This Europe: Anti-Stalinist satire reborn in theme park

Mikhail Bulgakov must be spinning in his grave. The Russian author's devotees are at loggerheads over a scheme to honour him in the area of Moscow where his most famous work, The Master and Margarita, is set.

On one side is Yury Luzhkov, Moscow's flamboyant Mayor, who seems to turn everything he touches into kitsch. He has his sights set on the quiet park known as Patriarch's Ponds, the heart of the residential area where Satan roamed in Bulgakov's surreal anti-Stalinist satire, tempting people to bizarre fates.

Mr Luzhkov envisages a kind of Master and Margarita theme park, with a statue of Bulgakov's Jesus Christ walking on the waters of the pond, and figures representing the Devil's coterie of "evil spirits" – including a mangy cat and a "shameless maid" wearing only an apron – suspended above its banks. A sculpture of an old-fashioned kerosene stove, which figures in the novel, will house the pond's pumping station.

Work has already begun, and City Hall says the park's "architectural ensemble" will be completed by May.

On the other side are the neighbourhood's residents, who have staged several protests to press their view that the best memorial to Bulgakov would be to leave the park as he knew and depicted it. "The planned sculpture garden is ugly beyond belief," says Dmitry Stoyanov, an architect. "They are taking one of the last places that reminds us of old Moscow and turning it into yet another monster."

Polls show another Luzhkov project – a towering bronze statue of Peter the Great in the Moscow river – is the most hated monument in Russia. Muscovites also ridicule the bears, village idiots and other figurines of Russian fairy-tale characters that Mr Luzhkov put in Manejnaya Square, near the Kremlin.

Only one element of Mr Luzhkov's plan for Patriarch's Ponds appears to please: a statue of Bulgakov, sitting on a broken bench and gazing thoughtfully at his beloved neighbourhood.