The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov – A Review

Published after the author’s death in 1968, this satirical novel skewers both sides of the political divide in Russia.

Set in the early days of the Soviet Revolution, the book opens with a four-legged narrator. Sharik is his canine name, and his lowdown perspective gives us the downlow on the down-and-outs in Moscow. While Sharik navigates angry chefs as he forages for food, he finds little empathy from the humans who find themselves in a similarly pitiful situation. Things are grim, and while the dog has no understanding of the political winds of change, he can detect the icy chill in the air as he tries to protect himself from the elements and has a keen sense of how the majority are locked into a daily struggle. A heaving mass fighting over few resources.

While this social reality is sobering, it is recounted by a surreal lightness of touch and a deliberateness of tone. A dog navigating city streets gives an off-kilter yet familiar view of urban life. Then, once the dog takes human form, we lose access to Sharik’s inner monologue. Instead, in parts, we get a dry medical account of the operation that makes him a man, where even a tail falling off and the creature finding his voice are recounted with scientific fidelity. There are handwritten notes that confess the growing alarm faced by the other characters as Sharik evolves into an indolent drinker, predator and political figure. As the story comes full circle, Sharik’s thoughts fill our pages once more.

A dog divided

The dog chooses a human name - Poligraf. The nomenclature might be a nod to the intentionally bizarre names of Russian literature - the dog names himself after the maker of a calendar - or a reference to the polygraph machine, a relatively new invention. Celebrating innovation and science is a key theme in the book.

So, Poligraf is an intolerable presence in the house. His existence represents the unwelcome arrival, for some, of the Soviets in the country. The disorder that Poligraf brings is a disorder represented by the chaos sown by the new regime. Big apartments are subdivided against the owners’ will and things become more insecure and less efficient. Shoes that were once left in communal areas get stolen, and Poligraf speaks of division and social equality when he is little more than a free-loading nuisance, an interloper in other people’s lives.

Yet, if communism is a big, bold experiment in the country, the doctor who operates on Sharik – Filipp Filippovich – is performing an audacious experiment of his own, that like atheistic communism, goes against God and the natural order. If he sees his work as having more merit, it is because he hates the proletariat and is a cruel elitist. He constantly barracks Poligraf and rejects any type of fatherly responsibility. It is little wonder that Filipp’s arrogance and aloofness, further highlighted when he speaks German or looks down on the circus, push Poligraf to a rejection of the upper classes and towards working class solidarity, no matter how idiosyncratic that is in the book.          

Sharik the dog is key to all of this. As a dog, he can read to a basic level, showing he is more intelligent than we might expect but not that educated, which may seem to be an indictment of the working classes from the perspective of the author. As a dog, he does not know why he has been rescued by the doctor. He assumes, despite being a mangy mongrel, that he comes from a good lineage, that he is handsome. In canine form, he buys into the bourgeoise lifestyle and never really questions it. He takes for granted that he deserves it, which is an implicit criticism of the gentry and their God-given right to be rich. He revels in his superiority when he has a new collar and both humans and dogs become more deferential.

As a man, his lived reality pushes him to extremism, though the fact that his human parts came from a criminal and generally bad person, perhaps we can assume Bulgakov see the Bolsheviks as a bad influence, as corrupting disruptors. Or we can see how a poor dog is operated on against his will and how Poligraf is manipulated by the Soviets. In both forms, there are preying, destructive forces that undermine Sharik’s/Poligraf’s free will and consent.

A book close to home

Despite the surreal elements and high farce, there is a lot of biography in the book. Bulgakov was a doctor who treated patients at home, and he was on the side of the White Army in the Russian Civil War. When most of his family emigrated to Paris, he stayed in Moscow and, like Filipp, maintained an awkward co-existence with the Soviets. In one moment of his life, he was so depressed about not being published, he wrote a letter to Stalin, who took pity on him. This is rather interesting. After all, the name of the criminal whose organs are inserted into the dog – Chugunkin – can be seen as a parody of Stalin’s name.

Bulgakov died relatively young and far from his family. There are tragic elements to his life. On a positive note, when the book was finally published in Russia in 1987, around 20 years after publication in the West, it was a sensation, beloved by a wide cross-section of Russian society. In the modern world, it still enjoys its much-deserved status as a literary classic.

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