The name “Alyonushka” has something in common with “Olga”.

Preobrazhensky’s large apartment on Prechistenka, which he does not allow Shvonder-Kamenev to move into, but in which Sharik-Chugunkin-Sharikov-Stalin, Bormental-Trotsky, Zina-Zinoviev and Daria-Dzerzhinsky already live, is Lenin’s Kremlin residence, into which he agrees to admit only those who are content with a little power.

Stuffed owl with glassy eyes, stuffed with red rags that smell of mothballs - Krupskaya with gray glass eyes bulging from Graves' disease, stuffed with communist ideology.

Portrait of Professor Mechnikov, a specialist in longevity, Preobrazhensky's teacher - a portrait of Marx, Lenin's teacher. The dog Sharik tore the portrait of Mechnikov from the wall and smashed it, i.e. Stalin neglected the teachings of Marx. But it is characteristic that Preobrazhensky does not give the order to glaze the portrait again; Lenin no longer needs Marx.

Since we are talking about the Marxist interests of the characters in “Heart of a Dog,” we must remember the unexpected interest for Sharikov, but natural for Stalin, in the correspondence between Engels and Kautsky, in which the illiterate Marxist Stalin did not understand anything. Preobrazhensky-Lenin ordered to burn the correspondence of Kautsky, whom Lenin strongly scolded during these years (Preobrazhensky calls him a devil),

Sharikov-Stalin calls Zina-Zinovieva a social servant of Preobrazhensky-Lenin, and Preobrazhensky-Lenin himself a Menshevik. Sharikov-Stalin hints at the secret alliance of Preobrazhensky-Lenin and Bor-mental-Trotsky against him: Bormental, “secretly not registered, lives in his (Preobrazhensky - S.I.) apartment.” Bormental-Trotsky recalls his first meeting with Preobrazhensky-Lenin: he came to him as a half-starved student (Trotsky as a young man came to the emigrant Lenin’s apartment in London and he treated him very warmly).

It is easy to understand in which direction one should look for “who is who” among Professor Preobrazhensky’s patients. In the young old woman it is not difficult to identify Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (born 1872). She was the first People's Commissar of State Charity, a prominent party member, and a diplomat. Her young lover Moritz, cheating on her left and right, is the famous sailor Dybenko, an army commander from the breed of illiterate Budyonnys and Voroshilovs (born 1889).

A fat and tall man in military uniform, who informed Preobrazhensky-Lenin about the intrigues of Sharikov-Stalin, - S. S. Kamenev, colonel of the tsarist army, in 1919-1924 - commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the republic.

House manager Shvonder, a fierce and caustic opponent of Preobrazhensky, is L. B. Kamenev-Rosenfeld, Chairman of the Mossovet (hence "house manager"). "Rosenfeld" in German means "field of roses", and "Schwand" means "hillside". Bulgakov simultaneously hints at the semantic similarity of the words “field” and “hill” and at Kamenev’s political bias. Historians know that Kamenev. for a long time supported Stalin, but relations between him and Lenin looked neutral. Bulgakov the historian reveals to us the exceptional bitterness between the two “partai-genossen”.

Two of Shvonder's companions are easily identified. The blond man in the hat is P.K. Sternberg (born 1865), a prominent Bolshevik, party member since 1905, professor-astronomer. His mistress Vyazemskaya is V.N. Yakovleva (born 1884, 19 years difference), secretary of the MK at that time, party member since 1904, etc. They met when Yakovleva was a student and Sternberg was a professor at Moscow University. She was a very beautiful woman, a real Russian beauty. Such beauties were depicted on Vyazemsk gingerbread, hence her surname Vyazemskaya.

If you wish, it is not difficult to find out the other two visitors of Preobrazhensky-Lenin: you need to take periodicals of that time and look among the members of the Moscow Party Committee. And in general, turning to periodicals could help establish many details: who was the cat with the blue bow with whom Sharikov-Stalin fought; who is an old woman in a polka dot skirt; who is the flea that Sharikov-Stalin caught under his arm, etc.

All these questions, i.e., clarification of details and details, no matter how important they are for historians, were not raised here by me. The main task now, in my opinion, is the formulation of the question itself. Literary scholars and historians must understand that it is not easy before us piece of art Bulgakov, but a whole memoir satirical cycle, which did not include only feuilletons. The main task now is to give each secret written work of Bulgakov a primary decoding.

