The second half of Heart of a Dog centers on the gentleman professor and surgeon Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky’s conflicts with Sharikov, the freakish, vulgar dog-man he creates through a transplant experiment gone awry. During these conflicts, Philip isn’t just defending his own property and privilege: he’s also defending the old Russian aristocracy, which has gone from ruling the Russian people to being reviled by them in just a few years. After the Russian Revolution, when the communist Bolsheviks took power, elite scientists and professionals like Philip were increasingly viewed as an outdated relic of Russia’s imperial past. But when Heart of a Dog is set, in the mid-1920s, the Bolshevik government still tolerated specialists like Philip because it hadn’t yet trained loyal communists to replace them. While Bulgakov certainly does satirize Philip’s elitism and greed, he also shows how Philip leads a fulfilling, cultivated life because of them. Bulgakov’s equally exaggerated portrayal of Shvonder, the angry young communist charged with taking away Philip’s apartment, and Sharikov, the bumbling proletarian lowlife who gets unexpectedly rewarded with a government job, shows his skepticism about the working class’s competence and values. In fact, for Bulgakov, the difference between the cultivated elite and the foolish masses is similar to the difference between humans and dogs. Bulgakov defends Russia’s aristocracy—and social hierarchy in general—because he thinks that the elite have the traits needed to govern society, while the masses are incompetent, immoral, and irresponsible.
Throughout the novel, Bulgakov presents working-class people as brutish, vulgar, and morally inferior to the competent, sophisticated elite. He exaggerates and parodies these differences, but only to argue that they exist—and never to challenge them. In fact, virtually everything in Bulgakov’s Moscow is segregated by class. Working-class people eat rotten meat stew and horsemeat sausage in the government cafeteria, while Philip and his assistant Dr. Bormenthal dine lavishly on lobster, fish, and caviar prepared for them by Philip’s private cook, Darya Petrovna. Sharikov goes to the circus and plays the balalaika, while Philip goes to the ballet and hums classical songs and opera arias. And most importantly, working-class people live in cramped apartments where they have to eat in their bedrooms, while Philip has seven rooms all to himself. Even after the Russian Revolution, then, there’s a sharp division between the elite, who live opulently, and the masses, who live rudimentary, uncomfortable lives.
But Bulgakov suggests that class divisions are more than just economic and cultural: he thinks they’re also intellectual and moral. This is clearest of all in the differences and clashes between Sharikov and Philip. While Philip spends his days treating patients and exploring scientific mysteries, Sharikov spends his harassing women, stealing from Philip, and killing cats. Even though some of Philip’s science is dubious, Bulgakov suggests, his job is clearly more sophisticated, ethical, and valuable to the world than Sharikov’s. So is his day-to-day behavior. For instance, while Philip keeps a strict routine and maintains order in his apartment, Sharikov ruins his schedule and spits, swears, and smokes all over the apartment. Most disturbingly, Sharikov is incapable of thinking for himself. He constantly repeats communist slogans and policy ideas that he learned from Shvonder, and he presents them as sophisticated theories, even though he has no education and can’t even read a calendar. Philip eventually snaps and tells Sharikov the truth: he’s an inferior being “on the lowest rung of development.” To Philip, so is the rest of the proletariat.
Based on the class differences he portrays, Bulgakov argues that aristocratic social and economic hierarchies are actually beneficial for society. In his mind, the superior are meant to lead and the inferior are meant to follow. Before he becomes a man, Sharik the dog illustrates this principle perfectly. At the beginning (and very end) of the novel, Sharik and Philip live in blissful harmony. Sharik is deeply loyal and grateful to his new owner, who has saved him from freezing to death in the Moscow winter. In fact, he’s much happier when he accepts his position as Philip’s social inferior (as a dog) than when he insists on being Philip’s equal (as a man). Similarly, there is a whole group of workers in the novel, like Zina and Fyodor, who are loyal and happy for the same reason: they accept their status rather than fighting it. This is how Bulgakov imagines that society should work: the majority should accept their subservient role and follow the dictates of the elite, educated minority. Like Philip, Bulgakov suggests, this minority should use its privilege to pursue the extraordinary political, creative, and scientific goals that only it is capable of achieving. But without the privileges that hierarchy brings them—in Philip’s case, the privilege of a seven-room apartment and ample free time—the elite will not have the time, space, or resources to pursue excellence. Therefore, for Bulgakov, traditional social hierarchies actually ensure that everyone ends up where they belong, and society as a whole progresses as efficiently as possible.
