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After his involvement in the First World War, Bulgakov continued within the medical profession. In 1916, he served as a surgeon at Chernovtsy hospital before being appointed provincial physician for the Smolensk province. Bulgakov committed his life in those days to paper in his Country Doctor’s Notebook. In February 1918, Bulgakov returned to Kiev where he opened a private practice at his home. It was here back in Kiev that he experienced the Russian Civil War and witnessed ten consecutive coups.

Successive governments drafted Bulgakov into their service which must have been awkward for him as his two brothers were serving in the opposing army, with the Whites. In February 1919, Bulgakov was trasnferred to the Northern Caucasus as an army physician but he became almost fatally ill with typhus there. In the Caucasus, Bulgakov began working as a journalist, disallowed from leaving Russia for France or Germany because of his typhus. Bulgakov recalled how he began his career as a writer: “Once in 1919 when I was traveling at night by train I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story.” Use your apple discount codes to read his first work on your iPad.