Towards the question of dating the events described in The Master and Margarita

The author proposes a principle for putting a date to the events described in M. Bulgakov’s novel, for which purposes he examined three groups of objects and phenomena: astronomical (Moon phases), calendrical (direct mentions of a date, month, or year), and ‘signs of the era’ (events in politics, social or everyday life of the period). The scholar strives to study Bulgakov’s book as a testimony about a specific period, which can be established forensically — i. e., by elimination of random, and matching of eligible, data. V. Orlov argues that, while avoiding direct mentions of the dates, Bulgakov could not possibly expunge all implied references. Moreover, the scholar suggests that Bulgakov left them out deliberately in the dual pursuit of appeasing censors and engaging in an intellectual game with the reader. Having analyzed the relevant data, Orlov finds that the novel is set in the period from the 11th to the 14th of May 1938 and hypothesizes other important dates in the novel, including the Master’s and Margarita’s birthdays.