Of course, Bulgakov’s views on the class system were practically the opposite of the Bolsheviks’. He thought they made a fatal error by trying to dissolve the Russian social hierarchy and give power to the proletariat. In Bulgakov’s mind, they replaced an effective aristocratic hierarchy—in which the most sophisticated and capable people ruled society—with an ineffective political one in which a new, corrupt, thoughtless elite trampled on everyone else. Restoring order to Russian society, Bulgakov suggests at the end of the novel, really means restoring hierarchy. In the final scene, after Philip turns Sharik back into a dog, Sharik lounges around on the rug, enjoying his life, while “the superior being,” Philip, sits in his chair, cuts up brains, and contemplates the mysteries of science. Inequality allows each to do what they do best.
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Social Class and Hierarchy Quotes in Heart of a Dog
Whoo-oo-oo-oo-hooh-hoo-oo! Oh, look at me, I am perishing in this gateway. The blizzard roars a prayer for the dying, and I howl with it. I am finished, finished. That bastard, in the dirty cap—the cook of the Normal Diet Cafeteria for employees of the People’s Central Economic Soviet—threw boiling water at me and scalded my left side. The scum, and he calls himself a proletarian! Lord, oh lord, how it hurts! My side is cooked to the bone. And now I howl and howl, but what’s the good of howling?
What harm did I do him? Would the People’s Economic Soviet get any poorer if I rooted in the garbage heap? The greedy brute!
“Sharik” she called him. … “Little Ball” … What kind of a “Sharik” is he, anyway? Sharik is somebody round, plump, silly, a son of aristocratic parents who gobbles oatmeal, and he is shaggy, lanky, tattered, skinny as a rail, a homeless mutt. But thanks for a kind word, anyway.
What’s that? Sausage? Sir, if you could see what this sausage is made of, you’d never come near that store. Better give it to me.
The dog gathered his last remnant of strength and crawled in a frenzy from under the gateway to the sidewalk. The blizzard clattered over his head like gunshots, and swept up the huge letters on a canvas placard, IS REJUVENATION POSSIBLE?
Naturally, it’s possible. The smell rejuvenated me, lifted me from my belly, contracted my stomach, empty for the last two days, with fiery spasms. The smell that conquered the hospital smells, the heavenly smell of chopped horsemeat with garlic and pepper.
What an obscene place, the dog thought, but how pleasant! And what the devil did he need me for? Will he really let me stay here? Such an eccentric! Why, he need only blink an eye and he could have the finest dog in town! But maybe I am handsome? I guess I’m lucky!
“Eat in the bedroom,” he said in a slightly choked voice, “read in the examination room, dress in the waiting room, operate in the maid’s room, and examine patients in the dining room.”
“You are a hater of the proletariat!” the woman declared proudly.
“You are right, I do not like the proletariat,” Philip Philippovich agreed sadly and pressed a button. A bell rang somewhere within, and the door into the corridor swung open.
“One fine day in March of 1917, all the galoshes disappeared, including two pair of mine. Also three canes, a coat, and the porter’s samovar. And from that day on the stand for galoshes ceased to exist. […] I ask you why, when this whole business started, did everyone begin to go up the marble staircase in muddy galoshes and felt boots? […] Why was the rug removed from the front stairway? Does Karl Marx forbid rugs on the stairs? Does he say anywhere in his writings that the second entrance of the Kalabukhov house on Prechistenka must be boarded up, and people must go around the house and enter through the backyard? Who needs this? Why can’t the proletarian leave his galoshes downstairs instead of tracking up the marble?”
“It’s the general rack and ruin, Philip Philippovich. Economic collapse.”
