Word: deviled
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...poet named Bezdomny has brilliantly executed a commission, a poem on Christ, but although it is correctly derisive, his work commits the error of assuming that Christ actually existed. Bezdomny's editor, Berlioz, is straightening out his tame poet on his shaky ideology when the Devil arrives to straighten them both out. Beautifully dressed, learned and well-spoken (the Prince of Darkness being a gentleman), Satan is amused by their respectable atheism. To teach them a lesson about his powers-and about the reality of the supernatural-he turns soothsayer and predicts that the editor will be beheaded...
From this point onward, Bulgakov's novel fans out into a frenzy of manic action in which Moscow is virtually taken over by the Devil and his attendant demiurges. These take their supernatural business for granted, while, in contrast, many plain Soviet citizens are deprived of their Marxist grasp of material reality by the apparition of the Devil, and behave like lunatics. First the poet, then assorted officials, unhinged by their attempts to explain the inexplicable, wind up in the psychiatric center...
Commissar Pilate. Bulgakov's novel is highly complicated, though there is consistency within the fantasy. He has succeeded in bringing the fear endemic to life under Stalin to a level where it can be borne-as excruciating comedy. Yet, while entertained by the absurd carryings-on of the Devil in Moscow, the reader is also made aware that grave matters of eternal importance are being decided behind the showy fireworks...
Poles caught driving while tiddly not only face jail and fines but must attend lectures that damn the old devil drink. In Czechoslovakia, the crackdown is aimed as much at those who sell booze to drivers as at the drivers themselves; a Czech motorist in search of a nip must thus park his auto well away from the tavern and make his approach by foot. West Germany's ten years of breath testing by police has given rise to a new industry that produces lozenges and mouth sprays to mask alcoholic fumes in the breath...
...produced my passport. The Westerner is always aware of simmering malevolence toward him. While some still exhibit traditional Chinese graciousness, there are many more who shout obscenities at foreigners as they walk the streets. Hostile crowds sometimes surrounded me, and people shouted: "What are you doing here, white devil?" Practically no one smiles...