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Readers are often left uncertainhow to understand the rich meanings of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic and beautifulnovel The Master and Margarita. To what extent is it political? Or religious? And howshould we interpret the Satanic Woland? ThisCompanion guides the readers through the work's thematic, structural andlinguistic complexities.

Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita , set in Stalin's Moscow, is an intriguing work with a complex structure, wonderful comic episodes and moments of great beauty. Readers are often left tantalized but uncertain how to understand its rich meanings. To what extent is it political? Or religious? And how should we interpret the Satanic Woland? This reader's companion offers readers a biographical introduction, and analyses of the structure and the main themes of the novel. More curious readers will also enjoy the accounts of the novel's writing and publication history, alongside analyses of the work's astonishing linguistic complexity and a review of available English translations.

On the one hand, the play A Very Expensive Poison focuses on the love story between Litvinenko (an endearing Tom Brooke) and his devoted and feisty wife Marina (a dignified MyAnna Buring), who are caught between the desire to lead a normal family life and the consequences of Litvinenko's work that forces them to flee Russia. Actors break the fourth wall and address the audience, Litvinenko leaves his deathbed to help the British investigators, giant puppets of former Russian presidents appear to watch Litvinenko give a press conference, oligarch Boris Berezovsky (an uncontainable Peter Polycarpou) bursts into a song, a mellifluous Vladimir Putin (a cartoonish Reece Shearsmith) comments on the events and provides alternative truths from a dress-circle box, and a rapid history of polonium is told in the style of a fairy tale. In reconstructing the chain of events that led to Litvinenko's poisoning, A Very Expensive Poison is an intelligent and playful indictment of the inanity of British politicians and the brutality and opaqueness of the Russian Government. [...]the play questions the superficiality and short-lived indignation of the general public and highlights how easily forgotten are the actions of those who are ready to sacrifice everything in the belief that truth and justice should always come first.

The retranslation of Russian classics into Italian in the last thirty years is a topic of no little importance, for at least two reasons. On the one hand, this phenomenon mirrors a literary text translation activity that is still alive and in great evolution. On the other hand, an assessment that shows which works of Russian literature have appeared in new translations and which have remained ‘behind the scenes’ can be a useful orientation for the future, for the benefit of publishing houses, translators and scholars. The perspective of this report is therefore not to address specific translation problems, nor to give indications about editorial strategies about Russian literature. Instead, it is to review the main retranslated authors, also highlighting those who have not yet had new translations, and to draw conclusions that may be of use to the scholarly community and its relations with the publishing industry.

The sophiology of Sergius Bulgakov has exerted a significant amount of influence over Anglophone theology over the last decade. Theological figures as significant as Rowan Williams, John Milbank and Paul Fiddes, to name but a few, have positively engaged with and utilised Bulgakov's sophiology within their own theological contributions. Thus, for many, Bulgakov's sophiology has proven to be a fecund source of theological inspiration, especially when articulating the relationship between God and the world. However, historically, Bulgakov's sophiology has been criticised by many Orthodox theologians, who argue that Bulgakov's proposals are theologically flawed and challenge traditional orthodox readings of Christian doctrine. Despite the controversy surrounding Bulgakov's use of Sophia, very few comprehensive, critical studies of Bulgakov's sophiology, spanning its historical development, exist. This article seeks to fill this void at a time when Bulgakov's sophiology is enthusiastically adopted by many without an accompanying critical lens.

This essay examines the reception of Western mystical theology in early twentieth-century Russian religious thought, showing how leading Russian thinkers—such as Ivanov, Frank, Bulgakov, and Berdyaev—reinterpreted Meister Eckhart’s central categories (Gottheit, Abgeschiedenheit), often in significant conjunction with Nietzschean and Tolstoyan doctrines. It reconstructs a distinctive philosophical current—“mystical anarchism”—emerging at the intersection of apophatic theology, political eschatology, and the critique of violence. Through a detailed analysis of primary texts, the essay argues that Russian philosophers radicalized the doctrine of detachment into a political ontology of freedom, aimed at challenging both metaphysical authority and social coercion. While drawing extensively on negative theological traditions, their most original contributions appear not in strictly speculative or metaphysical terms, but rather in the ethical and political domain. Particular attention is given to Berdyaev’s notion of an “apophatic sociology,” which articulates freedom as the negation of all power of man over man and as the condition of a communal life no longer bound by abstract categories of morality and knowledge. The article concludes that Russian religious thought offers an original contribution to understanding mysticism as a resource for ethical and critical philosophy.