“No,” Philip Philippovich argued with utmost assurance. “No. You ought to be the first, Ivan Arnoldovich, to refrain from using these terms. They are a mirage, a puff of smoke, a fiction.” Philip Philippovich spread out his short fingers, and two shadows like turtles stirred on the tablecloth. “What is this general ruin of yours? An old crone with a crutch? A witch who has knocked out all the windows and extinguished all the lights? Why, there’s no such thing! It doesn’t exist. What do you mean by these words?”
But suddenly his angry thoughts broke off. For some reason, a vivid fragment of his earliest youth rose in his memory: a vast, sunny courtyard near the Preobrazhensky Turnpike, splinters of sun in bottles, cracked bricks, free, stray dogs.
Oh, no, why lie to yourself, you’ll never leave here, you’ll never go back to freedom, the dog spoke to himself in anguish, sniffing. I am a gentleman’s dog, an intellectual creature, I’ve tasted a better life. And what is freedom, anyway? Nothing, a puff of smoke, a mirage, a fiction… A sick dream of those wretched democrats…
“The devil take it. He didn’t die. Oh, well, he’ll die anyway. Ah, Doctor Bormenthal, I’m sorry for the mutt. He was sly, but affectionate.”
“Why are you nagging all the time? … Don’t spit. Don’t smoke. Don’t go here. Don’t go there … What sort of business is it anyway? Just like in the streetcar. Why’nt you let me live? And as for ‘dad,’ you’ve no call to … Did I ask you for the operation?” The man barked indignantly. “A fine thing! Grabbed an animal beast, slashed up his head with a knife, and now they’re squeamish. Maybe I never gave you no permission to operate? And likewise (the man rolled up his eyes to the ceiling, as though trying to remember a certain formula), and likewise my relatives. I have the right to sue you, maybe.”
“You are on the lowest rung of development,” Philip Philippovich shouted still more loudly. “You are a creature just in the process of formation, with a feeble intellect. All your actions are the actions of an animal. Yet you permit yourself to speak with utterly insufferable impudence in the presence of two people with a university education—to offer advice on a cosmic scale and of equally cosmic stupidity on how to divide everything … And right after gobbling up a boxful of toothpowder too…”
“Doctor, would you please take him to the circus? But, for God’s sake, take a look at the program first—make sure they have no cats.”
“How do they let such trash into the circus?” Sharikov wondered morosely, shaking his head.
“Philip Philippovich, I say to you…” Bormenthal exclaimed passionately. He rushed to the door leading into the hallway, closed it more firmly, and returned, continuing in a whisper, “it is the only solution. Of course, I would not presume to advise you, but, Philip Philippovich, look at yourself, you are utterly worn out, it is impossible to go on working under such conditions!”
“Absolutely impossible,” Philip Philippovich agreed, sighing.
“Look at that business with the cats! A man with the heart of a dog.”
“Oh, no, no,” Philip Philippovich sang out. “You are mistaken, Doctor. In heaven’s name, don’t malign the dog. […] The whole horror, you see, is that his heart is no longer a dog’s heart but a human one. And the vilest you could find!”
The document read: “This will certify that the bearer of same, Comrade Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, is the director of the sub-section for purging the city of Moscow of stray animals (cats, etc.) of the Moscow Communal Property Administration.”
Philip Philippovich shrugged his shoulders.
“Science has not yet discovered methods of transforming animals into humans. I tried, but unsuccessfully, as you can see. He spoke for a while, and then began to revert to his original state. Atavism.”
“No indecent language here!” the dog barked suddenly from his chair and stood up.
The superior being, the dignified benefactor of dogs, sat in his armchair, and the dog Sharik lay sprawled on the rug near the leather sofa. […]
I’ve been so lucky, so lucky, he thought, dozing off. Just incredibly lucky. I’m set for life in this apartment. I am absolutely convinced that there was something shady in my ancestry. There must have been a Newfoundland. She was a whore, my grandmother, may she rest in the Heavenly Kingdom, the old lady. True, they’ve slashed up my whole head for some strange reason, but it’ll heal before my wedding. It’s not worth mentioning.
“Toward the sacred banks of the Nile…”
