Mikhail Bulgakov: The man torn between medicine and literature

The year 2016 marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of physician-venereologist and passionate writer Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov (1891-1940). From his essays emerges a figure of a man torn between medicine and literature. His works contain fragments pertaining to his personal ailments and health problems, which are described with medical precision, for example, morphine addiction. Bulgakov's essays are full of metaphors and references to the political situation of Soviet Russia. He compared this situation to syphilis as in treacherous infections, a slow destroying and enslaving of a social organism.