The Theme in the Work
The thesis on power is stated in chapter 2 by Yeshua Ha-Notzri, before Pontius Pilate: all power is a violence against people, and a time will come without any power at all, not even that of the Caesars. It was for saying this to Judas of Kerioth, who had received him at home and insisted on asking about the power of the State, that he was arrested. Pilate judges him a vagrant philosopher, without crime, and even formulates a lenient sentence, but the remark against Caesar is on record, Caiaphas chooses to release Bar-Rabban, and the procurator confirms the death. Earlier, when the prisoner assures that the kingdom of truth will come, Pilate shouts that it will never come.
In Moscow, power is the administrative machine and the fear it produces. In chapter 15, the dream of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy is a theatre where confessions of foreign currency hidden at home are extracted from the audience, one by one. In chapter 17, the president of the commission on performances is an empty suit that goes on dispatching papers behind the desk.
In Yershalaim, the same power that condemned acts in secret. In chapter 16, the spear thrusts that cut short the agony of the crucified come with the formula of glory to the generous Hegemon, spoken to Yeshua and Dismas. In chapter 25, Pilate asks Afranius, chief of his secret guard, to take every measure for Judas's safety; in 26, Judas is lured into the Gethsemane garden and stabbed, the money of the betrayal is thrown into Caiaphas's palace with a note, and Pilate tells Matthew Levi, who swore to kill Judas, that it was he. In chapter 32, Woland says that the procurator hates, more than anything in the world, his own immortality and his unprecedented glory.
Moscow's satire falls on what Soviet power distributes and withholds. The apartment is the most coveted good: in chapter 9, the president of the residents' association receives thirty-two declarations from neighbors who want Berlioz's rooms, though he died the day before; in 18, Berlioz's uncle travels from Kiev, and the narrator says that the motive was only one, the apartment in Moscow; in 24, the neighbor Aloisy Mogarych denounced the Master, after Latunsky's article, to get his apartment. In chapter 12, Woland sums up what he saw in the audience of the Variety Theatre: the Muscovites are people like those of old, they love money and sometimes have mercy, but the housing problem has corrupted them. Massolit, in chapter 5, administers trips, summer houses, creative licenses and a restaurant, and the membership card that gives access to all this is what the visitor envies; in 28, the same house demands a writer's identity from whoever enters. Foreign money is the other filter: the Torgsin store sells only for foreign currency, in chapter 28, and the dream of chapter 15 reenacts the campaigns to extract dollars from Muscovites through denunciation. The Variety Theatre and the commission on performances, in chapters 10, 14 and 17, show the officials trying to fit the inexplicable into telegrams, protocols and reports, and arresting whoever touches the banknotes that Woland's retinue transforms.
Moscow's satire shows power as the administration of scarcity: whoever decides who keeps the apartment, the trip, the dacha or the foreign-currency store also decides who fears and who denounces. That is why Woland's verdict on the housing problem exonerates the supernatural and indicts everyday life: the power the retinue displays is small beside what the city already exercises over its own residents.
The book puts power in two times and finds the same fear in both: Pilate condemns because he fears denunciation to Caesar, and Moscow is governed by neighborly denunciation, to the point that Woland's retinue uses against Nikanor a simple denunciation phone call made in a neighbor's name. Pilate's answer in chapter 2 is disproved by the plot itself, though not in the way Yeshua announces: Caesar's power does not end, it simply ceases to matter to the man who exercised it, because what holds him for two thousand years is the interrupted conversation with a prisoner who had no power at all.
Where It Appears
- Part One, Chapter 2: Pontius Pilate: Yeshua tells Pilate that all power is a violence against people, and Pilate, who judges him a harmless philosopher, confirms the death, partly because the record shows a remark against Caesar's power.
- Part One, Chapter 5: It happened at Griboyedov: Massolit administers trips, summer houses, creative licenses and a restaurant; the visitor envies the membership card, and Berlioz's death interrupts the dance for a few minutes before the night returns to normal.
- Part One, Chapter 9: Korovyov's tricks: The residents' association president, Nikanor Ivanovich, receives thirty-two declarations from neighbors wanting Berlioz's vacant rooms and accepts a bundle of money from Korovyov after hearing that there are no witnesses.
- Part One, Chapter 15: Nikanor Ivanovich's dream: In Nikanor Ivanovich's dream, an entertainer asks the audience on stage to hand over the foreign money hidden at home; whoever confesses is applauded, and whoever denies is denounced.
- Part One, Chapter 16: The execution: At the Golgotha execution, the commander orders the suffering of the three condemned men cut short with a spear thrust to each heart, announced by the formula "Glory to the generous Hegemon!"
- Part One, Chapter 17: The restless day: The treasurer Vasily Stepanovich finds Prokhor Petrovich, president of the commission on performances, reduced to an empty suit that dispatches papers behind the desk, while the secretary weeps.
- Part Two, Chapter 25: How the procurator tried to save Judas of Kerioth: Pilate asks Afranius, chief of his secret guard, to take every measure for Judas's safety, insists that they will kill him that night, and then hands him a bag of coins.
- Part Two, Chapter 26: The burial: Afranius reports Judas's murder to Pilate as a failure of the guard, Pilate reacts with satisfaction and then confesses to Matthew Levi: "It was me."
Passages
The phrase for which Yeshua was arrested.
any power is a violence against people, and a time will come when there will be no more power [...] Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where there will be no need of any power at all
Pilate's rejoinder, which the book spends the rest of the plot testing.
He'll never come!
Moscow's power reduced to pure function.
Behind the enormous office desk, with a massive inkwell, was the empty suit, which was writing across the paper with the dry pen.
The executioner's formula at Golgotha.
Glory to the generous Hegemon!
Pilate's confession to Levi, justice done in secret.
It was me