Mikhail Bulgakov: death and disease. Mikhail Bulgakov: "There is one decent type of death - from firearms. But, unfortunately, I don't have it" From what disease Bulgakov died

Causes of Bulgakov's death.

His illness was discovered in the fall of 1939 during a trip to Leningrad. The diagnosis was as follows: acutely developing high hypertension, renal sclerosis. Returning to Moscow, Bulgakov fell ill until the end of his days.

“I came to him on the very first day after their arrival,” recalls a close friend of the writer, playwright Sergei Yermolinsky. “He was unexpectedly calm. He consistently told me everything that would happen to him within six months - how the disease would develop. weeks, months and even numbers, defining all the stages of the disease. I did not believe him, but then everything went according to the schedule he had drawn himself. When he called me, I went to him. Once, raising his eyes to me, he spoke, lowering voice and in some uncharacteristic words, as if embarrassed: "I wanted to tell you something. You understand. Like any mortal, it seems to me that there is no death. It is simply impossible to imagine. But it is."

He thought about it and then said again that spiritual communication with a loved one does not go away after his death, on the contrary, it can become aggravated, and this is very important for this to happen. Life flows around him in waves, but no longer touches him. The same thought, day and night, no sleep. Words stand up visibly, you can jump up and write them down, but you can’t get up, and everything, blurring, is forgotten, disappears. So the beautiful satanic witches fly over the ravine, as they fly in his novel. And real life turns into a vision, breaking away from everyday life, refuting it with fiction in order to crush the vulgar fuss and evil.

Almost until the very last day, he worried about his novel, demanded that one page or another be read to him. These were days of silent and unrelieved suffering. The words slowly died in him. The usual doses of sleeping pills stopped working.

His entire body was poisoned, every muscle ached unbearably at the slightest movement. He screamed, unable to contain his screams. That cry is still in my ears. We carefully turned it over. No matter how painful it was for him from our touches, he strengthened himself and, even moaning softly, spoke to me barely audibly, with his lips alone: ​​- You do it well. Good. He is blind.

He lay naked, with only a loincloth. His body was dry. He has lost a lot of weight. In the morning, Zhenya, Lena's eldest son (the son of Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova from her first marriage. - A.D.), came. Bulgakov touched his face and smiled. He did this not only because he loved this dark-haired, very handsome young man, coldly reserved in an adult way - he did this not only for him, but also for Lena. Perhaps this was the last manifestation of his love for her - and gratitude.

On March 10, at 4 pm, he died. For some reason it always seems to me that it was at dawn. The next morning - or maybe the same day, time shifted in my memory, but it seems the next morning - the phone rang. I came up. They spoke from Stalin's Secretariat. The voice asked: - Is it true that Comrade Bulgakov died? - Yes, he died. The person who spoke to me hung up."

A few entries from the diary of Bulgakov's wife Elena Sergeevna should be added to Yermolinsky's memoirs. She testifies that in the last month of his life he was deepened in his thoughts, looked at those around him with alienated eyes. And yet, despite not physical suffering and a painful state of mind, he found the courage in himself to, dying, joke "with the same force of humor, wit." He continued to work on the novel "The Master and Margarita".

Here are the last entries from the diary of E. S. Bulgakova:

Dictated a page (about Styopa - Yalta).

Work on a novel.

Terribly hard day. "Can you get a revolver from Eugene *?"

He said: "All my life I despised, that is, I did not despise, but did not understand. Philemon and Baucis ** . and now I understand, this is only valuable in life."

Me: "Be courageous."

In the morning, at 11 o'clock. "For the first time in all five months of my illness, I am happy. I am lying down. Peace, you are with me. This is happiness. Sergey is in the next room."

"Happiness is to lie for a long time. in the apartment. of a loved one. to hear his voice. that's all. the rest is not necessary."

At 8 o'clock (to Sergey) "Be fearless, this is the main thing."

In the morning: "You are everything to me, you replaced the entire globe. I saw in a dream that you and I were on the globe." All the time all day extraordinarily affectionate, gentle, all the time love words - my love. love you - you'll never understand it.

In the morning - a meeting, hugged tightly, spoke so gently, happily, as before before the illness, when they parted for at least a short time. Then (after a seizure): die, die. (pause). but death is still terrible. However, I hope so (pause). today is the last, no penultimate day.

