"The fool from Sadovaya" Annushka from the novel "The Master and Margarita" is a real person

It is well known that most literary heroes have real prototypes. And this applies not only to the main characters, but also to secondary ones. The character of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" named Annushka, who became the indirect cause of the death of the chairman of the MASSOLIT Mikhail Berlioz, was also no exception. In 2006, the identity of the woman that Bulgakov brought out in this character became known to literary critics and historians.

The writer Mikhail Bulgakov did not invent Annushka, who spilled sunflower oil, because of which Berlioz was hit by a tram. This woman, about whom the poet Ivan Bezdomny said: "some kind of fool from Sadovaya," was a neighbor of the author of "The Master and Margarita."  Bulgakov and his wife Tatiana Lappa lived from 1921 to 1924 in the house number 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya, in communal apartment 50. The storm of the tenants there was Anna Goryacheva — a quarrelsome and mean woman.

The tenants of the apartment hated and feared a neighbor who could ruin anyone's life. Goryacheva was such a colorful personification of communal evil that the writer used her image in several works. The heroines copied from Annushka are in the "Theatrical Novel", "Moonshine Lake" and "The House of Elpit-rabkommune".

This excerpt from "The Master and Margarita" contains exhaustive information about this unpleasant lady. The author changed only the apartment number.

For a long time, the existence of Anna Goryacheva's "fool from the Garden" was in doubt. Some of Bulgakov's biographers believed that the neighbor with a bad character was an invention of a writer who loved hoaxes. But in 2006, unexpectedly for everyone, there was a descendant of Annushka. The great-grandson of Bulgakov's neighbor, a lawyer from Switzerland, contacted the museum of the writer.

He passed on the information known to him about his relative who once lived in Moscow. But most importantly, the man sent the museum a photo of Anna Goryacheva. This is the only surviving photograph of a woman, small and not in the best quality. Probably, sometime in the 20s of the last century it was made for some document. Modern digital technologies have made it possible to restore and enlarge photos.

Now we can see the neighbor who ruined the life of Mikhail Bulgakov and dozens of other people in all its glory. A portrait of Anna Goryacheva adorns the writer's museum in the famous "bad" apartment on Sadovaya. It can be seen on one of the walls of the communal kitchen — the favorite place of a professional brawler and gossip girl.