The house in which Mikhail Bulgakov lived in summer, 1924

46 Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street
In the summer of 1924, Bulgakov lived for some time with Lyubov Belozerskaya on Herzen Street (nowadays Bolshaya Nikitskaya) in School 48 named after N. Bukharin. Nadezhda Zemskaya (director of the school and sister of Bulgakov) put them up in the common room during the holidays.
In January 1924, M. Bulgakov became acquainted with Lyubov Belozerskaya, who was returning from Berlin (her husband intended to publish a newspaper in Moscow). Their acquaintanceship grew into a romance and in the summer of 1924, they began to live together. L. Belozerskaya recalled this period: ‘Nadezhda Zemskaya took us into the bosom of her family. She was the director of a school and lived on the mezzanine floor of a former gymnasium (46 Herzen Street). The result was a ‘little palace’ in which five people were already living and waiting for Elena Bulgakova’s younger sister to arrive from Kiev. This where we too found ourselves. Fortunately it was summer and they put us up in the common room under a portrait of the austere Ushinsky on an oilcloth sofa, which I slipped off at night. There were other portraits there, but they were less austere, which is why I don’t remember them. Nadezhda Afanasevna accepted all of her relatives with surprising humility and enviable patience.” In the autumn of 1924, Bulgakov collected his things from his wife and left house 10 on Bolshaya Sadovaya for good.