The address of Bulgakov’s typist Irina Raaben

4 Triumfalnaya Square
Subway station «Mayakovskaya»
Irina Raaben was the writer’s first typist and she typed all of his writings until the spring of 1924. It was here in a large six-roomed flat in this corner house, with six windows looking out onto Tverskaya Street and four onto the courtyard, that Bulgakov dictated his letter to N. Krupskaya (Vladimir Lenin’s wife) with a request for help – house 10’s house committee was refusing to register him in flat 50. Today the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall stands on the site where the house stood.
Irina Raaben helped Bulgakov compose his letter to Nadezhda Krupskaya (at that time, Krupskaya was head of the Chief Committee for Political Education and Bulgakov had worked for her for two months). Bulgakov asked for help with his registration – the chairman of house committee of house 10 on Bolshaya Sadovaya was threatening Bulgakov with the police and being moved out. The letter from Krupskaya had an instant effect – Bulgakov was given a warrant to the flat and registered on the spot. Bulgakov described these events in Memoirs (1924) and his first wife Tatyana Lappa, recalling the hated house committee, said that, ‘there were bitter drunks in the house committee. They would come to us threatening to expel Andrey (The room where Bulgakov lived belonged to Andrey Zemskiy — husband of Nadezhda Bulgakova, Mikhail’s sister) and they didn’t register us. They clearly wanted money, but we didn’t have any’.