Московские персонажи

Савва Потапович Куролесов

Context

Savva Potapovich Kurolesov is the actor who performs excerpts from The Covetous Knight by the Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) in the dream of Nikanor Ivanovich in chapter 15 of The Master and Margarita. According to Bulgakov, he is a «strapping and beefy man, clean-shaven, in a tailcoat and white tie».

Kurolesov told «many bad details about himself» during his performance. Nikanor Ivanovich, for example, heard him confess «that some wretched widow had gone on her knees to him, howling, in the rain, but had failed to move the actor's callous heart».

In the Epilogue of the novel it turned out that this «talented actor» was not just a dream image of Nikanor Ivanovich. After all, in the newspaper he saw a «black-framed announcement» saying that the man, with his frequent performances on the radio, «had suffered a stroke in the full bloom of his career».

Prototype

The name Kurolesov may well be derived from the verb куролесить [kurolesit], which means as much as to pull little pranks.

In Bulgakov Deciphered. The secrets of The Master and Margarita, a book from 2010, Bulgakov expert Boris Vadimovich Sokolov (°1957), who is also the author of the Bulgakov Encyclopedia, argues that the character Kurolesov would be based on Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870-1924), better known as Владимир Ильич Ленин.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

He came to this conclusion based on the fact that in an earlier version of The Master and Margarita this character was named Ilya Vladimirovich Akulinov. The first name and the patronymic or fathers name of this character do indeed remind Lenin. The name Akulinov would be derived from the Latin aquila, meaning eagle. The eagle was the emblem of the monarchy in the time of the tsars, and Lenin was sometimes accused of showing monarchist characeristics. This also explains why Kurolesov suddenly began «calling himself now dear sir, now baron, now father, now son, now formally, and now familiarly».

However, the name Ilja Vladimirovich Akulinov would have been too clear a reference that would never pass the censorship. Therefore, Bulgakov would have tried several other names that might elicit a smile from the readers without creating unrest in censorship.

First it became Ilya Potapovich Burdasov. The word бурда [burda] means junk or garbage, in the sense of some kind of filthy brew. But eventually it became Savva Potapovich Kurolesov. His first name and patronymic are the same as those of Savva Potapovich Lyukich, a character from Bulgakov's own play The Crimson Island from 1928, in which Savva Lyukich is a people's commissar who decides which books may be printed and which plays may be performed - and which may not. Lyukich was also a pet name for Lenin.

The «bad detail» about the wretched widow would come from the article Lenin in Power, which was published in 1933 in issue number 45 of the weekly magazine Иллюстрированная Россия [Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya] or Illustrated Russia. This weekly magazine was published in Paris and it was very popular among Russian emigrants.

The author of that article called himself Летописец [Letopisets] or the Chronicler. Boris Sokolov assumes that this was a pseudonym behind Boris Georgievich Bazhanov (1900-1982). Bazhanov was a member of the Politburo and secretary of Joseph Stalin from 1923 until he emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1928. We have not been able to read the article to which Sokolov refers, so we can not tell much about it. We may assume that Mikhail Bulgakov could know what was published in the weekly magazine Illustrated Russia, though. His brother Nikolay Afanasievich (1898-1966) lived in Paris since 1929. His other brother Ivan Afanasievich (1900-1969) joined him there in 1930.

Борис Георгиевич Бажанов

What is written in the Epilogue of The Master and Margarita about Savva Potapovich Kurolesov can easily be linked to Lenin. Lenin was indeed known as a gifted declamator, and he was a great supporter of the radio, which he called «a newspaper without paper and without distance». He considered radio as a suitable medium to control the masses, and to communicate effectively, not only with the Russian people, but also abroad.

In 1921, the first radio station broadcasting a few hours every day was set up in the Soviet Union. However, because most citizens could not afford an expensive receiver, loudspeakers were placed everywhere in public places, which meant that Lenin's voice could often be heard everywhere.

Lenin, like Kurolesov in The Master and Margarita, was also struck by a stroke, even a few times. The first, in May 1922, paralyzed the right side of his body. The second followed in December of that same year and the third one, in March 1923, deprived him of his ability to speak. On January 21, 1924 he fell into a coma and died later that day.