The Devil and Demons in The Master and Margarita By Mikhail Bulgakov (Margot Smith)

While today demons, witches, and the Devil largely belong to the realm of fantasy, to Christians in the early modern world they were an ever-present threat. The Devil was the personification of evil and possessed a number of supernatural abilities. He was foremost a deceiver; he could assume a variety of forms to trick people into abandoning their faith to worship him. He was also a tool for executing divine retribution, punishing sinners with God’s permission. For Christians in the early modern world, the Devil helped to explain why, if God is all-powerful, evil still exists in the world. Although he does possess free will and chose the path of evil on his own accord, all creatures, including the Devil, are subjected to God’s divine will. He cannot act without God’s express permission, nor can he perform any miracles outside of nature. While belief in such entities has certainly decreased over the centuries, their influence has persisted into the present day. Indeed, the Devil found himself a surprisingly welcoming home in the secular Soviet Union in the 1930s when Mikhail Bulgakov composed The Master and Margarita, a work which upon its posthumous publication in the 1960s would quickly become a classic of Russian literature. The Master and Margarita is a well-researched novel that incorporates real elements of Christian beliefs about the Devil, demons, and witches into a secular setting, using them to criticise the faults Bulgakov found with Soviet society.

Secularism in the Soviet Union

Anti-religious propaganda poster, c. 1930. Translates to “The fight against religion is the fight for socialism!!!”

“‘In our country there’s nothing surprising about atheism… Most of us have long ago and quite consciously given up believing in all those fairy-tales about God.’” (The Master and Margarita, page 18)

The Master and Margarita takes place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, where Scientific Atheism was promoted and Christianity was heavily suppressed. Religion symbolized a past of class oppression, and the Communist party promoted the idea that atheism would help advance the nation towards a progressive socialist utopia. The League of Militant Godless was established in 1925 and by 1932, membership had reached almost 6 million. Schools were secularised, religious activity was forbidden outside of official places of worship, and Sunday was banned as a day of rest in place of a full work week. In the novel, the Devil arrives in this atheist society, fascinated by its people’s lack of faith and morals.

‘Never Talk to Strangers’

In the first chapter, two Muscovite men engage in conversation over the existence of God and the Devil with a third person whom they are not yet aware is the Devil himself. These men articulate what Bulgakov saw as the official position towards religion under Stalinism:  society had progressed past the need for religion – God and the Devil are merely primitive fairy tales. The first man, a poet named Ivan Nikolayich, had been commissioned to write an anti-religious poem by the second man, the editor Mikhail Berlioz, for his magazine. Berlioz’s vision for Ivan’s poem was to prove that ‘as a person Jesus had never existed at all and that the stories about him were mere invention, pure myth’ (p. 15). It is amidst this debate that the Devil appears in the disguise of Professor Woland, delighted by not only their lack of faith, but that they are free, even eager to declare it publicly. When Berlioz reasserts their atheist beliefs, Woland exclaims ‘How Delightful!’ and ‘Allow me to thank you with all my heart!’ (p. 18). The Devil no longer needs to use tricks and illusions to lure good people away from the Christian God, Stalinism has done the job for him. The only task left is to convince the population to believe in the Devil instead.

Professor Woland

Prof. Woland in the 2024 film adaptation of The Master and Margarita

“’Very well,’ replied the visitor and said slowly and gravely: ‘At Patriarch’s Ponds yesterday you met Satan.’” (The Master and Margarita, page 157)

Physical Characteristics

We are introduced to Devil’s adopted persona, Professor Woland, in the first chapter when Ivan Nikolayich and Berlioz are debating the existence of God, a conversation the devilish professor is more than happy to join. The two men take him for a foreigner due to his odd mannerisms, accent, and disconcerting features. He has platinum and gold teeth, dark hair, uneven eyebrows, a crooked smile, and both a black and green eye. He is dressed in an expensive grey suit and matching foreign shoes with a grey beret atop his head. To these men, there was nothing supernatural about his appearance, they only questioned whether he was German, English, or French. The Devil did not assume the form of a horrific, beastly creature, but what Soviet Muscovites found most evil and dangerous: a foreigner.

Woland’s Powers

Woland exhibits several supernatural abilities, sometimes performed by his own hand and others by his demonic assistants. In the first chapter, Woland predicts Berlioz’s upcoming death, and as we discover in the third chapter, his death happens exactly as described. Woland did not cause Berlioz’s death, however. Rather, he possessed the prophetic ability to know that Berlioz would rush to a phone booth to report him to the Aliens Bureau but would slip in sunflower oil and fall across the tram tracks to his death.

Throughout the remainder of the novel, Woland and his demons trick greedy men into accepting large sums of foreign currency, leading to their swift arrests. They also decapitate people, replace a Soviet bureaucrat with an animate version of his suit – behaving and even speaking as he usually would but with no body inside – force offices full of people to break out into song, and magically transport the unfortunate Variety Theatre director Styopa Likhodeev a thousand kilometres away to Yalta. The only two citizens that are seemingly invulnerable to Woland and his retinue’s tricks are a writer known as ‘the Master’ – whose failed novel on Pontius Pilate provokes him to permanently admit himself to a clinic on grounds of ‘madness’ – and his lover and muse, Margarita. Woland’s purpose in performing these acts is not to lure the people of Moscow towards sin, but to expose their sins and punish them accordingly. This image of the devil as an agent of divine punishment is based on his true biblical role – notably in the Book of Job – and remains a frequent theme throughout the novel.

