Lesson 1. Interesting passages and hidden meanings

Koroviev and Behemoth make a scene at Torgsin, a currency store where scarce goods, out of reach for ordinary people, were sold for gold and foreign currency. The name itself is short for “Trade with Foreigners.” For contemporaries it was a symbol of injustice: a paradise behind glass that you could not enter with ordinary money. Here Bulgakov mocks both privileged consumption and servility toward everything foreign. Behemoth ostentatiously eats chocolate, tangerines, and herring right off the counter, Koroviev delivers a falsely sympathetic speech about the “poor” man who has nothing to pay with, and it all ends in a rampage and a fire. Behind the clowning is a precise social target: a society that proclaims equality but divides people into those who have access to abundance and those who do not.

The chapter's second target is the restaurant of Griboyedov House, headquarters of the writers' organization MASSOLIT. Here Koroviev and Behemoth play out a scene at the entrance: they are not let in without ID, and Koroviev mockingly argues that a writer is not recognized by the “little card” at all. This line carries a hard-won thought of Bulgakov's own. He asks: did Dostoevsky have to show an ID to be a writer? “Dostoevsky is immortal” sounds here like a defense of true creativity against literary bureaucracy. MASSOLIT is satire on the Writers' Union and the literary nomenklatura (the official elite), which handed out rations, dachas, and “membership” instead of valuing talent. The chapter closes the circle of a theme begun at the very start of the novel, where we first saw the well-fed, comfortable world of the Griboyedov literary men. Now Woland's retinue burns that world, and the fire at Griboyedov's echoes the burning manuscript of the Master, whom this very caste hounded.

The adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth may seem like mere cheerful hooliganism. But structurally this is a final review of Moscow's vices. Before leaving the city, the retinue makes the rounds of its most telling spots, a store of privilege and a club of official writers, and sets them on fire. It is important to understand the retinue's function. Woland and his helpers do not do evil “out of spite”: they lay bare and punish the evil already present in people, namely greed, lies, conformism, and philistinism. They are like litmus paper: everyone who comes in contact with them shows their true face. One more detail: fire again becomes a recurring image. The apartment, Torgsin, and Griboyedov's all burn, as if Moscow were being purified before the storm and the departure of the forces of evil. This sets up the finale, where everything “burned” will find its resolution.