The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

In the original Russian text though, Bulgakov did not write about roubles, he described another monetary unit from the Soviet period, the chervonets. A correct translation would have been: - «By God, they're real! Chervontsi!» joyful cries came from the gallery. Bulgakov never uses the term ten-rouble bills in The Master and Margarita. He always writes червонец [chervonets] or its plural червонцы [chervontsy], which gives a complete other dimension to the question if the bills «were real or some sort of magic ones». The chernovets was indeed the new official monetary unit introduced by the Soviet government in 1922 to stop the hyperinflation and restrain chaos in the money standard during the civil war. It became and remained the official currency in the Soviet Union until 1947. However, the Soviet regime did not dare to abolish the rouble. For 25 years, the country has known two currencies: the official chervonets - distrusted by everyone - and the «good old rouble». There was, however, no exchange rate between the two currencies, and officially only the chervonets could be used. https://www.masterandmargarita.eu/en/02themas/h12.html

the rain of money, ever thickening, reached the seats,

the incomparably delightful smell of freshly printed money.

expose this experiment

Tear his head off!‘

Uh-oh ….

Behemoth!‘

And an unheard-of thing occurred. The fur bristled on the cat’s back, and he gave a rending miaow. Then he compressed himself into a ball and shot like a panther straight at Bengalsky’s chest, and from there on to his head. Growling, the cat sank his plump paws into the skimpy chevelure of the master of ceremonies and in two twists tore the head from the thick neck with a savage howl.

Something out of Stephen King or Victor Lavalle.

the head cried desperately for all the theatre to hear: ‘A doctor!’

mercy sometimes knocks at their hearts

only the housing problem has corrupted them...’

Note the influx of famine refugees in the 30s as a factor in the housing shortage.

Put. Editor!

Above all, there was not even any scar left on the neck.

‘Give me my head, give me back my head ... Take my apartment, take my paintings, only give me back my head!

A red-headed girl

a queer scar on her neck

Margarete in Goethe’s Faust had a scar on her neck.

Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov,

Arkady Apollonovich was in his box with two ladies:

‘But there must be an exposure.’

went by bus to Yelokhovskaya Street to visit an actress

Now I see why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa!’

Narrator! Hoodwinker p. 163

‘Here, honourable citizens, is one case of the exposure Arkady Apollonovich so importunately insisted on!’

A second brief wave of satanic laughter seized the young relation.

The seance is over! Maestro! Hack out a march!‘

in the cat’s loathsome expression, hacked out some incredible march of an unheard-of brashness.

after all this, something like babel broke loose in the Variety.

the hoodwinker Fagott,

Narrator! scoundrelly p. 161

the brazen tom-cat Behemoth,

The Hero Enters

Praskovya Fyodorovna,

‘So, here we sit.’ ‘Here we sit,’ Ivan replied,

I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, or other things like that.

The master's aversion to noise and screaming almost literally repeats the words of Wagner in Faust. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/faust/characters/wagner

Praskovya Fyodorovna

some fat man with a purple physiognomy, who kept muttering something about currency in the ventilation

Pushkin

“Kurolesov,

‘A staggering coincidence! Tell me about it, I beg you, I beg you!’

‘I only regret that it wasn’t the critic Latunsky or the writer Mstislav Lavrovich instead of this Berlioz!’,

You oughtn’t to have behaved so casually and even impertinently with him.

And you must still say thank you that you got off comparatively cheaply.’

We’re all unreliable here

Satan.’

Named before the master.

You’re sitting, as you yourself understand, in a psychiatric clinic, yet you keep saying he doesn’t exist.

Now you, of course, are a virginal person,’

The very first things this professor said dispelled all my doubts. One can’t fail to recognize him, my friend!

the unrecognizable Ivan

the opera Faust?’

Gounod

‘So that means he might actually have been at Pontius Pilate’s? He was already born then?

the nocturnal luminary racing through a cloud.

he shocked you - and you came unhinged,