According to the memoirs of Elena Bulgakova, after the telephone conversation with Stalin in 1930, Mikhail Bulgakov threw the revolver which he had been keeping, thinking of committing suicide into Bolshoy Novodevichy Pond.

Bulgakova (according to V. Lakshina) remembered: ‘In 1929, “deprived of fire and water”, Bulgakov was ready to work as a labourer or a caretaker – no one would take him. After the telephone conversation with Stalin when he was promised work at the Art Theatre, he threw his revolver in a pond. It seems it was the pond by the Novodevichy Convent. Novodevichy and Pashkov’s house were Bulgakov’s favourite places in Moscow’.