Character guide

Ivan Ivanovitch

major

Also known as Ivan Ivanovitch Jeroshkin, Ivan

Ivan Ivanovitch is the neighbor everyone in Mirgorod calls a very fine fellow: curious, courteous, and given to snuff-box rituals and evening rambles after quail. His friendship with the bulky, taciturn Ivan Nikiforovitch rests on a delicate balance of opposites, and his thin skin and quick displeasure make him easy to wound. When a small offense lands between the two men, his wounded dignity becomes the engine of the whole quarrel.

Ivan Nikiforovitch

major

Also known as Ivan Nikiforovitch Dovgotchkun, Ivan Dovgotchkun, Nikiforovitch

Ivan Nikiforovitch is Ivan Ivanovitch's neighbor and closest friend, a man of few words and vast trousers who bathes to the neck with a samovar floating beside him. Where his friend is refined and easily ruffled, he is phlegmatic and unreadable, his small yellow eyes giving away nothing. That very opacity makes him dangerous once a trivial dispute begins, since no one can tell what he feels or how far he will take it.

Taras Bulba

major

Also known as Taras, old Bulba, Bulba, Old Taras

Taras Bulba is a Zaporozhian colonel of the old stamp, restless in peacetime and hungry for war, who pulls his cap over his brows and leads a hundred wagons out of the Setch against the Catholics. His wrath is total and his tenderness buried; he measures fatherhood in battles and honor, and he will not let insult or grief go unavenged. His raids and his terrible masses for the dead set the story's middle arc ablaze and make him both its engine and its conscience.

Akaki Akakievitch

major

Also known as Akaki, the little Akaki, Akakievitch

Akaki Akakievitch is a titular councillor in a Petersburg chancellery, a bald, silent man who bends over the same documents in the same spot while younger clerks shower him with paper snowflakes. His one plea, 'Do leave me alone! Why do you always want to disturb me at work?' carries a pathos that stops at least one young man cold. When he finally sets his heart on a new overcoat, the small hope transforms him, and the story's middle arc turns on how much a life can hinge on a garment.

Andrii

major

Also known as Lord Andrii, poor Andrii

Andrii arrives at Zaporozhe fresh from the seminary, and the Setch's chaotic morals and terrible punishments seize his imagination at once. He is the more impressionable brother, quick to feel, quick to be moved by beauty and by the fear of being buried alive beside a murdered man. His openness makes him beloved among the Cossacks and also makes him the one whose heart can be turned, setting up the choice that will divide the family.

Ostap

major

Also known as Ostap Bulba, Bulba

Ostap Bulba begins as a runaway schoolboy buried in theology and beatings, and emerges with the firmness that marks a true Cossack. He holds himself aloof from his fellows yet is first to join any daring venture, and neither prison nor blows can make him name a friend. Where Andrii feels everything, Ostap feels quietly and endures, and that steadiness makes him the son Taras can rely on as the war begins.

Major Kovaloff

major

Also known as Kovaloff, Poor Kovaloff, the Major

Kovaloff is a collegiate assessor who styles himself Major and measures his worth in rank, seals, and the admiring glances of ladies on the Nevsky Avenue. When his nose vanishes, his first instinct is not horror but social panic: he remembers he cannot flirt, cannot call on the Privy Councillor, cannot even walk the promenade without hiding behind a handkerchief. His frantic chase after the runaway nose — through police stations and droshky rides — sets the story's absurd machinery in motion.

Tchartkoff

major

Also known as Young Tchartkoff

Tchartkoff is a young artist scraping by in a cold Vasilievsky studio, with no candles, no money for his landlord, and a servant-model named Nikita who is always in the streets. He buys the mysterious portrait almost by accident, half-ashamed of the impulse, and carries it home through the twilight while envying the delicate tones of a sky he cannot afford to paint. The purchase marks the moment his grinding poverty begins to curdle into something stranger and more dangerous.

Thomas Brutus

major

Also known as the philosopher, Mr. Philosopher Thomas, Thomas, Brutus

Thomas Brutus is the philosopher of a wandering trio of seminary students, distinguished from the brooding theologian Khalava and the boyish rhetorician Gorobetz by his appetite for lying still, smoking, and dancing the tropak when drunk. He takes his beatings with philosophic calm and his misfortunes with a shrug, which makes him both comic and oddly prepared for the night the three lose their way on the steppe. When they stumble toward the farm of a witch, it is Thomas whose fatalism will be tested against something his philosophy never covered.

