Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov arrived in Moscow in September 1921 and, together with his first wife, Tatiana Nikolaevna Lappa, settled in a room of a communal apartment No. 50 at 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya.

This accordion and most of the exhibits in the kitchen are not memorial items. They have been collected in order to reflect the nature of communal life that prevailed in this, and in many other similar apartments in major Soviet cities.

Bulgakov’s room was located directly opposite the kitchen, the epicenter of constant quarrels and scandals. Along with Mikhail Bulgakov, at that time an employee of the “Gudok” newspaper, and Tatiana Lappa, who was dependent on her husband, 16 other people of various professions lived in the apartment. Among them were a grinder of pigments, a receptionist in a printing house, a pie vendor, a bakery worker and others.

Most of them significantly disturbed Bulgakov, who dreamed of peace. He could write only at night, when silence finally fell in the apartment.

Mikhail Bulgakov immortalized those who annoyed him more than others in his feuilletons on the topics of the housing issue and communal life.

For example, Anna Fyodorovna Goryacheva became the prototype of the characters in the stories “No. 13. — The Elpit Workers’ Commune Building” and “Moonshine Lake”. His neighbors Vasily Ivanovich Boltyrev and his wife Ekaterina Petrovna inspired the images of the flat administrator Vasili Ivanovich and his wife Katerina Ivanovna in the story “Moonshine Lake”.

His time in the communal apartment No. 50 and his neighbors affected Bulgakov so much that in his stories he burned down his first home several times. In the story “No. 13. — The Elpit Workers’ Commune Building” the building burns down due to the fact that Annushka Pylyaeva decides to heat the stove with parquet. The “bad apartment” of No. 302-bis in the novel “The Master and Margarita” was also destroyed by flames.