What is the name of the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov that satirizes Soviet bureaucracy?

The Mikhail Bulgakov work that satirizes Soviet bureaucracy is “The Heart of a Dog.”

Written in 1925, the work is technically a novella rather than a full-length novel. It follows Professor Filipp Preobrazhensky, a prominent Moscow surgeon who experiments on a stray dog named Sharik. After transplanting human organs into the animal, the professor produces Sharikov, an unstable human figure whose behavior exposes the absurdities and tensions of early Soviet society.

The satire targets more than office procedures. Sharikov gains employment with a government department, becomes connected to the apartment building’s housing committee, and uses revolutionary rhetoric to demand power and privileges. Professor Preobrazhensky’s elegant apartment becomes a battleground over communal living, authority, class, and the supposed creation of a “new Soviet man.”

Bulgakov’s story was suppressed in the Soviet Union and circulated privately before official publication there in 1987. It was published in English in 1968, decades before its Soviet release. Readers sometimes confuse it with “The Master and Margarita,” Bulgakov’s famous novel, but that is a separate work.