On October 28, 1934, Mikhail Bulgakov gave Grigory Konsky, an actor of the Moscow Art Theater, a pack of “Our Brand” cigarettes with a dedicatory inscription, “To the famous hypnotist G. G. Konsky in memory of the rehearsal. 28.X.34 M. Bulgakov.”

Mikhail Bulgakov and the actor Grigory Konsky joined the Moscow Art Theater in 1930 — Bulgakov in the spring and Konsky in September. The writer was promoted to the position of assistant director, and the actor appeared in Bulgakov’s play “The Days of the Turbins” and performances based on his adaptation of “Dead Souls” by Gogol and “The Pickwick Club” (Bulgakov worked on the staging of Charles Dickens’ novel with the playwright Natalia Venkstern).

Konsky and Bulgakov became friends while rehearsing “The Pickwick Club” — Konsky played a ferocious coachman, and Bulgakov appeared as the president of the court. The writer and the artist shared one dressing room. In December 1934, Konsky first visited Bulgakov in his apartment in Nashchokinsky lane. Since then, he became a regular guest of the house. Konsky, along other actors of the Moscow Art Theater and Bulgakov’s friends, were among the first listeners of the novel about the devil, later called “The Master and Margarita”.

In 1932–1936, Mikhail Bulgakov worked on a new version of the novel, which included the dialog about “Our Brand” cigarettes. It took place between Ivan Bezdomny and Voland in the first chapter. Probably, the mention of “Our Brand” was an in-joke.

Mikhail Bulgakov began smoking in his student years, and many of his contemporaries recalled this addiction. It is quite possible that Bulgakov himself smoked “Our Brand” cigarettes, so in his dressing room he had an empty packet, which he signed for Grigory Konsky.

Bulgakov jokingly calls Konsky a “famous hypnotizer” in this inscription, and it was the “gang of hypnotizers” that ordinary people considered Voland and his retinue in “The Master and Margarita”. Besides, it was in the fall of 1934 that Yelena Bulgakova wrote in her diary about her husband’s interest in hypnosis and the fact that the writer decided to “treat his fears with hypnosis”.