Afanasii Ivanovich Tovstogub

major

Also known as Afanasii Ivanovich

Afanasii Ivanovich lives in a small, stiflingly warm house with his wife Pulcheria Ivanovna, addressing her always as 'you' and never 'thou,' their affection concentrated entirely on each other since they have no children. He was once a brevet-major, once a young man in embroidered waistcoats who stole his bride from unwilling parents, but those days have dissolved into balcony reveries and polite curiosity about his visitors' lives. His kindness and his quiet, unremarkable contentment are the whole substance of the story's world — which is precisely what makes it fragile.

Pulcheria Ivanovna

major

Also known as Ivanovna

Pulcheria Ivanovna shares with her husband a life so entwined that the two seem to have one set of habits between them: the same love of heat, the same small rooms, the same unfailing courtesy of 'you.' She was once the bride Afanasii Ivanovich abducted against her parents' wishes, and her whole world has narrowed since then to the care of him and their house. Her fussing, her superstitions, and her quiet dread of losing him give the story its tender center and its eventual grief.

Levko Makohonenko

supporting

Also known as Levko

Levko is the headman's son, caught between a father who preens about dining with the Commissary and a sweetheart, Hanna, whose window he visits by moonlight. He is quick enough to turn the Commissary's note into a bargaining chip for his own wedding, and bold enough to wander the haunted shore where the drowned lady walks. His night among the spirits, and the gratitude of the maidens he helps, is what finally bends his father's vanity toward the marriage he wants.

Oxana

supporting

Also known as Beautiful Oxana

Oxana is the most courted girl in her Cossack village, and she knows it, teasing her admirers with glances she never means to honor. Her demand for the Tsaritsa's slippers is less a wish than a test of devotion, and it turns the blacksmith Vakoola's longing into a dare with cosmic stakes. Her vanity drives the story's central wager, making her both the prize and the provocation.

Blacksmith Vakoola

supporting

Also known as Vakoola

Vakoola is the village blacksmith, strong-armed, devout in his way, and hopelessly devoted to the beautiful Oxana, who toys with him while favoring no one. His frustration curdles into a reckless resolve when she demands the Tsaritsa's slippers, a task no sane man would attempt. His willingness to bargain with unholy powers sets the story's comic machinery in motion.

Solokha

supporting

Also known as most magnificent Solokha

Solokha is the widow of a Cossack and a practicing witch whose charms draw a steady parade of village dignitaries to her door. Her son Vakoola has no idea of her nocturnal trade, and her suitors, each convinced he is her only one, are the source of escalating farce. Her habit of hiding them in sacks when inconvenient guests arrive turns her cottage into the story's comic engine.

Yankel

supporting

Also known as tall Yankel

Yankel is a traveling merchant whose dealings with the Zaporozhian Cossacks have made him useful and distrusted in equal measure. When Taras needs to reach his imprisoned son inside a Polish-held city, Yankel is the only man with the contacts and nerve to attempt it, though he trembles at every risk. His haggling, fear, and grudging loyalty make him the story's unlikely bridge between two worlds that despise each other.

Koschevoi

supporting

Also known as the Koschevoi, the new Koschevoi

The Koschevoi leads the Zaporozhian camp not by birth but by the will of the kuréns, and his authority lasts only as long as his judgment holds. He speaks plainly, plans sieges with a practical eye, and knows that Cossack discipline is a fragile thing held together by shared hunger and shared glory. His decisions shape how the host fights, and his voice carries the weight of a free people's rough democracy.

Pythagoras Pythagoravitch Tchertokoutski

supporting

Also known as Tchertokoutski

Pythagoras Pythagoravitch is a gentleman of modest estate and immoderate self-regard, forever angling to appear grander than his means allow. His scheme to borrow a neighbor's calash to impress a gathering goes predictably awry, exposing the gap between his pretensions and his circumstances. His misadventure is a small, sharp portrait of provincial vanity and the absurd lengths men go to keep up appearances.

Andrei Petrovitch

supporting

Also known as Petrovitch

He is the voice of a diary that begins in calm observation and ends somewhere far stranger, tracking his own unraveling with unnerving composure. What begins as routine record-keeping becomes a struggle to hold self and world together, and the reader watches the ground give way beneath him. His pages matter because they make insanity feel gradual, logical, almost reasonable — until it isn't.

Ivan Jakovlevitch

supporting

Also known as Jakovlevitch, Ivan

He is a small tradesman in a bureaucratic city, a man of razors and routine who suddenly finds himself holding evidence he cannot account for. His terror is not guilt exactly but the dread of being blamed, of being crushed by forces far above his station. His discovery sets the whole absurd machinery of the nose story in motion, making him the reluctant hinge on which everything turns.

The General

supporting

He occupies the upper rungs of the Petersburg hierarchy, a man whose time and attention are guarded by protocol and self-importance. When a desperate subordinate tries to report a matter of urgent absurdity, the general's response is pure institutional reflex: irritation, dismissal, a reminder of who outranks whom. His refusal to listen exposes how rank insulates the powerful from reality itself.