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The work of M. A. Bulgakov is the largest phenomenon of Russian fiction XX century. Its main theme can be considered the theme of “the tragedy of the Russian people.” The writer was a contemporary of all those tragic events that took place in Russia in the first half of our century. And M. A. Bulgakov’s most frank views on the fate of his country are expressed, in my opinion, in the story “The Heart of a Dog.” The story is based on a great experiment. The main character of the story, Professor Preobrazhensky, who represents the type of people closest to Bulgakov, the type of Russian intellectual, conceives a kind of competition with Nature itself. His experiment is fantastic: creating a new person by transplanting part of a human brain into a dog. Moreover, the story takes place on Christmas Eve, and the professor bears the name Preobrazhensky. And the experiment becomes a parody of Christmas, an anti-creation. But, alas, the scientist realizes the immorality of violence against the natural course of life too late. To create a new person, the scientist takes the pituitary gland of the “proletarian” - the alcoholic and parasite Klim Chugunkin. And now, as a result of a most complex operation, an ugly, primitive creature appears, completely inheriting the “proletarian” essence of its “ancestor”. The first words he uttered were swearing, the first distinct word was “bourgeois.” And then - street expressions: “don’t push!”, “scoundrel”, “get off the bandwagon” and so on. A disgusting “man of small stature and unsympathetic appearance appears. A monstrous homunculus, a man with a canine disposition, the “basis” of which was a lumpen proletarian, feels himself the master of life; he is arrogant, swaggering, aggressive. The conflict between Professor Preobrazhensky, Bormenthal and the humanoid creature is absolutely inevitable. The life of the professor and the inhabitants of his apartment becomes a living hell. Despite the dissatisfaction of the owner of the house, Sharikov lives in his own way, primitively and stupidly: during the day he mostly sleeps in the kitchen, messes around, does all sorts of outrages, confident that “nowadays everyone has his own right” . Of course, it is not this scientific experiment in itself that Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov seeks to depict in his story. The story is based primarily on allegory. It's about not only about the scientist’s responsibility for his experiment, about the inability to see the consequences of his actions, about the huge difference between evolutionary changes and revolutionary invasion of life. The story “Heart of a Dog” contains the author’s extremely clear view of everything that is happening in the country. Everything that happened around was also perceived by M. A. Bulgakov as an experiment - huge in scale and more than dangerous. He saw that in Russia they were also trying to create new type person. A person who is proud of his ignorance, low origin, but who received enormous rights from the state. It is precisely such a person who is convenient for the new government, because he will put into the dirt those who are independent, intelligent, and high in spirit. M. A. Bulgakov considers the restructuring Russian life interference in the natural course of things, the consequences of which could be disastrous. But do those who conceived their experiment realize that it can also hit the “experimenters”? Do they understand that the revolution that took place in Russia was not the result of the natural development of society, and therefore can lead to consequences that no one can control? ? These are the questions, in my opinion, that M. A. Bulgakov poses in his work. In the story, Professor Preobrazhensky manages to return everything to its place: Sharikov again becomes an ordinary dog. Will we ever be able to correct all those mistakes, the results of which we are still experiencing?

Encyclopedic YouTube

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✪ Dog's HEART. Michael Bulgakov

✪ Heart of a Dog - Invasion of the Professor!

✪ Main phrase from the movie "Heart of a Dog"

Subtitles

Story

The story was written in January-March 1925. During the search carried out by the OGPU on Bulgakov on May 7, 1926 (warrant 2287, case 45), the manuscript of the story was also confiscated from the writer. Three editions of the text have been preserved (all in the Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library): the chapter “Give the floor to a textual critic.”

In the USSR in the 1960s, the story was distributed in samizdat [ ] .

In 1967, without the knowledge and against the will of the writer’s widow E. S. Bulgakova, the carelessly copied text of “Heart of a Dog” was transferred to the West: the chapter “My French Queen...” simultaneously to several publishing houses and in 1968 published in the magazine “Grani” (Frankfurt ) and in Alec Flegon's magazine The Student (London).

Plot

The story of the dog turning into a man quickly became known in medical circles, and then ended up in the tabloid press. Colleagues express their admiration for Professor Preobrazhensky, Sharik is shown in the medical lecture hall, and curious people begin to come to the professor’s house. But Preobrazhensky himself is not happy with the outcome of the operation, since he understands that he can get out of Sharik.

Meanwhile, Sharik falls under the influence of the communist activist Shvonder, who inspired him that he is a proletarian suffering from oppression by the bourgeoisie (represented by Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant Dr. Bormental), and turned him against the professor.

Shvonder, being the chairman of the house committee, issues documents to Sharik in the name of Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov, arranging for him to work in the service for catching and exterminating stray animals (in “cleaning”) and forces the professor to officially register Sharikov in his apartment. Sharikov quickly makes a career in the “cleaning” service, becoming the boss. Under the bad influence of Shvonder, having superficially read communist literature and feeling like the “master of the situation,” Sharikov begins to be rude to the professor, behave cheekily at home, steal things with money and pester the servants. In the end, it comes to the point that Sharikov writes a false denunciation against Professor and Doctor Bormental. This denunciation only thanks to the doctor's influential patient does not reach law enforcement. Then Preobrazhensky and Bormenthal order Sharikov to get out of the apartment, to which he responds with a categorical refusal. The doctor and the professor, no longer able to endure the arrogant and impudent antics of Poligraf Poligrafovich and expecting only the situation to worsen, decide to perform the reverse operation and transplant a canine pituitary gland into Sharikov, after which he gradually begins to lose his human appearance and turns into a dog again...

Characters

Data

A number of Bulgakov scholars believe that “Heart of a Dog” was a political satire on the government of the mid-1920s. In particular, that Sharikov-Chugunkin is Stalin (both have an “iron” second name), prof. Preobrazhensky is Lenin (who transformed the country), his assistant Dr. Bormental, constantly in conflict with Sharikov, is Trotsky (Bronstein), Shvonder - Kamenev, assistant Zina - Zinoviev, Daria - Dzerzhinsky and so on.

Censorship

An OGPU agent was present at the reading of the manuscript of the story during a meeting of writers on Gazetny Lane, who described the work as follows:

[…] such things, read in the most brilliant Moscow literary circle, are much more dangerous than the useless and harmless speeches of 101st grade writers at meetings of the “All-Russian Union of Poets.”

The first edition of “Heart of a Dog” contained almost open allusions to a number of political figures of that time, in particular to the Soviet plenipotentiary representative in London Christian Rakovsky and a number of other functionaries known in the circles of the Soviet intelligentsia for their scandalous love affairs.

Bulgakov hoped to publish “The Heart of a Dog” in the anthology “Nedra”, but it was recommended that the story not even be given to Glavlit for reading. Nikolai Angarsky, who liked the work, managed to pass it on to Lev Kamenev, but he declared that “under no circumstances should this poignant pamphlet on modernity be printed.” In 1926, during a search of Bulgakov’s apartment, the manuscripts of “The Heart of a Dog” were confiscated and returned to the author only after Maxim Gorky’s petition three years later.

Film adaptations