“The Story of Vlas the Lazy and Slothful” is the first separate edition of this children’s poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, published in 1927. The fifth page of the book shows Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov and his second wife Lyubov Yevgenyevna Belozerskaya as the parents of the protagonist, the lazy Vlas Progulkin.

The illustrations for the book were created by Natalia Ushakova, a painter, graphic artist and photographer, and the wife of the philologist Nikolai Lyamin.

“Our frequent guests were Nikolay Nikolaevich Lyamin and his wife, the artist Natalia Abramovna Ushakova. Throughout the eight-odd years of my marriage to M. A., these two were the closest of friends,” Belozerskaya wrote in her memoirs, “Oh, Honey of Memories.”

Bulgakov met the literary scholar Nikolay Lyamin in the very early 1920s. From then on, Lyamin’s apartment 66 at 12 Savelyevsky (now Pozharsky) lane, was the venue for meetings of friends of the “Prechistensky Circle” — a group that included philologists, philosophers, art critics and artists who lived in the neighborhood of Prechistenka street (many of them worked at the State Academy of Arts). It was there that Mikhail Afanasyevich first recited most of his works: “The White Guard” (in excerpts), “The Fatal Eggs”, “The Heart of a Dog”, “Zoyka’s Apartment”, “The Crimson Island”, “Molière”, and “The Consultant with a Hoof”, which served as the basis for the novel “The Master and Margarita”.

The image of the parents of Vlas the Slothful is not the only work that was inspired by the Bulgakov family. The artist Ushakova illustrated the handwritten edition of the humorous book “Mooka Maki” — about the pet cat Mooka, who lived in the writer’s apartment in Maly Lyovshinsky lane. The first kitten of Mooka was named Anshlag (full house) in honor of Mikhail Afanasyevich’s success in the theater. And Maka was Mikhail Bulgakov’s household nickname.