The building of the Insurance Company Rossiya (The literary department of the Chief Committee for Political Education at the People’s Commissariat for Education)

6/1 Sretensky Boulevard
Subway station «Turgenevskaya»
From 1st October to 1st December 1921, Bulgakov worked as a secretary in the literary department of the Chief Committee for Political Education at the People’s Commissariat for Education, headed by Lenin’s wife N. Krupskaya. Bulgakov wrote about this period in Notes on the Cuffs. The endless corridors of the literary department as well as those in Nirnzee’s house and the Palace of Labour can be recognised in the short story Diaboliada.
Bulgakov got a job at the literary department of the Chief Committee for Political Education at the People’s Commissariat for Education on 30th September 1921, and began to work there from the next day. His work involved managing the written work of the department, preparing minutes and agendas for the literary department, corresponding with institutions, reporting on the work of the department to the head, etc. Bulgakov’s days in the department were numbered, even when taking up the position – in the summer of 1921, the Council of People’s Commissars passed a resolution on cutting the staff of the Chief Committee for Political Education by fifty percent and the literary department was to be completely abolished. On 1st September, there were eighteen people in the department, but by November, apart from Bulgakov, only V. Bogatyrev (temporary head of the department), Bulgakov’s friend A. Erlikh (in the mysterious position of ‘head of the department of liaison with places’), senior clerk K. Bragina and two typists remained. On 23rd November, the department was completely disbanded, and from 1st December, the employees were all dismissed. Bulgakov wrote about this in Notes on the Cuffs: ‘As a captain from his ship, I left last. I told them to tie up their projects and submit them. I put out the lamp with my own hand and left. Snow immediately fell, and then rain, and then something between rain and snow, which blew right into the face from all sides. Moscow is awful when cuts are being made and the weather is like this. Yes indeed, it was a cut back.’