Character guide

Tikhon Ilitch

major

Also known as Ilitch, Tikhon, St. Peter Tikhon Ilitch, Tikon Ilitch, Tikhon Hitch

Tikhon Ilitch clawed his way from serfdom to prosperity, and now his wealth sits heavy on him — childless, aging, estranged from his brother Kuzma, and drinking mountain-ash cordial alone while trains roar past Durnovka. He feels his throat hollowing with age, kicks his dog Buyan in a fit of temper, and mutters curses at his brother's piety, caught between the peasant he was and the master he became. His refusal to share a single coin with Kuzma, and his schemes to marry off the shiftless Deniska, set the family's slow collision in motion.

Kuzma

major

Also known as Kuzma Ilitch, Kuzma Krasoff, Krasoff

Kuzma Krasoff, grey-haired from hunger and austere thinking, drifts through bazaars and eating-houses hunting for any clerkship that will buy him bread, his entire estate a chest and a ponderous umbrella. He calls himself an anarchist without being able to explain what one is, and his brother Tikhon — rich and childless — would not spare a copper to bury him. His return to Durnovka, and his wary reckoning with Tikhon's world, gives the novel its searching, self-questioning conscience.

Syery

supporting

Also known as V Syery

V Syery sits idle all winter, cold and hungry, regaling neighbours with the tale of two noble years spent at a priest's house near Eletz — a story everyone has heard and no one believes. At Rusanoff's he refuses to haul husks at the wrong hour, hurls his pitchfork into the straw, and walks off rather than be called a dog. His stubborn, theatrical dignity in the face of starvation captures the village's mixture of pride, idleness, and quiet rebellion.

Deniska

supporting

Deniska slouches through Tikhon's lecture about marriage and merchandise with a melancholy smile, mentally noting that rearing children sounds like rearing chickens or pigs. When Tikhon proposes the Bride, Deniska pretends not to know whom he means, needling the old man about the woman he once lived with. His lazy insolence and Tikhon's flustered anger expose the tangle of money, shame, and desire running through Durnovka's households.

Akim

supporting

Akim belongs to the small circle of villagers — with Menshoff and Syery — whose faces and habits Kuzma studies with a stranger's amazement, trying to read the peasant world he came from but no longer fits. He is part of the fabric of Durnovka's talk, labour, and rumour, the ordinary life that Kuzma both longs for and cannot enter. Through figures like him, the novel builds its dense portrait of a village where everyone knows everyone and no one is content.

Ivanushka

supporting

Ivanushka lost his entire family in the cholera year of '92, and though his railway-guard son lives five versts away, he prefers to beg, striding bareheaded through farmyards where even the sheep dogs leave him alone. He sits on the floor against the wall, mumbles blessings, and eats the Bride's potatoes with horny, unbending fingers, speaking of a Tsar made of gold in a clumsy, ancient language. His eerie, saintly vagrancy unsettles Kuzma and gives the novel one of its most haunting images of Russian endurance.

Yakoff

supporting

Also known as Yakoff Mikititch, Mikititch

Yakoff is a Durnovka peasant drawn into Tikhon Ilitch's orbit just as the village simmers toward rebellion over wages. He claims his son's wife tried to kill him with a cigarette stuffed with ground bones, yet his evasions and sudden silences hint at troubles he won't name. His twitchy disclosures and instant retreats into secrecy embody the distrust and rumor that make the manor's grip on thirty households so precarious.

Nastasya Petrovna

supporting

Also known as Petrovna

Nastasya Petrovna works in Tikhon Ilitch's household after autumn brought her disgrace and Rodka's death, her mother gone begging and the cottage locked. Taciturn and shy, she sleeps behind a partition near Kuzma, whose paternal tenderness toward her is twisted by Tikhon's coarse, suspicious insinuations. Her crushed dignity and the rumors that trail her expose how little the village cares for another's woe, and how readily innocence is read as guilt.

Rodka

minor

Also known as X Rodka

A villager, possibly a servant or laborer, with repeated mentions.

Odnodvorka

minor

A female character, possibly a peasant, mentioned in village context.

Makarka

minor

A minor character, likely a servant or peasant.

Old Balashkin

minor

Also known as Balashkin, Balaskhin

An elderly figure in the village, possibly a relative or neighbor.

The Farmhand Koshel

minor

Also known as Koshel

A farmhand working in the village, with a few appearances.

Menshoff

minor

A minor character, possibly a local resident.

Oska

minor

A young boy or servant, occasionally mentioned.

The Priest

minor

Also known as batiushka, Batiushka

Local clergy, appears in religious and community scenes.

Makar Ivanovitch

minor

Also known as Makar

A character with a few mentions, possibly a relative or acquaintance.

Consumptive Mitrofan

minor

Also known as Mitrofan

A sickly character, possibly a villager, with limited appearances.

Vaska

minor

A minor character, likely a servant or peasant.

The Bride

minor

Also known as Bride

A bride in a wedding scene, possibly symbolic or specific.

Donka the Goat

minor

Also known as The Goat, the Goat

A goat, possibly a pet or livestock, with a few mentions.

The Gipsy

minor

Also known as the Krasoffs, Krasoffs, The Gipsy

Nickname for a member of the Krasoff family, possibly a servant.

Shaggy Buyan

minor

Also known as Buyan

A dog or animal, possibly a pet, with a few mentions.

Duck-Headed Matty

minor

Also known as Duck-headed Motya, Motya

A character with a distinctive nickname, possibly a servant.

Grey Man

minor

Also known as the Grey Man

A mysterious figure, possibly symbolic or a stranger.

Zhikhareff

minor

A character, possibly a landowner or official, with a narrative presence.

Senka

minor

A minor character, likely a servant or child.

Klasha

minor

A female character, possibly a servant or family member.

Prince Bakhtin

minor

Also known as Bakhtin

A nobleman, possibly a landowner, with a brief appearance.

Little Russians

minor

Also known as the Little Russians

A group of people, possibly migrants or visitors, mentioned collectively.

Polozoff

minor

A minor character, possibly a merchant or official.

The Uhlan

minor

Also known as the Uhlan

A soldier, possibly a cavalryman, with a brief appearance.

The Postmaster

minor

Local postmaster, appears in a scene involving mail or communication.

Matorin

minor

A minor character, possibly a local resident.

Nil Afansaievitch

minor

A character with a few mentions, possibly an official or elder.

Motka

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or child.

September Komar

minor

Also known as Komar

A character with a seasonal nickname, possibly a peasant.

Akh

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or local.

Butylotchka

minor

A minor character, possibly a nickname for a person.

Khvostoff

minor

A minor character, possibly a landowner or official.

Rusanoff

minor

A minor character, possibly a neighbor or acquaintance.

Sakharoff

minor

Also known as Grumpy Sakharoff

A minor character, possibly a servant or worker.

Ilya Mironoff

minor

A minor character, possibly a peasant or worker.

Vystavkin

minor

A minor character, possibly a local resident.

Gatzuk

minor

A minor character, possibly a merchant or visitor.

Yegor

minor

A minor character, likely a servant or peasant.

Old Lukyan

minor

Also known as Lukyan

An elderly villager, possibly a relative or neighbor.

Akimka

minor

A minor character, possibly a child or servant.

Domashka

minor

A minor female character, possibly a servant.