Without date.

Strongly, drawn out, raised: "I love you, I love you, I love you!" - Like a spell. I will love you all my life. - Mine!

"Oh my gold!" (In a moment of terrible pain - with force). Then separately and with difficulty opening his mouth: go-lub-ka. Darling. When I fell asleep, I wrote down what I remembered. "Come to me, I will kiss you and cross you just in case. You were my wife, the best, irreplaceable, charming. When I heard the sound of your heels. You were the best woman in the world. My divinity, my happiness, my joy. I love you! And if I am destined to live, I will love you all my life. My little queen, my queen, my star, which always shone on me in my earthly life! You loved my things, I wrote them for you. I love you, I adore you! My love, my wife, my life!" Before that: "Did you love me? And then, tell me, my friend, my faithful friend."

Misha is dead.

And one more touch. Valentin Kataev, whom Bulgakov did not like and even once publicly called "an asshole", tells how he visited Bulgakov shortly before his death. "He (Bulgakov) said in his usual way: - I am old and seriously ill. This time he was not joking. He was really mortally ill and, as a doctor, he knew it well. He had an exhausted earthy face. My heart sank. - K Unfortunately, I can offer you nothing but this," he said, and took a bottle of cold water from behind the window. We clinked glasses and took a sip. He bore his poverty with dignity.

I'm going to die soon," he said impassively. I began to say what is always said in such cases - to convince him that he is suspicious, that he is mistaken. “I can even tell you how it will be,” he interrupted me without listening to the end. he will hit the door of Romashov, who lives on the floor below.

Everything happened exactly as he predicted. The corner of his coffin hit the door of the playwright Boris Romashov.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died on March 10, 1940, having lived only 48 years. The cause of death was kidney failure. Having received a medical education, Bulgakov became a famous writer, playwright, whose plays are still staged with success, and his novel The Master and Margarita is known all over the world.

Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian writer and playwright, died of kidney failure on March 10, 1940, at the age of 49. He died as a result of a long illness in his Moscow apartment, in the arms of his wife E. S. Shilovskaya.

Date and cause of death

Figure 1. M. Bulgakov continued to work, even having lost his sight

Bulgakov's death is considered from two angles, one of which is mystical. According to many admirers of his work, the fascination with the occult sciences and "demonic games" in the course of work on the immortal novel "The Master and Margarita" brought an early death to the writer and became retribution for what he had done.

From a medical point of view, the death of Mikhail Afanasyevich occurred due to poor health - sick kidneys. The passion for morphine at an early stage of the disease led to the manifestation of serious ailments, as a result of which the playwright died at the age of 48.

Even 8 years before his death, Bulgakov warned his third wife: “Keep in mind, I will die very hard - give me an oath that you will not send me to the hospital, but I will die in your arms.”

In the last days of his life, he suffered greatly and, according to S. Yermolinsky, it happened as follows: “These were days of silent moral suffering. The words were slowly dying in him... The usual doses of sleeping pills had ceased to work... Nothing could help. The whole organism was poisoned... He went blind. When I leaned towards him, he felt my face with his hands and recognized me. He recognized Lena by her steps as soon as she appeared in the room.

Until his death, friends and relatives were alternately on duty near his bed. The writer died at home on March 10, 1940.

Where is buried

Figure 2. The grave of M. A. Bulgakov on Novodevichy

Even during his lifetime, Mikhail Bulgakov asked that his body be cremated after death. According to the stories of friends, he did not want to repeat the posthumous fate of his beloved writer, when his allegedly upside-down body was discovered during reburial.

In conversations with a friend, screenwriter and playwright S. Yermolinsky, he often repeated: “Do you remember that Gogol turned over in his grave? No, no, to the crematorium. There, even if you wake up, you won’t have time to feel anything - puff and that’s it!

The next day after the death, a farewell ceremony was held in the building of the Union of Soviet Writers, and on the 12th the body was cremated and buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

A memorial monument on the grave appeared only in the early 50s. According to the recollections of his wife Elena Sergeevna, all this time she could not find a suitable, and most importantly, worthy monument. One day, going into the workshop on Novodevichy, she saw a huge stone block. Paying attention to it, I asked the masters what it was. It turned out to be a stone brought by Aksakov from the Crimea for the grave of N.V. Gogol and became unnecessary after his reburial. She realized that this is exactly what her late husband would have wanted.

