Facing threats of censorship or punishment, Bulgakov never directly criticizes the Soviet government in his novel. But Soviet despotism—and its satire—makes its presence felt in the novel as Woland sets off hijinks in the capital city. The Master and Margarita captures the realities of Soviet rule in both Woland and his befuddled victims.
In performing miraculous vanishing acts, Woland shares brutally comic similarities with oppressive Stalinist rule. Like in Soviet Russia, people disappear. Vasily Stepanovich “was obliged to call things by their names and to admit that the entire theater administration, including the director, the financial manager, and the house manager, had vanished and that its whereabouts were unknown.” This thinly veiled reference makes a nod to the Stalinist concentration camps that claimed millions of lives and turned neighbors against each other.
For those who have suffered in Woland’s clutches, Soviet society is just as unforgiving. Here, the novel extends its critique as Soviet society shrugs off these strange happenings and ignores its victims. What may be more maddening than Woland himself is the prevailing attitude of disbelief. Ivan Nikaloyevich gets carted off to Dr. Stravinsky’s, who shows him that there is no way out. “As soon as you appear at the militia in your underwear and report that you met a man who was personally acquainted with Pontius Pilate, you shall instantly be brought here, and you will find yourself in the very same room,” the doctor explains. Meanwhile, the investigations department hubristically indulges in its own comfortable speculation and confidently concludes that the accidents were the work of a “gang of master hypnotists and ventriloquists.” In fact, The Master and Margarita almost comes full circle as the department ironically follows Woland’s own lead. The police arrest “three Wolodins,” and nine “Korovins” in a foolish witch hunt that creates disappearances of their own making.
There is no Devil without his enablers: Woland’s romp through Moscow says as much about those around him as his own infernal powers. His mischief across the city makes for both humorous literary fare and a searing satire of human folly.
Woland’s breathtaking success reflects the moral failings of the people he deals with. Among other things, he and his crew dispense with the entire Variety Theater administration, pack Dr. Stravinsky’s practice with traumatized lunatics, and populate the city with chervontsy-turned-bottlecaps. What makes their havoc so tantalizing is that it could have been prevented. The writers at Griboyedov’s move on from Berlioz’s death without so much as a second thought—after all, “who can allow cutlets de volaille to go to waste?” Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy’s greed and laxity allow Woland to take up residence in apartment 50 with a flash of bills, while Annushka and Maximilian Andreyevich try capitalizing upon the chaos. In his meteoric rise, Woland charts the breakdown of scruple and institutional safeguards.
Few moments call as much attention to this human degeneracy as when the dark magic troupe takes to the stage in Variety Theater. Entrancing the audience with his tricks, Woland dazzles a morally bankrupt society—figuratively and literally, too, as fevered hands snatch for raining bills. The spectators revel in his performance and even watch as the Devil decapitates Bengalsky. The Variety Theater’s audience closely parallels the hissing, screeching crowd whose voices rise “like foam boiling up on the crest” in anticipation of Ha-Nozri’s death sentence. Human failings, the novel suggests, seem to be as old as time. Bulgakov explores what happens when the Devil descends into town and, equally, when humans awaken the very Devil within themselves.
The Master and Margarita responded to the Soviet-era approach to art through its satire of the industry. Drawing an equivalence between himself and the Master, Bulgakov sets the noble, suffering artist apart from his otherwise lazy, regimented colleagues. The novel sets forth mocking criticism of Griboyedov’s artists, who fail to demonstrate any actual commitment to their craft. Something is wrong, after all, when photos of sports clubs and the “FISHING AND VACATION SECTION” occupy the entrance of the writer’s union building. Beskudnikov and Pilot George grouse among themselves about missed travel stipend opportunities, for instance, while Foka and Amrovsy speculate over dinner. In effect, Bulgakov comically depicts writers spending more time swooning over dishes of perch and quail than committing any ideas onto paper.
Laziness is not the novel’s only grievance. Part of Bulgakov’s satire levels a charge against the straitjacketed institution of Soviet art itself. Placed before a full editorial board, the Master’s novel gets “automatically eliminated” from consideration and then put to shame by critics. The rejections drive the Master towards madness and his separation from Margarita. Through this, the novel exposes how Moscow’s state censorship and literary circles stifle genuine artistic expression. Soviet art’s needless bureaucracy stunts creativity while promoting an exclusivity antithetical to good art. Surprisingly, Behemoth launches the novel’s most eloquent attack against Moscow’s 20th-century art scene when he is denied entrance to Griboyedov’s in Chapter 28:
Well, then, in order to convince yourself that Dostoevsky is a writer, must you ask to see his identification card? Why, take any five pages from any of his novels and you will see without any cards that you are dealing with a writer.
Behemoth crowns Bulgakov’s satire with comic destruction. As he literally burns down the pompous edifice of the establishment, the tomcat reminds the novel’s audience that the ideas make the writer, and not the credentials or the card.