Lesson 1. Interesting passages and hidden meanings

After the grand show at the Variety, the chapter suddenly changes scale: the main character is now a modest accountant, Vasily Stepanovich Lastochkin. This is a deliberate device. Woland and his retinue have left the stage, and down on earth there is chaos for the “little people” to clear up. Through Lastochkin's eyes we see the aftermath of the miracle: vanished bosses, an administration crazed with fear, lines, rumors. Satan no longer appears in person, yet the whole Moscow institution is shaking. Bulgakov shows that the forces of evil strike not at giant villains but at the very fabric of Soviet daily life: offices, cash desks, stamps, and paperwork.

The chapter's most famous image is the empty suit of Prokhor Petrovich, chairman of the commission, which sits at the desk issuing orders, shouting into the phone, and signing off on papers, though there is no man inside it. A brilliant satirical metaphor for bureaucracy: the official as a function, not a person. The man is no longer needed; a suit with a pen will do. When Prokhor Petrovich snapped “may the devils take me,” Woland's retinue took him at his word, fulfilling a figure of speech literally, as so often in the novel (Berlioz's head was “cut off” just as literally, as predicted). Back in his suit, the owner approves all it signed: a hint that the two are no different.

At the branch office of the Entertainment Commission, the staff, whom Koroviev had organized into a choral singing club, sing the old Russian song “Glorious Sea, Sacred Baikal” against their will and cannot stop. They are driven away in trucks, still singing. It is an image of forced “collectivism”: people were herded into a choir by force and no longer belong to themselves. Woland's money takes revenge on greed too: ten-ruble notes turn now into labels, now into foreign currency. At the height of Stalin's campaign against “currency dealers,” holding foreign currency meant a dangerous criminal charge, so rubles turning into dollars and pounds is not just a joke but a trap that strikes the greedy and frightens everyone else.