June 3, an official cancellation ceremony of a souvenir sheet dedicated to the 125th birth anniversary of Mikhail Bulgakov took place



The cancellation ceremony was held at the pavilion of fiction during Red Square Book Festival in Moscow Oleg Dukhovnitskiy, Head of the Federal Communications Agency; Alexander Kibovsky, Minister of the Moscow Government, Head of the Department of Culture of Moscow; and Peter Mansilla-Cruz, Bulgakov Museum Director, took part in the event.



“The author needs no introduction, he was a great world-famous novelist and playwright, the author of famous works. At Soviet times, many his works were not published, and it was only since mid-1950s that they started to reach the reader — The Master and Margarita came out in 1966–1967. ‘Manuscripts never burn’, declares one of the novel’s characters. Pots-mortem destiny of Bulgakov’s works only confirmed this prediction”, said Mr. Dukhovnitskiy.



Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) was an outstanding Russian writer and playwright. He was the author of many novels, stories, short stories, theatre plays and feuilletons.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s works can be characterized by autobiographism, a mixture of the grotesque and fantastic with a detailed description of the everyday routine. The main ideas are the dramatic moral choice a human faces; ethic weakness and treason; an artist and the government; lie and truth; creative genius and aggressive mediocrity.




The most-known Mikhail Bulgakov’s works are The White Guard, Days of the Turbins, Heart of a Dog, The Master and Margarita, The Fatal Eggs, Diaboliad, and Notes of a Young Doctor.

The postage stamp depicts a portrait of Mikhail Bulgakov against the background of a house on Bolshaya Sadovaya St. The souvenir sheet margins bear images of a two-page opening of The Master and Margarita, The White Guard title page, a poster and a photo of The White Guard performance scene (1926), the characters’ images and a Moscow photo of 1920s.

Additionally, FSUE PTC “Marka” has manufactured an illustrated cover with a souvenir sheet and first day covers with cancellation (Moscow and St Petersburg) inside.




Design: O. Ivanova.
Face value: 90 RUB.
Size of stamp: 50×37 mm, size of sheet: 108×82 mm.
Circulation: 75,000 sheets.

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