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Abstract: The article analyzes the artistic images of M. A. Bulgakov’s novella “The Fatal Eggs” (V. I. Persikov, P. S. Ivanov, Grinmut) and the humorous genre forms of their expression – a novel-feuilleton and a mystery-bouffe. The study uses biographical, historico-cultural, mythopoetic and structural methods. These methods allow adding new strokes to the features of similarity between Persikov and V. I. Lenin found in Bulgakov studies, help to discover the prototype of L. D. Trotsky in privat-docent Ivanov, and the prototype of the founder of the Russian Monarchist Party V. A. Gringmut in student assistant Grinmut. The main attention is paid to Ivanov / Trotsky. Identifying the role of the prototype in the grotesque world of Bulgakov’s Leniniana refutes the attempt of researchers to identify Trotsky with Rokk. Gringmut’s introduction into the subtext is explained by Bulgakov’s historiosophical views. For the first time, the article establishes the genre attribution of the work and notes the conventionality of its classification as novella by the author. It is argued that in the 1920s, the novel-feuilleton continued to exist in a modified form, and the writer did not fail to take advantage of this genre form. He transferred the prototypes as a subject of satire and the “big politics” (class, political and intra-party struggle) as its object into the atmosphere of tabloid, newspaper-magazine fiction with its burlesque, adventurous, fantastic, thriller plot, and interest in the participants of secret investigation. The poetics of the modernized novel-feuilleton allowed the writer not only to ridicule political leaders, but also, for his own safety, to a certain extent hide the true faces of the culprits of the socio-economic tragedy in the country. This was facilitated by the inclusion of elements of the satirical theatrical form of mystery-bouffe into the structure of the novel-feuilleton. In the scenic frame of the mystery-bouffe, Trotsky appears simultaneously as a priest initiating the neophyte Lenin into hell and as a worker who makes part of a clown couple. The buffoonish katabasis enhances the caricature in the depiction of the characters. The article invites historians and literary theorists to take a new look at Bulgakov's artistic mastery.

About the author(s) :

Vladimir V. Kolchanov

Derzhavin Tambov State University (Tambov, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9755-2378

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 19.01.2025; date of publication: 31.10.2025

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