# Toporoff — Resurrection character guide

> Toporoff in Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0041-xxxviii

## Snapshot

A high-ranking church official whose path crosses the case, representing the institutional religion that blesses the state's machinery without questioning it.

## Who they are

Toporoff belongs to the clerical establishment that presides over oaths, sentences, and executions with the same unruffled assurance that it is doing something useful and important. His presence in the novel's world of courts and prisons embodies the alliance between official faith and official power that Nekhludoff gradually comes to see as hollow. He matters less as an individual than as the face of a system that sanctifies what Nekhludoff is learning to distrust.

## In the story

### [XXVII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/resurrection_se/chapters/xxvii)

Head of the Holy Synod; a morally insensitive bureaucrat who maintains religious superstition among the people while personally believing nothing.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/resurrection_se/characters/toporoff
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/resurrection_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/resurrection_se/characters