But what other style could fit a world where heaven was now, indeed, hell? What kind of diabolical sorcery could compare with the disappearance of millions by Stalin and his security apparatus? The novel’s galling play was to propose that, in a place like the U.S.S.R., justice was with the dark forces: the gospel according to the Devil.
The novel's structure was conceived from the demoralizing reality of Stalinist regime. The reality of the contemporary Moscow felt nightmarish and phantasmagorical while the story of Pontuis Pilate and Jesus Christ reads like a historical account.