Meeting with Marietta Chudakova as part of the series "Polish-Russian Dialogue at the International Cultural Centre" in cooperation with the Centre.
Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Master and Margarita is considered one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century and fascinates subsequent generations of readers. The life of its author is equally fascinating. Professor Marietta Chudakova has been studying it for years and the results of her work, consisting of both analyzing the archival documents and collecting testimonies from Bulgakov’s contemporaries, was the first scientific biography of Bulgakov, published in the USSR in 1988. Does this mean that we already know everything about the author of Master and Margarita? Are there still any blank spots in his biography? What aspects do they concern? Why are they still unknown? Professor Chudakova answered those questions during a meeting at the International Cultural Centre in Krakow.
Marietta (Maria) Chudakova – literary scholar, science-fiction writer, and author of children songs. She published over 200 scientific papers and articles on the history of 20th-century literature, history of philology and literary criticism. She graduated in philological studies. Between 1959-1961 she taught Russian language and literature in a school in Moscow, and between 1965-1984 worked in the manuscript department of the National Library of the USSR. Since 1985, she has been a contemporary Russian literature lecturer at one of the Russian universities, and since 1988 she has been lecturing at several American and European universities. Chudakova is particularly interested in the history of Russian literature of the Soviet era (especially the works of Bulgakov, Zoshchenko, and Zamiatin), poetics, history of Russian philology, archives and textology. She wrote the first scientific biography of Mikhail Bulgakov and is the chairman of the Bulgakov Foundation. In fantasy, she made her debut in 1969 with the story Убийца (another title – Пространство жизни, eng. Killer; Space of life), opening the series on the adventures of inspector Kraft. The first full edition of the whole series was only published in 2005. In Soviet era, Marietta Chudakova was close to the dissident circles, and after the USSR collapse she became interested in politics, supported Boris Yeltsin and was appointed by him a member of the Presidential Council and the Pardon Commission. After Vladimir Putin came to power, she became involved with the democratic opposition in Russia. In 2007 she was a candidate of the Union of Right Forces political party (SPS) in the elections to the State Duma, but the party did not exceed the 5-percent election threshold and did not enter the parliament.
fot. Klaudyna Schubert