Character guide

Peredonov

major

Also known as Varvara Peredonov, Varvara, Councillor Peredonov, General Peredonov

Peredonov moves through his dusty town as a man perpetually owed something—an inspector's post, a wife's dowry, respect from students he watches with loathing. His cousin Varvara dangles a princess's promise of promotion to keep him in line, while his mind quietly curdles: whispers become plots, schoolboys become enemies, and reality thins into a smoke of evil illusions. He is the novel's center of gravity, and through his eyes the whole town—its gossip, its pettiness, its small cruelties—takes on the color of his inner rot.

Sasha Pilnikov

major

Also known as Sasha, Pilnikov, Aleksandr Pilnikov, Mademoiselle Pilnikov

Sasha keeps to himself in a rented room, so modest his schoolmates tease him for being a girl, unaware how close the joke lands. When Peredonov's suspicion fastens on him, the town's gossip machine turns him into a scandal, and the fashionable Liudmilla rushes to his defense with tears, perfume, and a story of brotherly affection. He is the still point around which the novel's ugliest rumors and its one idyllic tenderness both swirl.

Pavel Volodin

supporting

Also known as Volodin, Pavel Vassilyevitch Volodin, Pavel Vassilyevitch, Vassilyevitch

Volodin trails after Peredonov through visits, teas, and long empty afternoons, absorbing his friend's contempt without quite noticing it. He belongs to the same small-town world of petty ambitions and idle talk, one of the many lesser Peredonovs the novel quietly indicts. His presence sharpens the portrait of Peredonov by contrast: where the teacher's pettiness is gigantic, Volodin's is merely comfortable.

Liudmilla

supporting

Also known as Liudmilla Platonovna, Liudmillotchka

Liudmilla dresses gaily, orders perfume from Petersburg, and arranges her sisters' errands so she can catch Sasha alone, telling herself it is sympathy for a lonely boy. Her dreams of him grow so habitual her sisters ask each morning how she dreamed of Sasha. She is the novel's dab of vermilion against Peredonov's grey—yet even her idyll gets smudged by the town's lies, and her charm is inseparable from her self-deception.

Varvara

supporting

Also known as Varvara Dmitrievna, Varvara Dmitrievna Maloshina, Varya, Vara

Varvara wants the marriage, and she wants the inspector's post she claims Princess Volchanskaya will arrange once the knot is tied—though the princess, inconveniently, is never quite findable. She listens to gossip about Sasha with apprehension, measuring rivals and rumors alike. Her scheming is small-scale and domestic, but it feeds directly into Peredonov's mounting suspicion that everyone, including her, is deceiving him.

Natalya Vershina

supporting

Also known as Natalya Afanasyevna Vershina, Vershina, Natalya

Vershina smokes black cigarettes in a black kerchief and speaks with malicious joy, telling Peredonov he has been fooled and savoring every word. She is one of the town's many agents of quiet cruelty, offering information that is less help than poison. Her whispered revelations deepen Peredonov's paranoia and show how the whole community participates in his unraveling.

Marta

supporting

Also known as Marta Stanislavovna

Marta moves through the drawing rooms and teas of the provincial town, one of the eligible young women whose futures are negotiated through gossip, matchmaking, and petty social maneuvering. Her position exposes how women in this world must navigate the predatory attention of men like Peredonov while maintaining the appearance of propriety. She matters because her presence sharpens the novel's portrait of a society where even courtship becomes a form of quiet violence.

Grushina

supporting

Also known as Marya Ossipovna Grushina, Marya Ossipovna, Marya

Grushina is the town's purveyor of gossip, a woman whose loose tongue and looser morals make her both entertaining and perilous to those around her. She trades in stories about deceived husbands and important personages, oblivious to the fact that her careless words can ruin reputations or inflame Peredonov's mounting paranoia. Her presence illustrates how information circulates in this suffocating town, where idle chatter becomes a weapon and no secret stays buried for long.

Valeria Routilov

supporting

Also known as Routilov, Valeria

Valeria Routilov belongs to the local gentry, part of a family whose daughters navigate the treacherous waters of courtship and reputation in a town that watches every move. Her cunning sets her apart, suggesting a young woman who understands that survival here requires strategy as much as charm. She contributes to the novel's atmosphere of veiled aggression, where even the most innocent social encounters carry an undercurrent of calculation and self-interest.

Nadezhda Adamenko

supporting

Also known as Nadezhda Vassilyevna Adamenko, Nadezhda Vassilyevna, Adamenko

Nadezhda is a young woman at the center of the town's marriage market, pursued by several men whose intentions range from sincere to sinister. Her situation exposes the limited options available to women in this world, where a suitor's rank and prospects matter more than affection, and where refusing the wrong man can carry social consequences. She matters because her story illuminates the quiet desperation beneath the town's polite surfaces, showing how courtship itself can become a trap.

Ardalyon

supporting

Also known as Ardalyon Borisitch, Borisitch, Ardasha

Ardalyon is a landowner and acquaintance of Peredonov, part of the loose network of men who gather for tea, cards, and idle talk in this stifling provincial town. His relationship with Peredonov exposes the emptiness of social bonds formed through habit rather than genuine connection, as he witnesses but rarely challenges his friend's growing instability. He matters because he represents the ordinary men who enable Peredonov's behavior through their passivity, their presence a reminder that evil flourishes when no one intervenes.

Olga Kokovkina

supporting

Also known as Olga Vassilyevna, Olga Vassilyevna Kokovkina, Kokovkina

Olga Kokovkina is a woman of some standing in the town, her respectability anchored in her role as a mother and her careful navigation of local social hierarchies. She represents the possibility of dignity within a corrupt environment, though her position also reveals how even the most upright must compromise to survive in a place where gossip and suspicion rule. She matters because she offers a counterpoint to the novel's pervasive pettiness, a figure whose quiet presence suggests that not everyone has surrendered to the town's spiritual rot.

