The magazine The Godless (together with the publications, The Antiregionist, The Atheist, Militant Atheism, and others) was published from 1923 to 1941 and was the most famous antireligious magazine. From his diary, it seems that Bulgakov dropped in to the editorial office on 5th January 1925 to pick up a few editions.

As part of the antireligious campaign of the 1920s, church values were not only suppressed in the USSR, but Komsomol Christmas and Easter celebrations were introduced. The antireligious inclination could also be detected in literature, particularly in the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yury Olesha and Demyan Bedny. Bulgakov actively followed the latter for his ‘literary militant atheism’ (the writer kept newspaper cuttings in his archive) – according to experts on Bulgakov, this influenced the plot of Sunset Novel. Having visited the editorial office of The Godless, Bulgakov left a note in his diary: ‘When I had a quick look through the editions of The Godless at home in the evening, I was staggered. The point isn’t the blasphemy, although of course, on the face of it, it’s boundless. The point is in the idea that you can prove it on paper – Jesus Christ is depicted as a villain and a cheat - the man himself. It’s easy to work out whose work this is. There’s no price for committing this crime. In The Master and Margarita, at the request of the Chairman of MASSOLIT, Mikhail Berlioz, the poet Bezdomny wrote an antireligious poem in which Jesus was furnished with negative traits, but turned out, ‘completely alive’, which displeased the editor and brought about the conversation at Patriarch’s Ponds. In the drafts of the novel (1928-1929), Berlioz was in charge of the magazine The Fighter Against God, and after meeting Woland, the barman went to a church, but found an auction room there; in another edition (1934), amongst the people in the literary restaurant Bogokhulsky is mentioned (whose name can be translated as ‘blasphemer’). Ponchik-Nepobeda, the character from Bulgakov’s play Adam and Eve, also confessed to having worked for The Godless: ‘My Lord! (Crosses himself.)