Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was a Russian playwright and novelist active during the first half of the 20th century.  His plays frequently criticized Stalin and his bureaucrats, but Stalin ironically enjoyed Bulgakov’s work and would not allow the writer to leave Russia, even as the Soviets censored his writing.  Bulgakov is most known for his novel The Master in Margarita, which went unpublished until 1966—twenty-six years after Bulgakov’s death—but added many idioms to the Russian language, most notably “manuscripts don’t burn.”