The halls of residence of the First Moscow State Medical Institute

18 Malaya Pirogovskaya Street
Subway station «Sportivnaya»
Ending up in Moscow at the end of September 1921, Bulgakov and his first wife Tatyana Lappa spent several days in one of the rooms of the halls of residence at the Medical Institute on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street. From here, the Bulgakovs moved to 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya.
In August 1921, Bulgakov considered emigrating to Constantinople through Batumi. In a conversation with Marietta Chudakova, the writer’s first wife Tatyana Lappa remembered Bulgakov’s stay in Batumi. ‘“…You know, maybe I’ll manage to get out”, he said. He had negotiated with someone, he wanted them to hide him the hold or something. He told me to go to Moscow and wait for news from him.’ In September, she arrived alone in Moscow and through the efforts of the medical student Nikolai Gladyrevsky, an acquaintance of the Bulgakov family from Kiev, set herself up in a room at the medical halls of residence where she spent almost three weeks until the arrival of her husband. In addition to depressing thoughts about the impending winter, Lappa’s life was complicated by having empty pockets – she had to sell her things at Smolensky Market to survive. At the end of September, she happened upon Bulgakov: ‘I don’t remember exactly where we met… Either I returned from the market and found him at Gladyrevsky’s place… or at the Zemsky’s place… For a night or two we stayed at the residence halls and then we immediately settled at Bolshaya Sadovaya’.
Incidentally, it was with Gladyrevsky that Bulgakov exchanged a coat for the terrible sheepskin jacket, which then frequently appeared in the memoirs of the writer’s friends. For example, in I. Ovchinnikov’s memoirs there is a description of the jacket: ‘Russian okhaben – fashionable at the end of the seventeenth century. In the chronicles, it is first mentioned under the year 1377. Now court boyars in these okhabens fall from the second floor at Meyerhold’s performances.’. Николай Леонидович Гладыревский, киевский друг семьи Булгаковых, в беседе с М. Чудаковой упоминал, что помогал Михаилу в медицинской практике. В 1920-х годах Гладыревский (как и В. Катаев) некоторое время ухаживал за сестрой Булгакова, Еленой Афанасьевной. Николай Леонидович работал в хирургической клинике профессора Мартынова — там же в 1924 году Булгакову удалили аппендицит.