Recognizing the face of the class enemy: reassessing the prospects of the Soviet experiment in the NEP literary contexts of Bulgakov's Heart of a dog and Mayakovsky's The bedbug

This comparative analysis focuses on Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog (1925) and Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bedbug (1929). After providing a brief historical and literary context for these two ideologically opposed authors, this thesis explores both works' representations of the 1920s intelligentsia specialist and his role as a behavioral model and catalyst in the revolutionary evolution of the mythic new Soviet man. Additionally, the fate of Bulgakov's newly constructed Soviet proletarian specimen Comrade Sharikov is considered in reference to that of the defrosted 1929 Prisypkin in Mayakovsky's vision of the scientifically regulated Soviet utopia of the future. Ultimately, this thesis aims to explain the surprisingly similar tone of ambivalent acceptance of the New Economic Policy (NEP) status quo that emerges in both of these works within the framework of Bulgakov's unaltered prerevolutionary perspective and Mayakovsky's growing disillusionment with the course of the Soviet state