Mikhail Bulgakov: The Life and Times

Marietta Chudakova is an expert on Soviet literature and on the works of Mikhail Bulgakov in particular. Her biography of Bulgakov was first published in 1988 and remains the most authoritative and comprehensive study of the writer's life ever produced. It has received acclaim for the journalistic style in which it is written: the author draws on unpublished manuscripts and early drafts of Bulgakov's novels to bring the writer to life. She also explores archive documents and memoirs written by some of Bulgakov's contemporaries so as to construct a comprehensive and nuanced portrait of the writer and his life and times.

About the Author
Chudakova, Marietta: - The famous historian of twentieth-century literature and well-known expert on Mikhail Bulgakov's works, Marietta Chudakova, was born in Moscow in 1937. In 1959, she graduated from the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University. In 1959-1961, she taught Russian language and literature at one of Moscow's schools. She defended her PhD thesis in 1964. From 1965 to 1984, Chudakova worked at the Manuscripts Department of the USSR State Library, where she played an active part in the acquisition of the writer's personal archive from Bulgakov's widow Yelena, who saved his unpublished works from oblivion and published them after his death in 1940. Marietta Chudakova has written more than 200 publications on twentieth-century Russian literature, the history of philology and literary criticism. Her main research interests are the history of Russian literature in the Soviet period (including works on Bulgakov, Zamyatin and Zoshchenko), poetics, and archival studies. Marietta Chudakova chairs the Bulgakov Foundation.