Собачье Сердце [Sobachye Serdtse / Heart of a Dog]

The first book edition of Bulgakov's suppressed satirical masterpiece, in its original illustrated wrappers by Yuri Annenkov. Published by YMCA-Press, Paris (printed by Beresniak), 1969. In Russian. 159 pages. Softcover, octavo.

The cover design, a crossed-out red heart on a cream ground, is the defining bibliographic feature of this first edition. The 1971 second YMCA edition repeated the crossed-heart motif but omitted the striking red colouring of the heart, making the coloured heart a reliable identifier of the 1969 first printing. The cover was designed by Iurii Annenkov (1889–1974), the Russian avant-garde artist and émigré who settled in France after 1921. The title page verso confirms the YMCA-Press Paris address (11, rue de la Montagne-Ste-Geneviève) and the 1969 date. A frontispiece photographic portrait of Bulgakov (14-V-1891 — 10-III-1940) faces the title page, with a credit noting the cover is the work of Yu. P. Annenkov.

The wrappers are in very good condition, clean and bright, with light age toning consistent with a softcover of this vintage. The spine is sound, with some minor professional stabilisation completed to reinforce the binding. Internally, the pages are clean and fresh, with no inscriptions or stamps noted aside from a previous owner's name (Russell C—) penned to the upper margin of the front inside cover.

This is the first separate book edition in Russian of Bulgakov's novella, originally written in 1925 and unpublishable in the Soviet Union until 1987. Prior to this edition, the Russian text had circulated only in clandestine samizdat copies and in two émigré journals in 1968, the Frankfurt journal Grani and the London magazine Student. The edition was prepared with the collaboration of Elena Bulgakova, and according to chief editor N. A. Struve, the manuscript had been stored in archives for 42 years before its unexpected discovery and release.

Written as a sharp satirical examination of one of the goals of the October Revolution, to create a new breed of man uncorrupted by the past, Heart of a Dog savages Soviet ideology and pseudoscientific thinking with characteristic Bulgakov wit. The author is best known in the West for The Master and Margarita. This first book edition of Heart of a Dog, with its famous Annenkov cover in its first-edition red-heart state, is an uncommon and desirable item in the literature of Russian dissidence and émigré publishing.