Some totalitarians prefer to conceal themselves behind the machinery of the state, but, like the cannibal who lovingly cradles his victim as he digs around for his heart, Stalin liked conversing with his terrorized children. He was an intimate murderer. So when Bulgakov, as skilled at despair as at the written word, reached a nadir in 1930 and burned an early draft of Margarita, it was to Stalin he wrote, asking permission to emigrate if his country could not find use for his talents.
