I'm a heavy reader but bad at reviews. All I can say is read this one. One of the best books I've ever read and that was clear to me before I finished it.
http://centerforfiction.org/awards/the-first-novel-prize/201...
There was lots and lots of "Woland is obviously not the devil, unlike everyone assumed" and much lofty discussion that I couldn't follow at all.
I'd strongly advise to leave that out, but read a more conventional commentary like the web site linked somewhere in this thread.
"It is extraordinary that Bulgakov managed to write a novel that is so full of humor and wit and lightness of tone when he was living through this period", writes Groskop. I guess she missed the point.
Luckily, the footnotes point out the tiny clues in the text that tell the whole story: that tenant had denounced all of his flatmates to the secret police so he could keep the whole place for himself.
“This was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. [...] A quarter of an hour after she left me, there came a knock at my window [...] Yes, and so in mid-January, at night, in the same coat but with the buttons torn off, I was huddled with cold in my little yard.”
Just like that, three months have vanished. Those missing buttons are the only indication of where he spent those lost months: it was customary to remove belts, shoelaces and buttons from those held for questioning by the secret police.
That's a wonderful example and no, they aren't. To a contemporary Soviet reader (or a modern one with a bit more context), it's crystal clear who the 'they' knocking on the window in the middle of the night are. In fact, such readers would have a pretty good idea where things are headed the moment the new 'friend' Mogarich appears and is described. And after the knock but before the buttons, our knowingly winking omniscient narrator suddenly disappears, stops being omniscient and refuses to tell us what happened! The buttons are a nice detail at the tail end on which to hang an explanatory footnote, perhaps, but not some hidden clue, left in there for readers to suddenly slap their forehead and say 'Aha!'.
It's a multilayered work and, stylistically, Bulgakov is often a circumspect narrator. But the repression bits are not some particularly deeply hidden layer at all. You're barely a few pages in when Ivan suggests Kant be sent to the Solovki, one of the OG Gulags. The very title of the first chapter is a reference to the paranoia and legitimate fears of the period.
"vanish one after the other as if by magic"
When the narrator suddenly feigns ignorance, is vague, evokes unclear, possibly supernatural forces at play - he's generally talking about things like the state terror or other entirely humanly-wrought events and matters.
When he talks about the actual supernatural - the devil and his retinue - he has no trouble at all following them around and describing their actions and their consequences precisely.