“Teacher, cover me with your cast-iron overcoat!” Mikhail Bulgakov once said. And so it happened. Nikolai Vasilyevich covered his remains with his gravestone.

short biography

Figure 3. M. Bulgakov moves to Moscow

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was born on May 15, 1891 in Kyiv. During his life he successfully practiced medicine, wrote many dramatic and mystical works. Thanks to this combination, he received the title of "Russian medical writer". The biography of the author, like his main work, is filled with riddles and a number of mysterious events.

Childhood, youth, education

In the family, Misha was the eldest child, besides him, his parents raised six more children: two boys and four girls. After studying at the first Kyiv gymnasium, he entered the medical faculty of Kyiv University, choosing the profession of his mother's brothers, who work as a therapist and gynecologist, and have good incomes.

During the seven-year period of study, he repeatedly filed a report, trying to go to serve in a military hospital, but received a negative response due to chronic kidney failure. 31.10. 1916 received a doctor's diploma.

Work as a doctor

The practice began during the First World War and continued during the Civil War. In 1920, Bulgakov fell ill with typhus and ended up in a Vladikavkaz hospital. Being unemployed, he began to write and publish in local newspapers. Later, in 1921, in a correspondence with his cousin, he remarked: “I was 4 years late with what I should have started doing long ago - writing.”

First publications

The first published work of Mikhail Bulgakov was the satirical feuilleton "The Adventures of Chichikov", published in the newspaper "Nakanune" on September 24, 1922. This was followed by several similar small works, and in 1923 the author wrote "The White Guard", published for the first time in 2 years. Interesting is the fact that the novel was met with sharp criticism:

• compatriots called him anti-communist;
• in the foreign press, on the contrary, too loyal to the Soviet regime.

Friends, acquaintances

Despite the fact that since 1921, after moving to Moscow, Bulgakov stopped practicing medicine and devoted himself entirely to creativity, his close people, with whom he constantly communicated, were the doctors Pokrovsky, his mother's brothers.

If we talk about those with whom Bulgakov did not have family ties, then N. N. Lyamin was considered one of his closest friends. As a sign of recognition, friendship and respect for the eminent philologist, after one of the many games of chess, the author presented him with the collection "Diaboliad", signing it with these words: "To my real best friend Nikolai Nikolayevich Lyamin. Michael Bulgakov. 1925 July 18 Moscow".

Also, the writer's friends can be called such significant people:

• philosopher and literary critic P. S. Popov;
• poetess A. A. Akhmatova;
• composer and director I. O. Dunaevsky;
• poet B. L. Pasternak;
• screenwriter S. A. Ermolinsky.

Personal life

Figure 4. M. Bulgakov and E. Shilovskaya

The first wife of the writer was Tatyana Nikolaevna Lappa, the author called her Tasya. For 11 years they lived together, they overcame the most terrible years: world, revolution, civil, famine and poverty. It was she who served as the prototype for the creation of Anna Kirillovna in the story "Morphine".

The first years of his life in Moscow, the family was in poverty, the works of her husband did not bring money, he often disappeared at creative evenings. On one of them he meets Lyubov Belozerskaya, who became his second wife. He lived in marriage with her for 6 years, from 1925 to 1931.

The third and last wife was Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, who was married to General Shilovsky. As a girl, the girl bore the surname Nuremberg. She became the main prototype of Margarita of the legendary work of Michael and after the death of the author received the right to keep the literary heritage.

Creation

Figure 5. Margarita and Fagot arrived at the Ball of Satan (Master and Margarita)

The author revealed the beginning of his medical practice to the reader in the collection Notes of a Young Doctor. The story “Morphine” received the greatest interest, revealing the detailed torment of a doctor who is addicted to this narcotic substance, which acts as an anesthetic. He received particular interest after it became known that Bulgakov himself began taking drugs as early as 1917 and wrote a work in the form of an autobiographical cycle.

In the cult work “Heart of a Dog”, Mikhail Afanasyevich used his uncle, the metropolitan gynecologist N. P. Pokrovsky, as a prototype. It was in his image that the brilliant Professor Preobrazhensky was invented.

