ABSTRACT
The world of a Soviet citizen, according to the Bulgakovian novel, is a fascinating place filled with good and bad spirits, demons, femmes fatales, extraordinary occurrences, and magical metamorphoses. Quite unlike the setting evoked by Bulgakov, the world of this fiction is bursting with energy and optimism. The subtitle of Natal'ia Sokolova's Careful, Magic!, The Fairy Tale of a Big City, fits other Bulgakovian novels that place the source of creativity, liveliness, and dynamic action in a modern metropolis. Urban life, portrayed in byt prose of the sixties and seventies as robbing people of spontaneity, youthful energy, and the ability to enjoy life, is suddenly capable of revitalizing and transforming the protagonist. In Bulgakovian fiction, artistic creativity and diversity of interest and belief are linked. Although the protagonists can hardly be considered "rogues" in a picaresque style, they are full-blooded individuals whose adventures take them far out of the realm of the traditional Soviet novel.