The Artist

supporting

He is a man of thirty-five with the unmistakable bearing of an artist — careless dress, black curls, a face free of worldly fret. At the auction he interrupts the bidding not out of greed but recognition, insisting the portrait belongs to him. His tale of Kolomna and its ash-coloured inhabitants draws the room into a darker register, shifting the story from comic to uncanny.

The Colonel

supporting

He moves among officers and country gentlemen at a grand military dinner, one of the ranking men whose presence lends the gathering its weight. When the general shows off his bay mare, the colonel steps down to pat her neck, performing the easy camaraderie of command. He embodies the world of martial hospitality and masculine display that frames the campaign's opening.

The Constable

supporting

He belongs to the small-town apparatus of judge, police chief, and constable that governs B⸺ with more ceremony than efficiency. When the feud between Ivan Ivanovitch and Ivan Nikiforovitch spirals into petitions and courts, he is one of the functionaries expected to sort it out. His presence shows how petty disputes get absorbed into the slow, comic gears of provincial bureaucracy.

The Judge

supporting

Demyan Demyanovitch runs his courtroom as a social club: the secretary drones a verdict no one hears while the judge reminisces about a sick thrush and the delicacies at Zachar Prokofievitch's table. His snuffbox and his nose are in constant, contented conspiracy, and Ivan Ivanovitch's entrance delights him more than any docket. He embodies the languid, self-satisfied officialdom that lets a petty quarrel between two worthies harden into legend.

Anton Prokofievitch Pupopuz

supporting

Also known as Prokofievitch, Anton Prokofievitch

Anton Prokofievitch is the quarrel's busybody peacemaker, ready to perjure himself ten times an hour to coax the stubborn Ivan Nikiforovitch into company. He trades assurances as freely as tobacco-pouches, and when his deception lands — the guest arriving after he has loudly declared he would not — he nearly splits with laughter at the company's consternation. His meddling keeps the two Ivans circling each other, feeding the comedy of reconciliation that never quite arrives.

Hanna Petritchenka

supporting

Also known as Hanna

Hanna is the sweetheart at the center of May Night's youthful world, desired by Levko and pursued by the lecherous headman who masquerades under her name. When the youths mistake the headman for her and he curses them off, Levko realizes the old sinner's game and turns his guitar and friends toward revenge. Though she barely appears in the passage, her name is the spark that ignites the Cossack lads' rebellion against authority.

The Village Headman

supporting

The headman carries himself like a duke among free Cossacks, treating villagers as serfs and cajoling their sweethearts — including Hanna, whose name he borrows when caught in the dark. His hypocrisy enrages Levko, who rallies the youths to 'bait the headman' with disguises and songs, and the old sinner's own guest, the brandy-distiller, sits smoking in his house unaware. He is the target that turns private grievance into communal mischief.

The Drowned Girl

supporting

The drowned girl belongs to the haunted layer of May Night, a wronged spirit bound to the water where she perished. She approaches Levko not as a terror but as a petitioner, asking him to expose the witch-stepmother who tormented her, and in return she lends her uncanny power to his cause. Her plea gives the village pranks a moral weight, tying Levko's night of mischief to an older, sadder injustice.

The Fat Patzuck

supporting

Also known as Patzuck, This fat Patzuck

The fat Patzuck is one of Gogol's most grotesque and comic figures, a Cossack who eats dumplings without lifting a finger and whose bulk seems to mock the very idea of magic. He appears as an advisor to Vakoola in his quest, dispensing help from a body that is itself a kind of spectacle. His blend of the supernatural and the gluttonous gives the tale its distinctive flavor — the demonic rendered ridiculous, the helpful rendered hungry.

The Devil

supporting

Also known as Satan, Devil

He moves through the collection as a trickster who meddles in ordinary lives—snatching the moon, tempting the desperate, and inspiring mischief that no clerk can untangle. His power lies less in terror than in opportunism: he exploits vanity, greed, and love with equal delight. His early appearances set the comic and menacing tone for stories where the supernatural is never far from the bureaucratic or the domestic.

Basavriuk

supporting

Villagers count anyone acquainted with Basavriuk as an enemy of Christ, not a member of the human race. He appears at the edges of the story, offering treasure to a desperate labourer in exchange for something far dearer than coin. His quiet, knowing presence turns a village romance into a moral trap, and his bargain drives the tale toward its dark bargain.

Peter

supporting

Also known as whither Peter, Peter Feodorovitch

Peter the Orphan works for the Cossack Korzh, mocked for his grey gaberdine yet admired for what he might become in a red sash and a lambskin cap. His love for Korzh's daughter Pidorka is tender and reckless, and one stolen kiss brings the whip down on his back. When Basavriuk offers him gold, Peter's poverty and passion collide, making him the story's central wager between love and damnation.