The main work of his life - the mystical novel "The Master and Margarita" - Bulgakov wrote for 11 years. He made the final touches, already being at death, a few days before his death. Having almost completely lost his sight, the author listened to his wife, who read out lines from the sketches and said where corrections needed to be made. It was first published only 20 years after the death of the playwright.

A significant part of the bibliography of M. Bulgakov is occupied by plays, librettos and screenplays:

• the play "Days of the Trubins", compiled on the basis of the "White Guard";
• "Ivan Vasilyevich", the plot of which was used to stage the film of the same name by Leonid Gaidai;
• "The Cabal of the Saints", which was staged only after strict censorship;
• "Zoyka's apartment";
• "Crazy Jourdain";
• "Run".

In 1930, all his plays were banned from being staged, and his works were no longer published. The situation was disastrous. He addressed a letter to the Government in which he asked either to be allowed to leave the USSR or to be given the opportunity to work normally. Soon Stalin personally called him and told him to contact the Moscow Art Theater. But the next day after this call, in the morning, the Moscow Art Theater called first - Bulgakov was offered a job.

In total, the bibliography of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov includes more than 100 works of various genres, ranging from dramatic and autobiographical to mystical, which cannot be fully understood even today.

In the modern world, Mikhail Bulgakov, along with his "teacher" Gogol, is considered one of the most mysterious authors of Russian literature. Using the technique of Nikolai Vasilievich in his work, the author, like him, died under mysterious circumstances. Today, the life and work of the playwright are covered with a mystical halo and are a mystery and mystery for contemporaries.

Video

"Michael Bulgakov. Curse of the Master. Documentary project of TV-3 channel

One of the most "medical" Russian writers (along with Chekhov, of course) is Mikhail Bulgakov. He himself was a doctor, the medical theme in his works is not uncommon. This topic also comes up when we talk about Mikhail Afanasyevich himself: the way he fell ill and died without having time to edit his novel often becomes the subject of literary research and speculation.

It is often heard that since the writer wrote the story "Morphine", he himself was an experienced morphine addict and died due to his own drug addiction.

Therefore, in this chapter, we will use the opinion not of a literary critic, but of a physician - Leonid Dvoretsky, who published a study of the writer's illness and death in the reputable publication Nephrology.

Anamnesis vitae

In 1932, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov warned his new chosen one, Elena Sergeevna: “Keep in mind that I will die very hard - give me an oath that you will not send me to the hospital, but I will die in your arms.”

Eight years remained before the writer's death, during which he would write and almost complete the great work The Master and Margarita.<…>

Six months after the onset of the first symptoms, the disease developed and led the patient to a slow, painful death: in the last three weeks, Bulgakov went blind, was exhausted by terrible pains, and stopped editing the novel.

What kind of illness treated the writer so cruelly?

Bulgakov regularly underwent examinations that did not reveal any somatic pathologies. However, neurotic disorders were already observed in him.

Thus, a medical form with a medical report was found in Bulgakov's archive:

“05/22/1934. On this date, I found that M.A. Bulgakov has a sharp depletion of the nervous system with the phenomena of psychosthenia, as a result of which rest, bed rest and drug treatment are prescribed for him.

Tov. Bulgakov will be able to start work in 4-5 days. Alexey Lutsianovich Iverov. Doctor of the Moscow Art Theatre.

Elena Bulgakova also mentions similar neurotic states and attempts to treat them in her diaries of 1934:

“On the 13th we went to Leningrad, where we were treated by Dr. Polonsky with electrification.”

“October 13th. M.A. has a bad nerve. Fear of space, loneliness. Thinking about turning to hypnosis?

"The 20th of October. M. A. phoned Andrey Andreevich (A. A. Arend. - Note. L. D . ) about a date with Dr. Berg. M.A. decided to hypnotize his fears.”

November 19th. After hypnosis, MA's attacks of fear begin to disappear, his mood is even, cheerful, and his work capacity is good. Now - if he could still walk alone along the street.

"November 22. At ten o'clock in the evening M.A. got up, dressed and went alone to the Leontievs. For six months he did not go alone.

That is, already in 1934, Bulgakov used at least two then common methods of treating neuroses: therapy with electric shocks and hypnosis. It seems to have helped him.

