Flight and Bliss Book

The key to understanding the underlying analogies in Soviet literature (referring here to suppressed literature under the Soviet regime), is to understand the censorship they faced. Bulgakov had made a stand regarding his inability to publish anything in book form through the censors, claiming that he would write plays instead and hope for peace with his writing, and for that he was mockingly appointed to a position in the Moscow theater. His plays were more subtle, were often approved, but rarely passed a week before being canceled by the authorities. Written later, Bulgakov's novel Master and Margerita shows his subtlety at its height, but these plays show his bolder, more glaring indignation.

Flight was somewhat permitted to stage for its historical significance, and for the fact that the action of the play has its cast on the run from the Bolsheviks. In fact, the Bolsheviks remain untouched off stage, as it were. One is forced to wonder if they originally played some part in the action, but were later cut for the censors. At first glance it seems a wholesome, Kremlin-safe tale extolling the virtues of the revolution and the idiocy of the fleeing Whites. But the emotion that comes forward by the end is one of sadness. Even the comedic General Khludov is mad for good reason. The plight of the characters is the plight of the whole country, when the revolution "wiped the slate" as it were. We even get a glimpse of a mini KGB through Tikhy's interrogations. The cockroach races in Istanbul… I'm still not sure what Bulgakov meant there, except the standard "caesar's games" for the distraction of the poor.

The second play Bliss is a bit different, but more awkward thematically. This seems to have been his warm-up phase for the magical realism of his novels. Characters travel to the future, where they encounter a Soviet utopia. Of course, this play was truncated then removed completely. I can't imagine a more dangerous concept for Bulgakov than this. Needless to say, he makes the utopia seem wonderful, and his time travelers seem too un-evolved to handle it. They break the future's laws and run back to their past. They're happy to be arrested by the authorities then. What a farce - Bulgakov knew that his audience would sense the irony, the absurdity of the conclusion.

In Flight, p 31. Golubkov says "She doesn't know what she's saying!" To which Khludov replies "That's good. Our people, when they know what they're saying, will never say a word of truth." I love that line, and I believe it's the key to understanding and appreciating the success of Bulgakov's complicity with his then Russian audience.