Heart of a Dog

Chosen as the test animal was a stray dog who had accidentally been given the name "Sharik," picked up by the professor on the street; he found himself in the professor's spacious apartment and was given excellent food. The organ donor was Klim Chugunkin, a thief, alcoholic, and troublemaker who had died in a brawl.

The results of the operation exceeded expectations. Sharik's limbs elongated, his fur fell out, speech appeared, and he took on a human form. Rumors spread through Moscow about the miracles taking place in the professor's house. However, Preobrazhensky soon had cause to regret what he had done. Sharik underwent not only a physical but also a psychological humanization, inheriting all of Chugunkin's vicious habits. Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov 'lol', as he called himself, displayed a fondness for foul language, drunkenness, theft, debauchery, tavern revelries, vanity, and pronouncements on the proletarian idea. In order to raise his social status, Sharikov, on the recommendation of the house committee chairman Shvonder — who hoped to use him to drive Professor Preobrazhensky out of the apartment — secured a senior position in the department for clearing the city of stray animals.

His new job gratifies Sharikov's vanity; a company car comes for him every day, the servants begin to treat him with obsequiousness, and he does not feel indebted to Preobrazhensky and Bormental, who still try to instill in him the norms of cultured life. He takes pleasure in the destruction of stray cats, although, in Preobrazhensky's words, "the cats are temporary." Sharikov brings into the professor's apartment a young woman whom he has taken on as an employee and from whom he has concealed his biography. Upon learning the truth from the professor, the woman rejects Sharikov's advances — whereupon he threatens to have her fired. Doctor Bormental comes to the woman's defense.

Sharikov decides to write a political denunciation of the apartment's inhabitants, who are far from sympathetic toward the new authorities and their representatives in their own home. However, the document falls into the hands of one of Preobrazhensky's former patients, who returns it to the professor. Preobrazhensky demands that Sharikov leave his apartment; Sharikov refuses and draws a revolver. Bormental disarms Sharikov, and together with the professor they perform a new operation, turning Sharikov back into a dog. The dog remembers nothing of what happened to him and remains living in the professor's apartment.