In letters to Vikenty Veresaev, also a doctor by profession (remember his Notes of a Doctor?), Bulgakov admitted:

“I have become sick, Vikenty Vikentievich. I will not list the symptoms, I will only say that I stopped responding to business letters. And there is often a poisonous thought - have I really completed my circle? The disease manifested itself with extremely unpleasant sensations of "the darkest anxiety", "complete hopelessness, neurasthenic fears".

"Somatics", the bodily manifestation of the disease, manifested in September 1939,<…>after a serious stressful situation for him (review of a writer who went on a business trip to work on a play about Stalin), Bulgakov decides to go on vacation to Leningrad.

And on the very first day of his stay in Leningrad, walking with his wife along Nevsky Prospekt, Bulgakov suddenly felt that he could not distinguish the inscriptions on the signs.

A similar situation had already taken place once in Moscow - before the trip to Leningrad, about which the writer told his sister, Elena Afanasievna: see). I decided that it was by accident, my nerves were naughty, nervous overwork.

Alarmed by a recurring episode of vision loss, the writer returns to the Astoria Hotel. The search for an ophthalmologist begins urgently, and on September 12, Bulgakov is examined by a Leningrad professor, an outstanding ophthalmologist Nikolai Ivanovich Andogsky.<…>

The professor tells him: "Your business is bad." Bulgakov, himself a doctor, realizes that things are even worse: that is how the illness began, which claimed the life of his father at about 40 years old in 1907.

At first - examinations by an ophthalmologist,<…>the fundus revealed changes characteristic of severe arterial hypertension, the presence of which in Bulgakov before the events that developed was not mentioned anywhere in the available materials. For the first time, we learn about the true numbers of the writer's blood pressure only after the onset of eye symptoms.

“09/20/1939. Polyclinic of the People's Commissariat of Health of the USSR (Gagarinsky pr-t, 37). Bulgakov M.A. Blood pressure according to Korotkov Makhim. - 205 / Minim. 120 mm.

The next day, 09/21/1939, a home visit was made by Dr. Zakharov, who from now on will supervise M. A. Bulgakov until his last days. A receipt order for a visit (12 rubles 50 kopecks) and a prescription for the purchase of 6 leeches (5 rubles 40 kopecks) were issued. A little later, blood tests give very alarming results.<…>

The diagnosis, or rather the symptom complex, becomes clear: chronic renal failure. Bulgakov also puts it on himself.

In an October 1939 letter to a Kyiv friend of his youth Gshesinsky, Bulgakov himself voiced the nature of his illness:

“Now it’s my turn, I have kidney disease, complicated by visual impairment. I am lying, deprived of the opportunity to read, write and see the light ... Well, what can I say to you? The left eye showed significant signs of improvement. Now, however, the flu has appeared on my road, but maybe it will go away without ruining anything ... "

Professor Miron Semenovich Vovsi, who examined him in the same October, an authoritative clinician, one of the consultants of the Kremlin Lechsanupra, who has experience in the field of kidney pathology, the author of the later published monograph "Diseases of the Urinary Organs", confirmed the diagnosis and, saying goodbye, told the writer's wife that he was giving he is only three days old. Bulgakov lived for another six months.

Bulgakov's condition steadily worsened. According to the available selection of prescriptions, one can assume the presence of leading clinical symptoms and their dynamics.

As before, in connection with headaches, analgesics continued to be prescribed - most often in the form of a combination of pyryramone, phenacetin, caffeine, sometimes together with luminal. Magnesium sulphate injections, leeches, and bloodletting were the main treatments for arterial hypertension.

So, in one of the entries in the diary of the writer's wife we ​​find:

“09.10.1939. Yesterday I had a big bloodletting - 780 g, severe headache. This afternoon is a little better, but I have to take the powders.”<…>

In November 1939, at a meeting of the Union of Writers of the USSR, the issue of sending Bulgakov and his wife to the government sanatorium "Barvikha" was considered. A strange place for a dying person with chronic kidney disease. But nevertheless, Bulgakov departs there with his wife. The main method of Bulgakov's treatment there was ... carefully designed dietary measures, about which the writer writes from the sanatorium to his sister Elena Afanasyevna:

"Barvikha. 12/3/1939 Dear Lelya!