Nikolai Khripatch

supporting

Also known as Nikolai Vlasyevitch, Nikolai Vlasyevitch Khripatch, Khripatch

Khripatch belongs to the small-town bureaucracy that orbits around Peredonov's school and the gossip networks of the district. As a father, he embodies the novel's quiet indictment of domestic life reduced to routine, obedience, and appearances. His presence helps establish the stifling provincial world whose tedium and cruelty Sologub renders as both comic and tragic.

The Headmaster

supporting

He presides over the school where Peredonov teaches, wielding his small power with the self-importance typical of the town's functionaries. His relationship to Peredonov is one of mutual suspicion and rank-consciousness, each man measuring the other by promotion and favour. He matters because he anchors the novel's satire of institutional life, showing how authority in this world is less about guidance than about vanity and fear.

Misha Koudryavtsev

supporting

Also known as Misha, Mishenka

Misha moves through the schoolboy world around Sasha, sharing in the games and affections that briefly relieve Peredonov's oppressive atmosphere. His youth and openness stand in contrast to the adults' corrosive gossip, though even he cannot fully escape the town's contamination. He matters because the Sasha-Liudmilla episode, in which he is a participant, offers the reader a glimpse of innocence before the novel's grey dust settles over it.

Prepolovenskaya

supporting

Also known as Efimovna Prepolovenskaya

Prepolovenskaya traffics in rumours, introductions, and the small social transactions that keep provincial life humming. Her interest in arranging matches, particularly around Peredonov's long-delayed engagement, gives her a stake in nearly every household's business. She matters because she embodies the town's collective nosiness, the force that transforms private hopes into public property and helps drive the plot's domestic tensions.

Aleksandr Veriga

supporting

Also known as Aleksandr Mikhailovitch Veriga, Veriga, Aleksandr

Veriga belongs to the district's minor gentry, moving among officials and teachers with the ease of inherited standing. His relative cultivation and composure set him apart from the petty functionaries around him, though he is not immune to the town's intrigues. He matters because he represents an alternative to Peredonov's squalid world, a reminder of what provincial life might be if it were not so thoroughly poisoned by malice and boredom.

Vladya

minor

Also known as Vladislav

A young boy, often seen with other children.

Darya

minor

Also known as Dashenka

A servant in the Peredonov household.

Skouchayev

minor

Also known as Yakov Anikyevitch Skouchayev, Yakov Anikyevitch

A local merchant and acquaintance of Peredonov.

Mourin

minor

A mysterious figure who haunts Peredonov's thoughts.

Klavdia

minor

Also known as Klavdiushka

A young woman, possibly a servant.

Ershova

minor

A local woman, possibly a servant.

Goudayevsky

minor

Also known as Nikolai Mikhailovitch Goudayevsky, Nikolai Mikhailovitch

The town notary.

Kramarenko

minor

Also known as Yosif Kramarenko, Yosif

A local man, possibly a tradesman.

Princess Volchanskaya

minor

Also known as The Princess, Princess

A noblewoman who visits the town.

Larissa

minor

A young woman, possibly a servant.

Julia Goudayevskaya

minor

Also known as Julia, Goudayevskaya

A young woman, daughter of the notary.

Antosha

minor

A young boy, possibly a student.

Madame Khripatch

minor

Also known as Khripatch

Wife of Nikolai Khripatch.

Machigin

minor

A local man, possibly a tradesman.

Bengalsky

minor

A local official or merchant.

Avinovitsky

minor

Also known as Aleksandr Alekseyevitch, Aleksandr Alekseyevitch Avinovitsky

A teacher at the local school.

Ekaterina Pilnikova

minor

Also known as Ekaterina Ivanovna Pilnikova, Ekaterina Ivanovna

Sasha Pilnikov's mother.

Ivan Kirillov

minor

Also known as Ivan Stepanovitch Kirillov, Kirillov

A local man, possibly a teacher.

The Headmaster's Wife

minor

Wife of the school headmaster.

Tishkov

minor

A local man, possibly a servant.

Minchukov

minor

Also known as Semyon Grigoryevitch, Semyon Grigoryevitch Minchukov

A local man, possibly a teacher.

Inspector Bogdanov

minor

Also known as Bogdanov, Sergey Potapovitch Bogdanov

A school inspector.

Pavloushka

minor

A young boy, possibly a student.

Cherepnin

minor

A local man, possibly a landowner.

Roubovsky

minor

Also known as Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolai Vadimovitch Roubovsky

A military officer stationed in town.

Prepolovensky

minor

Husband of Prepolovenskaya.

Falastov

minor

A local man, possibly a merchant.

Trepetov

minor

Also known as Georgiy Semenovitch Trepetov, Georgiy Semenovitch

A local official.

Madame Shteven

minor

A local woman, possibly a widow.

Skobotchkina

minor

A local woman, possibly a servant.

Vladimir Boultyakov

minor

Also known as Vladimir

A local man, possibly a student.

Avdeyev

minor

A local man, possibly a servant.

Kashtanova

minor

A local woman.

Sofya Efimovna

minor

Also known as Sofya

A local woman, possibly a servant.

Vitkevitch

minor

A local man, possibly a student.

Sourovtsev

minor

Also known as Evgeny Ivanovitch, Evgeny Ivanovitch Sourovtsev

A local man, possibly a teacher.

Nika

minor

A young boy, possibly a student.

Nartanovitch

minor

A local man, possibly a student.

Marfushka

minor

A servant girl.

Anna Mikhailovna

minor

A local woman, possibly a relative of a character.

Ignaty

minor

A local man, possibly a servant.