The article critically analyzes the second edition (2023) of Marietta Chudakova’s book Biography of Mikhail Bulgakov (1988). This detailed biography of the writer consists of about a third of the diaries of his third wife Elena Bulgakova. At the same time, in the late 1990s Chudakova, based not on facts, but on her artifices, put forward a “postulate” according to which Elena Bulgakova was an agent of the NKVD. Chudakova spread this idea for two decades, until the end of her life. The article analyzes the truthfulness of this version and the reasons and circumstances for its appearance. In addition, the author wonders about the harmful role of speculations, which is sometimes expressed by “academic” scientists. Cynical and crude falsifications in a “post-truth” way are often fabricated based on “expert’s knowledge”, under the influence of which perverted ideas about cultural figures and the historical and cultural process as a whole are consolidated in the mass consciousness.
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