Here's some news about me. Significant improvement was found in the left eye. The right eye lags behind him, but also tries to do something good ... According to the doctors, it turns out that since there is an improvement in the eyes, it means that there is an improvement in the process of the kidneys. And if so, then I have hope that this time I will leave the old woman with a scythe ... Now the flu has delayed me a little in bed, but I have already begun to go out and was in the forest for walks. And he got much stronger… They treat me carefully and mainly with a specially selected and combined diet. Mostly vegetables in all forms and fruits ... "

Unfortunately, the hopes (if any) placed on the "sanatorium service" to the writer Bulgakov did not come true. Returning from the Barvikha sanatorium in a depressed state, feeling almost no improvement and realizing his tragic situation, Bulgakov wrote in December 1939 to his longtime medical friend Alexander Gdeshinsky in Kyiv:

“... well, I returned from the sanatorium. What about me?..

If I tell you frankly and in secret, the thought sucks me that I returned to die. This does not suit me for one reason: painful, tedious and vulgar. As you know, there is one decent type of death - from firearms, but I, unfortunately, do not have one.

To be more precise, speaking of the disease: in me there is a clearly felt struggle between the signs of life and death. In particular, on the side of life - the improvement of vision. But enough about illness! I can only add one thing: towards the end of my life I had to endure another disappointment - in general practitioners. I won’t call them murderers, it would be too cruel, but I’ll gladly call them guest performers, hacks and mediocrity. There are exceptions, of course, but how rare they are! And how can these exceptions help if, say, for such ailments as mine, allopaths not only have no means, but sometimes they cannot even recognize the ailment itself.

Time will pass, and our therapists will be laughed at like Molière's doctors. This does not apply to surgeons, ophthalmologists, dentists. To the best of doctors, Elena Sergeevna, also. But she alone cannot cope, so he accepted a new faith and switched to a homeopath. And most of all, God help us all the sick!”

Alas, as we now understand, the transition from sanatorium doctors to homeopaths was a transition from useless to meaningless.

Homeopathy does not even work as a method. Not then, not now, but because the condition continued to worsen<…>.

02/03/1940. Bulgakov is advised by Professor Vladimir Nikitich Vinogradov, personal physician of I. V. Stalin, who later almost died in the “Doctors' Plot”. Here are the recommendations of Prof. V. N. Vinogradova:

"one. Mode - going to bed at 12 o'clock at night.

2. Diet - dairy and vegetable.

3. Drink no more than 5 glasses a day.

4. Powders of papaverine, etc. 3 r / day.

5. (to sister) Injections of Myol/+Spasmol gj 1.0 each.

6. Daily foot baths with mustard 1 tbsp. l., 10 pm.

7. Chloral hydrate mixture at night, 11 p.m.

8. Eye drops in the morning and evening.

This is how patients with end-stage chronic renal failure behaved just three-quarters of a century ago!

Bulgakov's friend, director and screenwriter Sergei Yermolinsky, recalled the last days of the dying writer as follows:

“These were days of silent moral suffering. The words were slowly dying in him... The usual doses of sleeping pills stopped working.<…>Nothing could help. His entire body was poisoned... ...he went blind. When I leaned towards him, he felt my face with his hands and recognized me. He recognized Lena (Elena Sergeevna) by her steps as soon as she appeared in the room.

Bulgakov was lying on the bed naked, in only a loincloth (even the sheets hurt him), and suddenly asked me: “Do I look like Christ? ..”

His body was dry. He lost a lot of weight…”<…>

Shortly before his death, the writer said to Valentin Kataev: “I will die soon. I can even tell you how it will be. I will lie in a coffin, and when they start to carry me out, this is what will happen: since the stairs are narrow, my coffin will begin to turn and it will hit the door of Romashov, who lives on the floor below, with the right corner.

And so it happened.

Anamnesis morbis

So it's all over. Despite alleged later memories of the results of the autopsy, it most likely simply did not exist.

When they talk about an autopsy, they often recall the words of the literary critic Marietta Chudakova (“... he had blood vessels, like a seventy-year-old man ...”) and director Roman Viktyuk: “... I remembered her (Elena Sergeevna) story about how Bulgakov was treated, it seems, from the kidneys, and when they opened it, it turned out that the heart was riddled with tiny holes ... "

But no information about the autopsy can be found, and most likely the causes of death indicated in the certificate: nephrosclerosis (replacement of the renal tissue - parenchyma - with connective tissue) and uremia (intoxication caused by the accumulation of metabolites in the blood that should have been excreted in the urine, a consequence renal insufficiency), were entered on the basis of a certificate from the clinic.