Pidorka

supporting

Pidorka is the beauty of the village, her cheeks compared to poppies and her hair to a raven's wing, and she loves Peter the Orphan despite her father's whip and fury. When Peter vanishes after a mysterious night, she is left to grieve a man the village cannot explain. Her devotion and sorrow anchor the story's emotional stakes, making the demonic bargain feel less like a fable and more like a wound.

Kalenik

minor

Also known as the drunken Kalenik

A drunken Cossack who wanders into the wrong house at night.

The Lyakhs

minor

Also known as Lyakhs, the Poles, Poles

Polish nobles and soldiers who fight against the Cossacks.

Kukubenko

minor

Also known as raged Kukubenko

A brave Cossack leader who dies in battle against the Poles.

Osaul Tovkatch

minor

Also known as Tovkatch

A Cossack officer who brings news to Taras Bulba.

Bovdug

minor

Also known as The old Cossack Bovdug, Kasyan Bovdug

An old Cossack who gives advice before the final battle.

The Beautiful Pole

minor

A Polish noblewoman loved by Andrii, who betrays the Cossacks for her.

Terentiy Korzh

minor

Also known as Korzh

A wealthy Cossack who opposes his daughter's love for a poor blacksmith.

The Doctor

minor

A physician who examines the madman in Memoirs of a Madman.

Sophie

minor

The daughter of a general, loved by the mad clerk Poprishchin.

Madame Podtotchina

minor

Also known as Madame Alexandra Podtotchina, Alexandra Podtotchina

A woman suspected by Kovaloff of causing his nose to vanish.

The Servants

minor

Household staff in various stories, often comic figures.

Gapka

minor

A servant in the household of the two Ivans.

Agafya Fedosyevna

minor

A gossipy woman who fuels the quarrel between the two Ivans.

Mr. Notary

minor

A notary involved in the legal proceedings of the two Ivans.

Jew

minor

A Jewish merchant who appears briefly in Taras Bulba.

The Tatar

minor

A Tatar servant who brings news to the Cossack camp.

Father Kondrat

minor

Also known as Father

A priest who performs rites in the Viy story.

Thoma Grigorovitch

minor

Also known as the Dikanka Church Thoma Grigorovitch, Thoma

A church elder who tells stories in the Dikanka cycle.

The Stranger

minor

A mysterious figure who appears in St. John's Eve.

The Important Personage

minor

A general who rebukes Akaki and later feels remorse.

Ivan Pererépenko

minor

Also known as Pererépenko

A landowner who testifies in the quarrel between the two Ivans.

The Czarina

minor

Also known as Catherine, Kitty, our late Empress Catherine the Second

The Empress who gives Vakoola the slippers for Oxana.

Demid Popovitch

minor

Also known as Popovitch

A witty Cossack who taunts the enemy during the siege.

Borodaty

minor

A Cossack known for his beard, killed in battle.

Schilo

minor

Also known as Mosiy Schilo

A Cossack who escapes from Polish captivity.

Balaban

minor

A Cossack who dies heroically in the final battle.

Stepan Guska

minor

Also known as Stepan, Guska

A Cossack who is captured and executed by the Poles.

The Waiwode of Dubno

minor

Also known as Waiwode of Dubno, the Waiwode

The Polish governor of Dubno, father of the beautiful Pole.

The Officer

minor

A police officer who returns Kovaloff's nose to him.

A Maidservant

minor

A maid in the Tovstogub household who helps with chores.

Judge Demyan Demyanovitch

minor

Also known as Demyan Demyanovitch

A judge who handles the Ivans' lawsuit.

Cheptchicha

minor

A woman who appears in the quarrel narrative.

Mikita

minor

A Cossack mentioned in passing during the battle scenes.

Ivas

minor

A young Cossack who dies in battle.

Khlib

minor

A Cossack mentioned in the camp.

Spirid

minor

A Cossack who fights in the battle.

The Viy

minor

A monstrous creature summoned by the witch in the church.

Mardokhai

minor

A Jewish innkeeper in Taras Bulba.

Meggy

minor

A dog mentioned in the story of the two Ivans.

Fidel

minor

A dog belonging to Ivan Ivanovitch.

The Colonel's Wife

minor

The wife of a colonel in the quarrel story.

Lise

minor

A young woman in the Memoirs of a Madman.

The Master

minor

A landowner in Old-Fashioned Farmers.

Mawra

minor

Also known as the wretched Mawra

A servant in the Mantle story.

Petrovitch

minor

A tailor who makes Akaki's new overcoat.