Communism In Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart Of A Dog

Heart of a Dog, written by Mikhail Bulgakov, was developed around the time when communist sentiments started gaining actual political traction in Russia, in the form of the Bolshevik movement, which came to power in 1917. Two major parties clashed, the one who opposed the revolution and the insurrection, often referred to as “tsarists” and the ones who support it. Throughout the novel, Bulgakov uses characters and their details to illustrate his opinions on communism.

Bulgakov demonstrates his strong opinions of dislike on the insurgency movement headed by Lenin. Characters often symbolize and are representative of aspects of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. For example, Philipovich demonstrates counterrevolutionary rhetoric in his interactions …show more content…
The violence and aggressive methods used by revolutionaries is criticized by creating an analogous situation where Philipovich reprimands someone for suggesting physical brutality as a scolding method for Sharikov misbehaving and chewing up an owl figure. The nature of subversive insurrections with forced regime change requires violence, injuries, and many casualties. Bulgakov dissents the idea of such actions and their consequences. The passage alludes directly to the communist and anti-communist movements with the mentions of colors, where red represents the communists and white the anti-communists (and brown nazism, though less pertinent to contemporary Russian politics). This interaction also shows that Philipovich is principled and unpartisan in his rejection of terror, as he refuses the use of it even in the political movement that he inclines to agree with. He not only opposes physical aggression, but he also advocates for kindness and more ginger treatment of Sharikov. Philipovich believes that physically rebuking Sharikov will not have the intended consequences, and that this method is plainly false. This is Bulgakov’s opinion about Marxist revolutionaries; using violence to achieve political gains will not work. His decision to declare terror as “useless” shows that Bulgakov doesn’t …show more content…
As is required by the nature of a communist government, there was no personal property and the means of production were nationalized. There was no capitalist competition that kept food production steady, thus Soviet Russia became infamous for housing many famines and hunger stricken people. This enormous problem was made an allusion to in an exchange with Arnoldovich and Philipovich over food, where Philipovich reveals that he conducted a study and concluded that people who merely read the communist newspapers would already be overtaken by hunger. By creating this situation in the novel, Bulgakov again exhibits his criticism on the communist movement through Philipovich. The author even goes as far as to indicate that no change is better than the communist reform, which is a reasonable argument in light of the hunger issue that was only worsened by the soviet regime. Another perspective that is covertly displayed in Philipovich’s spiel, but more clearly throughout other portions of the novel, is the basic civility of revolutionaries. A Marxist society is a classless society, and without the upperclass, there are no bourgeois manners, which are usually described as traditional, sophisticated, and respectful. The Bolshevik and related groups often campaigned against the bourgeoisie and