The author of the article that we are using offers his own version of the diagnosis: chronic interstitial nephritis (interstitial inflammation of the kidneys) of medicinal origin. Here's how he justifies it.

In a letter to the writer's brother, Nikolai Afanasyevich, dated 10/17/1960, that is, 20 years after the death of Mikhail Afanasyevich, E. S. Bulgakov says:

“... once a year (usually in the spring) I made him do all sorts of tests and X-rays. Everything gave a good result, and the only thing that often tormented him was headaches, but he was saved from them with a triad - caffeine, phenacetin, pyramidon. But in the fall of 1939, the disease suddenly struck him, he felt a sharp loss of vision (this was in Leningrad, where we went to rest) ... "

In her diaries, Elena Sergeevna often mentions Bulgakov's headaches, long before the first manifestations of kidney damage.

05/01/1934: “... Gorchakov, Nikitin had dinner with us yesterday ... M.A. met them, lying in bed, he had a wild headache. But then he came to life and got up for dinner.
08/29/1934: "M. A. came back with a wild migraine (obviously, as always, Annushka was holding food), lay down with a heating pad on his head and occasionally put in his word.

In the archive collected by E. S. Bulgakova, there is a series of prescriptions documenting the appointment of drugs (aspirin, pyramidon, phenacetin, codeine, caffeine) to the writer, which was indicated in the prescription signature - “for headaches”.

These prescriptions were written out with enviable regularity by the attending physician Zakharov, who also resorted to all sorts of tricks to constantly provide the unfortunate patient with these drugs. One of his notes to M. Bulgakov's wife can serve as confirmation:

"Deep respect. Elena Sergeevna. I prescribe aspirin, caffeine and codeine not together, but separately so that the pharmacy does not delay the issuance by preparing. Give M.A. an aspirin tablet, tab. caffeine and tab. codeine. I go to bed late. Call me. Zakharov 04/26/1939.

Long-term use of analgesic drugs long before the onset of symptoms of kidney disease suggests a possible role in the development of renal pathology in the writer.

A decent version. Alas, only an autopsy and qualitative histology of the kidneys could confirm or refute it. But there was no autopsy (or his data was not included in the archives), the Master was cremated and buried under a stone from the grave of Nikolai Gogol ...

Nevertheless, the proof of the Russian doctor's hypothesis came with the advent of new methods of chemical analysis. Israeli and Italian scientists published in the reputable Journal of Proteomics a study of the pages of the manuscript of The Master and Margarita, roughly finished by Mikhail Bulgakov a month before his death, and were able to confirm both the writer's diagnosis and the treatment he was prescribed.

The team of Pier Giorgio Righetti of the Polytechnic University of Milan and Gleb Zilberstein of the Spectrophon company analyzed 10 randomly selected pages of the manuscript (out of 127 available to the researchers) and found traces of morphine on them, the content of which ranged from 2 to 100 nanograms per square centimeter.

In addition, a metabolite of morphine, 6-O-acetylmorphine, was found, as well as three proteins - a biomarker of nephrosclerosis. Ricchetti explains that evidence of Bulgakov's use of the drug remained in the sweat secretions of fingerprints and saliva, which could get on the pages at the time of turning them over.

The pages were treated with sorbent beads, which were then analyzed in a gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer.

In the course of the work, the researchers contacted the Moscow police, who provided an opportunity to compare the results of the analysis of the manuscripts with the morphine standards that existed in Moscow in the late thirties and early forties of the twentieth century.

Some pages, such as the episode with the dialogue between Yeshua and Pilate, contain quite a small amount of morphine - about 5 ng/cm 2 . At the same time, other parts, on which the writer worked for a long time and rewrote more than once, contain fairly high concentrations of the substance.

So, on the page with the plan of the novel, up to 100 ng / cm 2 of morphine was found.

So the writer was taken to the grave either by drug-induced or hypertensive nephrosclerosis (kidney damage caused by chronically high blood pressure and atherosclerosis of the kidney vessels). Both variants of the disease are accompanied by severe headaches and often end in death from kidney failure (as happened on March 10, 1940).

Alas, the fate of the Master showed that they are two very common causes of death or serious illness: drug abuse (including with the consent of the attending physician) and "silent death" - arterial hypertension.