# Artemy Filippovich Zemlianika — The Inspector General character guide

> Artemy Filippovich Zemlianika in The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Artemy Filippovich, Artemy, Zemlianika

**First appearance:** 0004-scene-i

## Snapshot

The smooth-tongued charities superintendent who feeds Khlestakov gossip about his colleagues, hoping to buy safety with other people's secrets.

## Who they are

Zemlianika runs the town's charitable institutions and presents himself as a model of enlightened administration, though his hospitals are as dubious as his morals. His instinct when threatened is to ingratiate and inform, denouncing the judge's affair and the schoolmaster's freethinking in the same breath. He shows how the town's officials will devour one another to survive a scare, and his eagerness to lend Khlestakov money reveals the bribe beneath the courtesy.

## Links

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