The desk, as well as the sofa, and the bookcase that stand in the corridor of the museum, are part of the furniture set from the editorial office of “Gudok” (“Signal”) — a newspaper of railway workers. Although these interior items were made in the 1940s, that is, they were created after the writer’s death, they are directly connected with Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov.

From 1923 to 1926, Bulgakov worked in the editorial office of the newspaper “Gudok”. At first, he was engaged in literary editing of letters from reporters, and soon received a position as a full-time writer of feuilletons.

During those years, Valentin Kataev, Ilya Ilf, Yury Olesha and Konstantin Paustovsky also worked at “Gudok”. There Ilya Ilf met his future close friend and co-author Yevgeny Petrov.

They all wrote feuilletons for the last, fourth page of the newspaper. The team of writers and poets who gathered under the roof of one editorial office became a unique phenomenon of Russian literature of that time.

“At ‘Gudok’ Bulgakov worked easily, in a carefree way, in those famous days when a company of sarcastic young men led by Ilf and Petrov were writing for the fourth page. The ‘fourth page’ terrified idlers, truants, bureaucrats and do-littles. It was merciless, ”the writer Konstantin Georgiyevich Paustovsky later recalled.

Many of his colleagues became Bulgakov’s friends. In the 1920s, the writer was friends with Valentin Kataev and Yury Olesha. His friendship with Ilya Ilf continued until Ilf’s death in 1937.

Bulgakov had a stable income and wrote feuilletons with ease, however, the work still exhausted him. On September 3, 1923, Bulgakov wrote in his diary,

He managed to leave the newspaper only in 1926 after the success of the play “The Day of the Turbins” at the Moscow Art Theater.