Mikhail Bulgakov worked on the novel “The Master and Margarita” for more than ten years, but it was not published during his lifetime. After Bulgakov’s death in March 1940, the Union of Soviet Writers established a commission on the writer’s literary legacy chaired by Konstantin Simonov.

Bulgakov’s widow Yelena Sergeevna contributed significantly to the return of Bulgakov’s name to Soviet literature. In the 1960s, she helped publish many of Bulgakov’s short stories and plays, a biographical book on Moliere, “Notes of a Dead Man” (“Theatrical Novel”) and the full version of the novel “The White Guard”. Hoping to publish the novel “The Master and Margarita”, Yelena Sergeevna typed a copy of the text on a typewriter and put her signature on each page.

Marietta Chudakova, an expert on Bulgakov’s work, recalls the reaction to the novel of Yevgeny Popovkin, editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Moskva, who read it in the 1960s,

And yet, thanks to the persistence of Bulgakov’s widow and through the influence of Konstantin Simonov, “The Master and Margarita”, albeit with large censorship exceptions, was printed in late 1966 — early 1967 in the literary magazine Moskva.