'A portrait of the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, fighting for his work and his life in a society riven with fear of Stalin''s tyranny Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891. He started as a career writing articles and satiric short stories about the revolution and the economic reconstruction in the young Soviet state. He drew on these writings in many of his stage plays which brought him into conflict with the authorities. He died in 1940.'