From 1927, Moscow Art Theatre artist Evgeny Kaluzhsky lived in this house. In 1932, Olga Bokshanskaya (the secretary to V. Nemirovich-Danchenko and the older sister of Bulgakov’s third wife, Elena Bulgakova) became Kaluzhsky’s second wife. Before 1936, the Kaluzhskys had lived in General-Lieutenant E. Shilovsky’s flat, and then, aside from a number of temporary addresses, settled in the house on Maly Vlasevsky Lane. On 26th June 1939, Bulgakov read The Master and Margarita in the Kaluzhskys’ house.

‘Stroev, who had become lost in chatter in Toropetskaya’s dressing room at that time, hurried to the auditorium, jumping down the stairs’ – according to E. Bulgakova, in Theatrical Novel, Kaluzhsky and his spouse, Olga Bokshanskaya, featured in the depictions of the actor Stroev and Poliksena Toropetskaya. Like the Bulgakovs, Evgeny and Olga got married in 1932. The Kaluzhskys often visited Mikhail and Elena Bulgakov on Pirogovka and Nashchokinsky Lane – together they celebrated birthdays, the new year, attended readings at home and so on. Elena wrote about one of these meetings in her diary in 1933: ‘31st December. The Kaluzhskys, Leontevs and Arendts are coming over. They’ve arrived. It was lovely. Zhenya Kaluzhsky and Leontev were dying from laughter at some unpleasant joke verses, which Mikhail composed for the new year. The poems were decent, but the rhymes should have been different. The Kaluzhskys stayed the night’. Because of its suitable location, some researchers believe the house could have been one of the models for Margarita’s house.