Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita' at Bard College | By John Castellucci - WSJ.com: When the Devil visits Moscow and discovers the majority of Russians don't believe in him, there is hell to pay. An editor who boasts that Soviet society is atheist slips beneath the wheels of a trolley and is decapitated. A poet who doubts the Devil's existence goes insane. The tenant of an apartment the Devil needs for Walpurgis Night is whisked away to Yalta. The audience at a performance of black magic erupts in a riot.