Devil in the details

In a bizarre court case that could have easily made the pages of Mikhail Bulgakov's best known novel, "The Master and Margarita", a privately operated Moscow museum dedicated to the writer is facing the confiscation of its exhibits and possible disruption of its operations.
Moscow's arbitration court recently ruled that Alexander Morozov, who lives in the same Garden Ring building that houses the ground-floor Bulgakov House Cultural Centre, is the rightful owner of 6 million roubles' worth of the museum's exhibits. Morozov has said the items were stolen from him. The museum plans to appeal the ruling.
Nikolai Golubev, the museum's director, shrugged off the accusations as absurd and unsubstantiated. "The whole thing was so bizarre that we weren't even worried at the beginning," he said. "[Morozov] just came to the museum, took pictures of the exhibits and claimed that they belonged to him. From the viewpoint of common sense, this is nonsense and he is obviously lying."
The museum building, located at 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya Ulitsa, was where Bulgakov himself lived for several years after moving to Moscow in the early 1920s. In "The Master and Margarita," he described the No. 50 apartment where he stayed as the "Nekhoroshaya kvartira" or "Bad Apartment." Bul­gakov died in 1940, and only 25 years later, when Soviet society's ideological restrictions were loosened, was the novel first published in Russia. It quickly earned a cult status, which later turned into massive popularity all around the world.
By the late 1980s, the "Bad Apart­ment" and the building itself had become the focus of pilgrimages by Bulgakov's fans. In the early 1990s, the building, which used to host a design bureau, stood half abandoned. Besides hanging around the building's hallways, some Bulgakov fans actually moved into the apartment, which turned into a kind of a squat. In the meantime, ownership of the building, which had both residential and commercial spaces, changed hands several times. Dozens of squatters lived in apartment No. 50 and apartment No. 6 until the authorities evicted them in the mid-1990s, after one of the apartments was reportedly damaged by fire.
In 2000, some of the building's residents, including Morozov, formed The Foundation for the Preservation of the Bulgakov House. In 2004, a group of Bulgakov-loving entrepreneurs opened the Bulgakov House Cultural Centre on the ground floor of the building at 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya Ulitsa. While it doesn't have official status as a museum, it is open free to the public and provides guided tours. Three years later, the state Bulgakov Museum was opened in the "Bad Apartment." It has sometimes been confused with Bulgakov House.
Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reported Morozov as saying in March that The Foun­dation for the Pre­servation of the Bulgakov House was the original owner of the museum's antique collection. The paper reported him as saying that the foundation once ran a children's theatre. His wife, a former actress, would sing for the children and that their parents were so happy with the performances that they donated the antiques en masse to the foundation, from where they were later stolen.
Golubev said he was certain that the ruling was a court mistake. "We are preparing for an appeal," he said. "In the meantime, the museum is operating as usual. Moreover, we are collecting new exhibits and are launching a theatre stage downstairs in the same building."
But if the appeal is rejected, the museum could face financial troubles. The director said that Morozov's motivation was money.
"He put his alleged losses at $200,000, but that figure is absolutely random," Golubev said. "He doesn't want these exhibits, he wants cash. What would come out of that? Our bank accounts would be frozen and we wouldn't be able to properly operate. It's too bad that it is all happening at a time of an economic downturn and no one has any extra cash."
"We would, in fact, like to help the cultural centre, but we don't have that authority - it's not a government museum," Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Romuald Krylov-Iodko, deputy head of the city's cultural de­part­ment, as saying. "In any case, it's very sad for the cultural centre. In many ways they are a lot more active than our state mu­seum, which recently opened in the ‘Bad Apartment' at No. 50 of the same building. It's currently at the stage of being set up, so it's all rather difficult. If we receive all those people who currently visit the cultural centre, I'm afraid we won't cope. For starters, Golubev has well developed programmes and excursions. And secondly, they have more space - we are terribly cramped."
Both Morozov and The Foundation for the Preservation of the Bulgakov House were not available for comment. The appeal is scheduled for April 26 in the Moscow arbitration court.