Master and Mstislav Lavrovich

The relationship between the Master and the writer Mstislav Lavrovich is one of persecution and professional annihilation, a central instance of the novel's indictment of a literary establishment that functions as an arm of state terror. Lavrovich, a figure within the Moscow literary world of Massolit, did not merely criticize the Master's unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate; he launched a public, ideological attack that helped drive the Master out of literature and into madness.

The Attack in Print

Two days after the Master's novel was rejected by an editor who claimed the publishing house was overstocked for two years, a newspaper article by the critic Ariman appeared, warning readers that the Master had attempted to foist an apology for Jesus Christ into print. The very next day, a second article, this one by Mstislav Lavrovich, was published in another newspaper. Lavrovich's piece recommended "striking, and striking hard, at Pilatism and at the icon-dauber who had ventured to foist it (again that accursed word!) into print." The Master, dumbfounded by the unheard-of term "Pilatism," opened a third newspaper to find two more articles, one by the critic Latunsky and another signed with the initials "N.E." The Master later told Ivan Homeless that the works of Ariman and Lavrovich could be counted as jokes compared with what Latunsky wrote, but Lavrovich's contribution was nonetheless a key blow in a coordinated campaign of denunciation.

Consequences for the Master

The cascade of hostile articles, beginning with Lavrovich's call to strike hard, had a devastating effect on the Master. He described the monstrous failure with his novel as having taken out a part of his soul. The attacks triggered a psychological decline: first he laughed at the articles, then he was astonished by their "rare falsity and insecurity," and finally he was consumed by fear—not of the articles themselves, but of unrelated things, such as the dark. He began to suffer from mental illness, experiencing terrifying hallucinations of a cold octopus stealing toward his heart. The campaign of vilification, in which Lavrovich played a prominent early role, directly precipitated the Master's breakdown, his burning of the novel's manuscript, and his eventual confinement in Professor Stravinsky's psychiatric clinic.

The Literary World as a System of Terror

The Master's conflict with Lavrovich is not a personal feud but a structural feature of the literary world depicted in the novel. The Master, a historian by training who had worked in a museum and done translations, won a hundred thousand roubles and left his job to write a novel about Pontius Pilate. He lived in a basement apartment near the Arbat, a private refuge where his secret wife, Margarita, would visit him. When he emerged into the world of literature, he encountered an editor who asked him who had given him the idea of writing on such a strange theme, and then the editorial secretary Lapshennikova returned his manuscript, already greasy and dishevelled, telling him the question of printing it "did not arise." The subsequent newspaper articles, including Lavrovich's, were not independent critical judgments but coordinated acts of ideological policing. The Master's novel, which dared to treat the Gospel story as a historical and psychological drama, violated the official atheist orthodoxy, and the literary establishment—embodied by figures like Lavrovich, Ariman, and Latunsky—mobilized to destroy both the work and its author. This system mirrors the broader terror of the Stalinist state, where the "imposed will" of absent rulers like Stalin has become "the measure of normality and self-evidence," and where literary criticism functions as a weapon of political repression.

The Master's Fate and the Novel's Judgment

The Master's encounter with Mstislav Lavrovich and the other critics marks the point at which his life "ended." After the attacks, he became afraid of the dark, burned his manuscript, and was eventually arrested and confined to the clinic. When he later tells Ivan Homeless that he no longer has a name, having renounced everything in life, he is describing the total erasure that the literary establishment, through figures like Lavrovich, has effected. The novel's judgment on this system is implicit in the fate of its persecutors: the Master, though broken, is granted an "eternal refuge" with Margarita, while the literary functionaries remain trapped in the empty, terrorized world of Moscow. Lavrovich himself, as a character, is never seen again after the Master's story; he exists only as a name on a newspaper article, a functionary of the apparatus that destroys artists. The Master's relationship with Lavrovich thus encapsulates the novel's central theme: the struggle between authentic creative freedom and the institutionalized cowardice and cruelty of a literary world that has become an instrument of state power.