A joint letter from Mikhail Bulgakov’s third wife Yelena Sergeevna and her sister Olga Bokshanskaya, was written on April 27, 1932. It was addressed to the actors Sophia Hyacintova and Ivan Bersenev. The letter probably refers to the sisters’ impressions of Bersenev’s play “Humiliated and Insulted” based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Hyacintova played the role of Nelly.

Next to it is an inscription made by Yelena Sergeevna,

Yelena Sergeevna mentions Lariosik, the character from Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard” and the play “The Days of the Turbins”. During the period when this letter was written, the future wife of Mikhail Afanasyevich stopped meeting with the writer at the insistence of her husband Yevgeny Shilovsky.

Shilovsky summoned Bulgakov, and they had a painful conversation. Later Yelena Sergeevna told Marietta Chudakova,

The marriage of Yelena Sergeevna and Mikhail Bulgakov was registered October 4, 1932. Yelena Sergeevna’s eldest son Yevgeny stayed with his father, and the younger Sergey lived with his mother. During the 15-month separation of Bulgakov and Yelena Sergeevna, in 1931, a new character named Margarita appeared for the first time in the sketches for the novel, “Margarita spoke passionately,” and in 1933 she already becomes a full-fledged character in the novel.