ABSTRACT
The name of Mikhail Bulgakov became known in the West chiefly after the publication of the novel The Master and Margarita. Within the Soviet Union itself this work not only aroused exceptional interest but also served as a kind of signal of permission to broach previously forbidden themes. The Master and Margarita, and likewise Black Snow (first published in the latter half of the 1960s1 ) can be considered catalysts which introduced new material into Soviet literature. Up till that time it had been possible to treat such themes as biblical ones or phenomena from the non-material world only with condemnation; better still was to avoid them altogether. For this reason certain of Bulgakov’s devices, for example the transposition of the past into the present, created new opportunities which were exploited during the 1970s and 1980s by several Soviet writers, such as Chingiz Aitmatov, Vladimir Tendryakov, Vladimir Orlov, Tatyana Tolstaya and others.
