Statue unveils itself
November 29, 2018
«Welcome! With no embarrassment or ceremony», Fagot yelled at the Variety Theatre in chapter 12 of The Master and Margarita. It is exactly in this way, without any ceremony, that a statue for Mikhail Bulgakov appeared in the Moscow streets.
Earlier this month we wrote here that, on November 21, a statue for Mikhail Bulgakov would be unveiled «between the houses 35 and 37 of the Big Pirogov Street», near one of the apartments where the author has been living himself.
Anyone who had hoped for an official unveiling of the statue in the presence of the authorities, literary people, or Bulgakov experts, had reasons to be disappointed. It is also amazing that the media completely missed it. Only the news site Московская перспектива [Moskovskaya Perspektiva] found it worthwhile to report laconically on November 27, 2018 that «Памятник Булгакову в Москве открылся сам» or «The statue of Bulgakov in Moscow runveils itself».
It looks like the Moscow city government was not really happy with a statue in honour of Mikhail Bulgakov, because the Big Pirogov Street is located 5 km south of the Patriarch Ponds, far from most of the places which Bulgakov described in his works, and outside the large city crowds. It is therefore questionable whether many people will take the trouble to visit it.
Just one day before the news, on November 26, at the Mokhovaya street no. 27 in Saint Petersburg, a statue of Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky, the professor from Bulgakov's novel Heart of a Dog, was unveiled. This statue was made by the young artist Igor Senin. The unveiling coincided with the 30th anniversary of the release of the film Heart of a Dog, and it was director Vladimir Bortko who cut the ribbon.
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Bulgakov at the Big Pirogov Street in Moscow
Vladimir Bortko and Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky
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