# Vasíli Ivánovitch — Short Fiction character guide

> Vasíli Ivánovitch in Short Fiction by Vladimir Korolenko.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0001-short-fiction

## Snapshot

A self-styled artist of talk, he spins the old official world into living anecdote while his own career quietly degrades around him.

## Who they are

Vasíli Ivánovitch belongs to the exiled, half-gentry world of men who once moved among inspectors, bailiffs, and provincial Jupiters, and who now survive on memory and storytelling. He prizes his cultivated tastes above every other advantage, yet his insatiable craving to expose the truth keeps costing him position and comfort. When offered a respectable post in Russia, he refuses it, unable to breathe anywhere but among the familiar miseries he loves with a strange love. His vivid, affectionate portraits of the pre-reform order give the story its backward-looking, elegiac texture.

## In the story

### [IV: A Voltairian of Siberia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_54_se/chapters/iv-a-voltairian-of-siberia)

The philosophical stationmaster who delays the narrator, discusses Proskuróf and the criminal company, and reflects on Siberian character and his own 'degradation.'

### [V: The Exterminator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_54_se/chapters/v-the-exterminator)

The stationmaster who teases Proskuróf about his haste and the murder case.

### [IX: The Doll](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_54_se/chapters/ix-the-doll)

The narrator's father, who confronts his son about the stolen doll but eventually relents after Tiburtsi's intervention.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_54_se/characters/vasili_ivanovitch
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_54_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_54_se/characters