Nikolay Ernestovich Radlov was a Leningrad artist and book illustrator with whom Bulgakov enjoyed a friendly relationship from the 1920s until his death in March 1940. Radlov was a master of cartoons and caricature, one of the most recognizable and popular artists of satirical magazines of the 20s: “Behemoth”, “Red Raven”, “Mukhomor” (Fly agaric), “Pushka” (Cannon), “Revizor” (Inspector), “Smekhach” (Сomedian) and others.

Bulgakov and Radlov had many things in common: they were almost the same age, witty, worldly, and always well-dressed. They met, most likely, in the mid-1920s, thanks to the writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. In 1926, Radlov illustrated a book of Bulgakov’s stories in the series “Humorous illustrated library of the magazine ‘Smekhach”.

In the winter of 1930, the Radlovs visited the Bulgakovs in Moscow. In memory of this meeting in the apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya the writer gave them his photograph with the inscription,

In 1937, Radlov moved to Moscow, taking up the positions of professor at the Moscow Art Institute and head of the graphic section of the Moscow Union of Artists.