A delayed triumph. On the publication history of M. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita [Master i Margarita]

The study examines the history of the first publication of M. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita [ Master i Margarita] in the journal Moskva and analyzes the reasons for this and subsequent Soviet publications of the novel to go through. The scholar also addresses the underlying factors of the book’s infrequent publications and low print run. Citing the cultural and historical context of the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s, Y. Bit-Yunan successfully argues that such a publishing pattern was politically motivated. The first edition was made possible by a short-lived easing of censorship at the start of L. Brezhnev’s rule. The 1969 détente, aimed at building a more personal partnership with US, French, and West German leaders, prompted the novel’s second publication in the 1970s. Conversely, the main reason preventing republication of The Master and Margarita was increasingly more restrictive Soviet internal politics in response to the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars