Hilarious, sarcastic look at Soviet life

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	• Heart of a Dog Mikhail Bulgakov Grove Press, 1994 - 84 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hilarious, sarcastic look at Soviet life

Written in 1925, Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog is an absolutely hilarious and wonderfully sarcastic look at Soviet life, directly after the revolution.

The plot focuses on genius professor Preobrazhensky, who transplants the pituitary gland from a minor criminal into a stray dog named Sharik (little ball, in Russian). Gradually, the dog turns into a disgusting, crass little man and terrorizes the professor's household...

Sharik transforms into a dark satire of a Soviet official - Director of the agency responsible for clearing Moscow of 'vagrant quadrupeds' such as cats. He drinks, chases women, steals money, etc. All the while, Preobrazhensky battles the newly formed proletariate housing committee that has taken control of his luxury apartment building.

Absolutely unique for its time, the book strongly anti-communist and decidedly anti-proletariat... It wasn't until 1987 (60 years after it was completed), that Heart of a Dog was allowed to be published in the Soviet Union. It is also ridiculously over the top funny.

If you enjoy this novel, I would highly recommend trying to get a copy of the wonderful 1989 film, which was nominated for several international awards.

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An Analysis of "Heart of a Dog"

If perused only ephemerally, or taken merely at face value, Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Heart of a Dog," is likely to give the reader a false impression of simplicity or childishness; however, if more carefully surveyed in light of the monumental political and historical context in which it was penned, the novel, formally seeming silly or fantastical, reveals itself to be a highly critical analysis and commentary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, as well as subsequent events. This fanciful tale of an unfortunate street dog transformed, against its own will, into a drunken and vice-laden human monstrosity, closely parallels the fitful and savage conversion of the Russian Empire and its peoples into the Soviet Union and its subjects. When said dog, Sharik, first makes his appearance in the tale, he is indeed a quite sympathetic and homely creature; battered from a harsh life on the streets and suffering from the wounds inflicted upon him by a well-to-do chef, Sharik is nonetheless capable of great empathy, as evidenced by his feelings of sorrow for an underpaid and overdependent typist. Although Sharik is initially much afflicted by his wounds, one can sense a decisive mentality of perseverance in this hapless and battered, yet overwhelmingly grateful and obedient, animal. Sharik, thus, symbolizes aptly the Russian people as they stood prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. Hungry, abused, and left destitute by a cold bourgeois society that cared little for their well-being, the Russian, much like Shark, nonetheless remained unbroken in spirit and consistently persevered through their difficulties while maintaining their unique mindset and wit. Yet, just as Sharik was pushed to his limit of persistence by his scalding, so to were the Russian by the hardships of the second World War; in both cases, these battered would would likely have perished had it not been for the arrival of charismatic and empathetic leaders, whom they, in their destitution, would follow blindly to their ultimate detriment. Just as many Russians rallied behind Lenin and his promises of peace, land, and bread, so too did Sharikov throw in his lot with Professor Preobrazhensky, a seemingly kindly doctor who took pity on the suffering dog.
Professor Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky, literally "Professor Transformation" in the original Russian, presents a unique dilemma for the critic attempting to assess his character and actions; on the one hand, it is simple to view him in light of his charity to Sharik, while, on the other hand, his cold betrayal of the dog coupled with his questionable morality significantly blacken his character. Indeed, the Professor, who appeared at first to adopt Sharik simply out of some goodness of heart, had truly done so in order to use the poor mut as the subject of his experiments; after fattening up Sharik, the Professor quickly betrays his trust and sets about forcibly altering him. In this, one can discern a certain similarity with the behavior of the Bolsheviks, who upon gaining the trust of certain of the Russian people with their promises, ultimately brought upon them immense suffering as they attempted to force them into the Communist mold. The operation in which the Professor transplants a human pituitary gland into Sharik is depicted in such violent and grisly terms as to only be a criticism of the "operation" that was the Bolshevik Revolution. Just as the Professor "treacherously" cut and prodded Sharik in molding him into a man, so too did the Bolsheviks impose much bloodshed and carnage upon the Russian during the Revolution and subsequent civil war. Indeed, the entire gruesome operation sequence, combined with base nature and the resultant human Sharikov, speak loudly to Bulgakov's underlying criticism of the Bolsheviks hasty and brutal methods of imposing Communism upon the nation. Similarly damning to the character of the Professor is his seeming moral indifference and unwillingness to accept the results of his own cruel actions. In performing the experiment upon Sharikov, the Professor knew nothing of what would result; he did so merely out of cold scientific uncaring. Yet, when the result was the drunken Poligraph Ploigraphovich, the Professor exhibited no tolerance for his own creation, constantly berating him instead of more patiently bearing the responsibility of his actions. When the Professor's assistant suggests murdering Sharikov, the Professor refuses only out of a desire to keep his hands clean of crime; such poor morality does not speak well for him. His refusal to abandon his bourgeois lifestyle, which inevitably leads to conflict with the Soviet authorities, presents not only his stubbornness and corruption, but also his possibly noble refusal to submit to a cause which he does not hold dear.
In sharp contrast with the more nuanced and ambiguous Professor, Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov, as the dog becomes know after his transformation into a man, represents all that is worst in human nature, as well as the nascent Soviet mentality. From the beginning, Sharikov is portrayed as hopelessly vulgar, impetuous, ungrateful, and drunken. Not afraid to lie, he invents tales of war heroism to woo a coworker; when this dishonesty is exposed, he shows himself to be vengeful, vowing to have the woman's pay docked. Perhaps more significantly, Sharikov quickly becomes a staunch, mindless, devotee to the local Communist leader, Shvonder; to the Professor's disgust, he begins using terms like "Comrade" and speaking of the division of property. It is with this that Bulgakov makes his biting attack upon the corruption already apparent in the Communist lifestyle of the Soviet Union. Aside from being a drunken monstrosity, Sharikov also only half-heartedlt accepts the Communist ideals he so loudly espouses, as revealed by his refusal to register for military service. It is with the generally disagreeable character of Sharikov that Bulgakov illustrates best the ungodly and corrupted beast that the Revolution had transformed Russia into; though not overtly anti-Soviet, Bulgakov does not fear exposing the rot of the Soviet system. In a prophetic statement that Bulgakov could never have understood at the time, the Professor foresees that Sharikov, brute as he is, represents just as much of a threat to the Communists as he does to the Professor and his well-being; this succinct remark foreshadows the depraved and mindless purges carried out by Stalin against the Communist Party itself. In realizing the overall pointlessness of the ability to transform a man into a dog when nature itself is capable of creating great men at any time, the Professor profoundly comments upon the mistake of forcing a Communist revolution upon Russia, when Marx had urged that such a transformation would occur naturally; in ultimately reversing the procedure and changing Sharikov back into a dog, it is possible to identify an exhortation to reverse the botched Bolshevik Revolution. However, Bulgakov was too careful and canny an author to jeopardize his life or liberty by so overtly criticizing the Soviet regime, and as a result, "The Heart of a Dog" is an intentionally multi-faced and ambiguous novel, which may be interpreted in numerous fashions.

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Heart of a Dog--Revolution or Evolution?

This novel, written by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulagakov, in 1925, is a satirical science fiction novel. The subject of the satire is the Communist ideology and bureaucracy as well as the petty bourgeoisie that they oppose. However, Bulgakov develops an even deeper theme relating to human nature and human culture.

Professor Preobazhensky is a flagrantly decadent bourgeois character who does all he can to resist the leveling of the Communist Revolution, maintaining a relatively luxurious lifestyle while young radicals, like Shvonder are trying to carry out their revolutionary leveling policies.

Shvonder insists that Preobazhensky give up several rooms of his apartments and give them to other individuals in the spirit of the revolution.

Shvonder then threatens to complain to higher authorities, implying that force would be used if needed. Preobazhensky refuses and is actually the first to use a kind of force by using his influence with the apparently corrupt Communist bureaucracy to maintain his lifestyle. He calls Party officials and tells them that he will no longer perform operations to help Party officials if Shvonder is allowed to divide up the apartment. Shvonder is called to the phone and apparently ordered to back off.

As the novel proceeds, Preobazhensky is further fleshed out as a sort of mad scientist character. He undertakes a dramatic experiment in which he transplants the pituitary gland and testes of a male human into a stray dog, Sharik. In a Kafkaesque transformation, this dog, Sharik, is transformed into a sort of human. He is only "sort of human" in the sense that once he appears human, he still retains the "heart of a dog" or more accurately we might say in English the "soul" of a dog. At least, this is the reader's first interpretation of the new Sharik, soon to be re-christened "Sharikov."

The plot of the novel is developed by the complications arising from this experiment. Preobazhensky had set out prove that the intelligence of humans is located in the pituitary (and testes?) and that this can be successfully transplanted--even to another animal, like a dog. Thus, if a dog were to receive a human pituitary, he would develop the intelligence of a human. At first, the experiment seems to be a stunning success. Sharik(ov) even develops the ability to speak and read.

Unfortunately, the professor finds out that there is a downside to the transplantation. Along with human capabilities he has also transplanted the degenerate character of the donor. Sharik(ov)'s character develops as a degenerate human character. This is due, of course, to the fact that the "donor" human was the low-life, bar-brawling scoundrel, Klim Chugunkin.

Later in the novel, having fully having experienced this downside in his subject, Preobazhensky, despairs of his efforts. The allure of eugenics no longer enthralls him. It is nothing but a blind alley. The human race can only be improved through the slow, gradual process of natural evolution--in no other way.

Dr. Bromenthal answers his colleague's despair by asking Preobazhensky, "But what if it were Spinoza's brain" that had been transplanted? Wouldn't the transplantation then have been worthwhile? Preobrazhensky answers "no." No, it would not have been necessary, he explains, because every day the world produces Spinozas out of ordinary women. The point is, nature needs no help in producing Spinozas. In the course of its evolution, Preobazhensky explains, the human race "creates dozens of outstanding geniuses who adorn the earth, stubbornly selecting them out of the mass of scum."

Of course, the whole attempt to "remake" a creature is also suggestive of the Communists' idea of remaking man into Soviet Man - and of remaking the crude and ignorant peasants and workers into proletarians fully aware of their class, their class power, and of the class struggle.

We can hear the author's voice in Preobazhensky's observation that torture or force cannot be used to change human nature or human society. This is a clear statement of the theme of the novel. The Communists can transform neither individuals nor entire classes through the forcible methods that they are employing. The only results of such attempts will be violence and chaos.

This violence and the resulting chaos is produced by Sharik, who begins by demanding the first name and patrynomic of Polygraph Polygraphovich and the appropriate surname of Sharikov (son of Sharik), which he truly is. The man Sharikov, who is described as somewhat physically deformed or at least incompletely formed, acts out a parallel deficient moral character. He becomes the low-life character that his human donor was--stealing, chasing women, lying, exploiting, mooching, exhibiting cruelty and prejudice, etc.

Of course Sharik's name is emblematic. He is a "polygraph" in the sense that he is telling the truth that the author Bulgakov is trying to tell--literally recording the truth as the writing of the novel is read by the reader.

The only way some semblance of order can be restored and the main conflict of the novel resolved is by removing the transplanted organs from Sharikov and giving him back is own organs. As a restored dog, Sharik again finds his natural place; and all is once again relatively peaceful, as peaceful, perhaps, as anything can be in this world.

And so humanity will have to wait patiently for its next Spinoza, and by extension, it will also have to wait patiently for its era of deliverance from the darkness of past ages. Social progress is a story of evolution not revolution, and evolution is a very slow process, barely discernable in the lifetime of any single individual.

At the end of the novel, we see the "stubborn, persistent" Preobazhensky at it again, pulling brains out of jars, "searching for something all the time, cutting, examining, squinting and singing..." Hadn't Preobazhensky learned his lesson? Perhaps he had, for a brief time. But the mind of science, the reductionist element in our dominant Western culture can't just leave it alone. Bulgakov sees this as the enduring danger against which we must be on constant guard. We murder to dissect. We have trouble going with the flow--seeing the big picture and not being open to the wisdom it can give us.

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russian masters

Heart of a Dog is a most insightful book into the Russian soul, and Bulgakov proves himself to be another brilliant Russian satirist. It was great fun to read of the Bolshevik era in this common Russian theme, with its bizarre appearances of the "loyal comrades" upstairs. One of the great Bolshevik era writers. If one considers the dog to be the common Russian, who was attemptedly educated to be of a higher class, the monster he became rings a familiar note looking at Putin's Russia right now.

The dissonance between classes was pronounced in the pre revolutionary era, as now, and does not change with the poltical winds, it seems to this author, despite the huge variation in political rulers and philosopies over the last 100 years. An interesting, quick and fun read. Highly recommended, especailly to those with a history of reading Russian novels.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

This hilarious, brilliantly inventive novel by the author of The Master and Margarita tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Thanks to the skills of a renowned Soviet scientist and the transplanted pituitary gland and testes of a petty criminal, Sharik is transformed into a lecherous , vulgar man who spouts Engels and inevitably finds his niche in the bureaucracy as the government official in charge of purging the city of cats.

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