When Science Interrupts History: New Soviet Man and Posthuman Science in Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog

Abstract

This article explores the cultural and conceptual place of humanity in Heart of a Dog, and brings it into line with the novel’s allegorical view of history. Sharik’s transformation allegorically depicts the changes in Russian society after the Bolshevik occupation of the country. Criticizing the rapid collapse of the old Russian tradition and the establishment of a new system, Bulgakov represents the absurd history of the Soviet Union in the novel. Along with the novel’s historical allusions to the New Soviet Man project, the eugenic experiment that sought to enhance human faculties via supposedly scientific ways, issues of humanity and subjectivity are discussed in the scientific advances posed in Heart of a Dog’s metamorphosis story. The novel’s account of how human-enhancing technology served its ideological function after the revolutionary change in Russian history is the author’s response to one of the most provocative and complex issues when the communist regime sought to appropriate the scientific method for political purposes. Bulgakov presents a strong political satire using post-humanistic imagination while contemplating the place of human and humanity at the time when science intervened in human life.