Bulgakov’s Demons: Behemoth

Left to right: Azazello, Behemoth, Koroviev

In the Old Testament, Behemoth is a large, beastly demon associated with chaos. Bulgakov’s Behemoth is ‘a cat the size of a pig, black as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officers’ whiskers’ (p. 63). Although he is the only of the three demons to not possess a human form, he exhibits human behaviour, walking on two legs, speaking perfect Russian, and drinking vodka. Remarkably, the general population of Moscow find nothing unnatural about this peculiar creature. In Chapter Four, Behemoth attempts to board the tram, handing the conductress a ten-kopeck piece for his fare. Rather than being surprised that an unusually large cat could navigate Moscow’s public transportation system, she shook in anger and barked that cats were not allowed on board her tram. The fact that no citizen questions the absurdity of Behemoth’s existence implies that society had become so detached from the spiritual that the presence of a large talking cat was perfectly natural.

Magic and Miracles

Behemoth and Koroviev performing magic tricks at the Variety Theatre

“We have seen, ladies and gentlemen, a case of so-called mass hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, demonstrating better than anything else that there is nothing supernatural about magic.” (The Master and Margarita, page 147)

The Magic Shows

When Woland and his demonic entourage arrive in Moscow, they set up a series of black magic shows for Moscow’s elite. Their first major trick was to cause money to miraculously rain from the ceiling of the Variety Theatre. The audience, blinded by greed, grasp and pocket the notes almost as soon as they appear. Soon after, however, Woland’s miracle proves to be nothing more than a mass illusion. Taxi drivers, bartenders, and other workers find that they have been paid with crumpled napkins and receipts. He performs a similar illusion at his next show, when he clothes women from the audience in the latest fashions from a magical wardrobe. Eager to showcase their new clothing, the women step into town the next day, only to suddenly be dressed in nothing but their undergarments. Following the arguments of medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, Woland could not have caused these items to miraculously appear but would have used his powers of illusion to deceive the people of Moscow into believing them to be true. By performing these illusions, Woland acts as an agent of divine retribution, punishing the people of Moscow for their greed, vanity, and other sins.

Margarita’s Flight

Albrecht Dürer’s Witch Riding a Goat (1500)

When Azazello hands Margarita a cream that allows her to fly invisible to Satan’s ball, it is not a wild story invented by Bulgakov, but rooted in real early modern beliefs about the transport of witches to the sabbath. The history behind such diabolical air travel, however, is much more disturbing.

The demon Azazello presents Margarita a golden box containing a special cream, instructing her to ‘kindly strip naked and rub this ointment all over your face and body’ (p. 261). She obeys, and upon anointing herself immediately appears younger. She glows and turns a healthy pink, her muscles relax, and her headache subsides. The most unusual effect of this ointment is that it allows her to fly invisible upon a broom by exclaiming, ‘I’m invisible!’ Early modern theologians questioned whether witches travelled to the sabbath in the flesh or were deceived by the Devil into believing so. Many sources on witches, such as Martin del Rio’s Six Books on Investigations into Magic, claimed they were physically transported to the sabbath with the assistance of demons by rubbing themselves with an ointment made from the fat of dead children. Azazello never reveals the ingredients to the ointment, but Margarita’s sudden youth may allude to this. However, the Malleus Maleficarum, a notorious fifteenth-century theological handbook on withes, claims that witches certainly travelled to the sabbath, but only in their imaginations. Whether it only be in their delusions, witches were also thought to travel to such gatherings mounted atop various beasts or household items like pitchforks and brooms. Margarita boards a broom while her maid rides a flying pig, a common form of sabbatical transportation. Unlike the magic tricks, however, the narrator suggests that Margarita’s flight to Satan’s ball was not an illusion and truly took place. Margarita’s journey to becoming a witch displays many accurate early Christian beliefs on witches and their relationship with the Devil, revealing the influence early modern religious beliefs had on Bulgakov in writing this novel.

The Devil as Political Satire

The Master and Margarita is highly renowned for its elements of political satire. Bulgakov lived and worked under Stalinist rule where his writing was subject to government censorship. Discretion was essential in producing a political satire, and subtle references to the police state, the housing crisis, and anti-religious policy appear throughout the story. Bulgakov utilised supernatural beliefs about the Devil to define what he viewed as good and evil in Soviet society and construct a world where the greedy, vain, and corrupt would face, if not divine, then certainly still just punishment. Bulgakov never lived to see his masterpiece published, but even today it is regarded as a highly significant and unique piece of modern literature. It is further representative of how, despite a declining belief in the Devil across the centuries, its influence persists into the present day, symbolising good and evil even in the secular world.