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Doctor Bulgakov II
Bulgakov Museum
2008
2008
This exhibition continued the "Doctor Bulgakov" project, first presented in 1999 at the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum as a collective installation of artistic objects. The new exhibition turned to the historical context behind Bulgakov’s fantastical medical novels and stories.
Bulgakov’s experience working as a rural and military doctor from 1916 to 1919 was both harrowing and formative—a life-changing period that ultimately pushed him toward literature. His memories of this time were captured in A Young Doctor’s Notebook and Morphine. He performed surgeries, amputations, delivered babies—while, in parallel, another brutal "operation" was being performed on the country itself, giving birth to a new Soviet state. It is likely that Bulgakov perceived and deeply felt this metaphor.
At the same time, the scientific and medical discourse of the early 20th century—focused on overcoming death and disease, enhancing human physical and cognitive capacities, and reimagining the doctor as a creator of new life—became for Bulgakov a metaphor for Soviet political experimentation. The bizarre hypotheses appearing in the pages of popular science journals undoubtedly caught his attention. His reflections on the emerging homo socialisticus and the aftermath of the revolution culminated in his satirical science fiction works Heart of a Dog and The Fatal Eggs.
The sharp political subtext of these works—veiled in Wellsian sci-fi—was immediately recognizable even in the late 1920s. Scholars have long debated the possible real-life political prototypes for characters such as Professors Persikov and Preobrazhensky. Yet, as with all of Bulgakov’s writing, no single interpretation prevails.
The exhibition featured enlarged diagrams and photographs from early 20th-century science publications, illustrating experiments with artificial tissue growth and reviving individual body parts. At the center of the exhibition was an installation object—an operating table, where the birth of new life was symbolically underway.
Bulgakov’s experience working as a rural and military doctor from 1916 to 1919 was both harrowing and formative—a life-changing period that ultimately pushed him toward literature. His memories of this time were captured in A Young Doctor’s Notebook and Morphine. He performed surgeries, amputations, delivered babies—while, in parallel, another brutal "operation" was being performed on the country itself, giving birth to a new Soviet state. It is likely that Bulgakov perceived and deeply felt this metaphor.
At the same time, the scientific and medical discourse of the early 20th century—focused on overcoming death and disease, enhancing human physical and cognitive capacities, and reimagining the doctor as a creator of new life—became for Bulgakov a metaphor for Soviet political experimentation. The bizarre hypotheses appearing in the pages of popular science journals undoubtedly caught his attention. His reflections on the emerging homo socialisticus and the aftermath of the revolution culminated in his satirical science fiction works Heart of a Dog and The Fatal Eggs.
The sharp political subtext of these works—veiled in Wellsian sci-fi—was immediately recognizable even in the late 1920s. Scholars have long debated the possible real-life political prototypes for characters such as Professors Persikov and Preobrazhensky. Yet, as with all of Bulgakov’s writing, no single interpretation prevails.
The exhibition featured enlarged diagrams and photographs from early 20th-century science publications, illustrating experiments with artificial tissue growth and reviving individual body parts. At the center of the exhibition was an installation object—an operating table, where the birth of new life was symbolically underway.
Curator and Artist
Aleksandra Selivanova
Aleksandra Selivanova
