Three Loves of Mikhail Bulgakov

“You should change women, dear boy. To be a writer, you have to marry three times,” said the seasoned Alexey Tolstoy to the aspiring Bulgakov. And those words proved prophetic: in the Master’s life there were three novels, three loves, and three wives. What women captured his heart—playing the leading roles in his work and fate? To whom did Bulgakov owe his rescue from drug addiction, and is it true that healing from a fateful passion is like “getting off the needle”? How did he confess his love, and why did he stop loving? Why didn’t he have children, whose fault were his two marriages, and for what did he, after the divorce, repent before his first wife: “Because of you, God will punish me”? How did the Master find his Margarita—one who helped him overcome antisemitic prejudice and marry the daughter of a baptized Jew? Did he find the peace he valued more than light? And isn’t the luckiest man the one who, like Bulgakov, can whisper to his beloved before death: “You were the best woman in the world! My deity, my happiness, my joy. My little queen, my queen, my star that shone for me always in my earthly life! I love you, I adore you! My love, my wife, my life!”