The Worker newspaper (office)

3 Putinkovsky Lane
From March to September 1922, Mikhail Bulgakov contributed to The Worker and over that period, published almost three dozen reports in the paper, dedicated to the life and labour of workers.
‘This is the darkest period in my life. My wife and I are starving.’ – A note from Bulgakov’s diary concisely describes the beginning of 1922. On 1st February, the writer was struck by the tragic news of his mother Varvara Mikhailovna’s death. However, Bulgakov’s perseverance in his search for a job paid off and in mid-February, he wrote, ‘So much for not believing in the signs! I came across the funeral and… 1) there’s some hope in The Worker newspaper…’ The Worker became Bulgakov’s first experience of work in a large publication in Moscow – his work as a reporter gave him a small, stable income. From September 1922, Bulgakov stopped publishing in The Worker, which was probably related to the fact that he had got a job as a satirist at Gudok. Bugakova linked the idea for the novel The Victor Planet with The Worker. By verbal agreement with the editor N. Smirnov, the writer received an advance of fifty rubles and was to present a synopsis of the new novel. At the end of July 1926, Bulgakov returned the money and the editors permitted him to develop the theme of The Victor Planet as he saw fit. Marietta Chudakova suggests that the unwritten novel was possibly thematically linked with Bulgakov’s play Adam and Eve.