Yalta

Yalta, the Crimean resort city on the Black Sea, serves in The Master and Margarita as the improbable destination of Stepan Likhodeev's involuntary journey, a teleportation that shatters the normal order of the Variety Theatre and becomes a central piece of evidence for the supernatural forces at work in Moscow. The city is not a setting for action but a location of dislocation, a place where the impossible becomes fact, and its name becomes a byword for the inexplicable scandal that engulfs the theatre's administration.

The Teleportation and the First Telegram

Stepan Likhodeev, the director of the Variety Theatre, wakes from a terrible hangover in his apartment on Sadovaya Street to find the black magician Woland and his retinue already installed. After a brief, terrifying confrontation, Likhodeev loses consciousness. He comes to on a stone jetty, with the sea rocking at his feet, a brilliant blue sky above, and a white city on the mountains behind him. Kneeling before a stranger, he begs to know where he is and is told, "Well, it's Yalta." He then quietly gasps and sinks down, his head striking the warm stone, losing consciousness once more. The first news of this event arrives at the Variety Theatre as a super-lightning telegram from the Yalta criminal investigation, stating that at eleven thirty a brown-haired man in a nightshirt and trousers, shoeless and a mental case, had come to them giving the name Likhodeev, the director of the Variety. The telegram asks for confirmation of his identity.

The Chain of Telegrams and the Theatre's Crisis

The findirector, Grigory Danilovich Rimsky, and the administrator, Ivan Savelyevich Varenukha, are initially incredulous. They dismiss the first telegram as the work of an impostor or a madman. However, a second telegram arrives, begging them to believe that Likhodeev has been thrown to Yalta by Woland's hypnosis and urging them to wire the criminal investigation to confirm his identity. A third, a photogram, provides proof of Likhodeev's handwriting and signature, confirming his plea to wire urgently and to place a secret watch on Woland. Rimsky, after careful comparison, is forced to admit the handwriting is genuine. The situation becomes even more bewildering when Rimsky tries to call Yalta but finds the line is broken. He sends a telegram of his own, confirming the handwriting and stating that Likhodeev had spoken to him on the phone in Moscow around eleven thirty, a fact that makes the teleportation seem physically impossible. A final telegram from Yalta thanks them for the confirmation and asks for five hundred roubles to be sent urgently, promising to fly back to Moscow the next day. Rimsky, despite Varenukha's protests, sends the money, believing Likhodeev will have a hard time explaining his "little picnic."

The Aftermath and the Collapse of the Administration

The Yalta affair is the catalyst for the complete collapse of the Variety Theatre's administration. Rimsky, already shaken by the seance, is further terrorized by the disappearance of Varenukha, who is attacked and turned into a vampire after trying to deliver the telegrams. The next morning, the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin finds himself the senior member of the team, with the director, findirector, and administrator all vanished. The police investigation is baffled; the contract with Woland has disappeared, and no one can remember the magician's name with certainty. The line of people desiring tickets for the next performance swells to a half-mile, but the show is cancelled. Yalta, therefore, is not merely a place but a narrative device that triggers the unmasking of the supernatural, the disintegration of institutional order, and the flight of the terrified Rimsky, who escapes on the Leningrad express, leaving the theatre in chaos.