From February to March 1922, Bulgakov was in charge of the publishing department at the Military Editorial Board of the Scientific-Technical Committee of the Nikolay Zhukovsky Airforce Engineering Academy.

Bulgakov got this job thanks to the help of Boris Zemsky, who worked in the academy as an assistant to the head of academia. The writer’s first wife Tatyana Lappa remembered: ‘Boris Zemsky took him to work with him. It was some kind of educational establishment related to aviation. It was in Petrovsky Park’. Formally, he should have been in charge of the press, however, it all turned out differently. In a diary entry from 15th February 1922, he wrote, ‘My position at the military editorial board boils down to running errands, but at least I have that.’