The Governor-General’s address to the officials is the novel’s final substantial public scene: a private meeting becomes both a warning of extraordinary punishment for official wrongdoing and an appeal to serve the fatherland by resisting dishonesty. The speech begins with the prospect of military proceedings against a scandal whose concealed dealings have generated further abuses, then shifts from retribution to repentance and civic duty. Its exhortation remains unresolved: the manuscript breaks off in the middle of the address, leaving the appeal for reform suspended rather than completed.

Occasion and Announcement

An hour after the departure of the ruined Chichikov and the earlier departure of Murazov, the Governor-General announces that he is about to leave for St. Petersburg and wishes to meet the officials privately. Officials of every rank gather at his residence and wait with apprehension. When he enters, he appears composed and assured; the officials bow, and he acknowledges them with a slight inclination of his head.

He explains that a scandal has occurred in their midst and assumes that most of those present can identify it. The investigation, he says, has also uncovered other matters of comparable dishonor, implicating people he had previously believed honorable. He claims to know both the purpose behind the efforts to complicate the case and the identity of its ringleader, despite that person’s attempts to conceal his involvement. The address thus opens not as a general lecture but as a declaration that concealment has failed and that the Governor-General knows more than the assembled officials may have expected.

Proposed Proceedings and Threat of Punishment

The Governor-General argues that ordinary documentary procedure can no longer resolve the affair. Some necessary documents have been burned, while false and extraneous evidence and fabricated reports have further obscured the investigation. On that basis, he proposes a summary court-martial and hopes to obtain the Emperor’s authorization after laying out the circumstances. His proposal frames procedural disorder itself as a reason to move beyond civil proceedings.

He pauses for the officials’ opinion, but none responds. Their eyes are lowered, and many faces have turned pale. The silence is followed by a more pointed warning: a further matter, known only to those who carried it out, will not be presented through documents. Instead, the Governor-General says that he will act as plaintiff and petitioner and rely on ocular evidence. Someone in the crowd starts, alarming others already fearful of what he knows.

The proposed penalties are severe. The principal conspirators, he says, should lose rank and property, while the rest should be dismissed. He acknowledges that innocent people might suffer alongside the guilty, but presents this as the only available course in a disgraceful case demanding justice. He also recognizes that dismissed officials may be replaced by others who repeat the same abuses, that formerly respected people may lose their reputations, and that new appointees may continue to betray their responsibilities. Even so, he insists that he must set aside personal feeling and act as an instrument of retribution.

From Retribution to Appeal

After describing stern measures, the Governor-General introduces a different possibility: the man with power over the officials’ fates is himself making a request. If they grant it, he promises to forget, blot out, and pardon everything, and to intercede with the Throne on their behalf. The change in register turns the meeting from a sentence pronounced on subordinates into an appeal for their voluntary recognition of responsibility.

He does not claim that penalties or preventive measures can eradicate dishonesty. Its roots, he says, have spread too deeply; bribery has become a necessity and even a mainstay for some people who are not inherently venal, while many find it impossible to resist the prevailing current. At this critical moment, when the country needs people willing to save it, he appeals to everyone with a Russian heart and a sense of nobility. His question about whether any one person is more guilty than another widens the charge beyond a few conspirators and makes shared complicity part of the address’s moral argument.

The Governor-General includes himself in that reckoning. He suggests that his reserved manner and his haste in rebuffing people who wished to serve him may have contributed to the situation. Yet he also argues that subordinates should adapt themselves to the tone of a superior, since one director must coordinate many subordinates. His acknowledgment of possible personal fault therefore coexists with a defense of hierarchy: he admits that his conduct may have discouraged useful approaches but maintains that an orderly administration requires a single directing authority.

The Shadow Administration and National Duty

The address’s central diagnosis is that the country suffers not from an invasion by foreigners but from the actions of its own people. Alongside the lawful administration, the Governor-General says, a second administration has arisen, wielding greater power than the system established by law. This unofficial system has set its own conditions and fixed and publicized a tariff of prices. Bribery is therefore presented not as a collection of isolated transactions but as an organized structure operating beside—and overpowering—the legitimate one.

He argues that even the wisest ruler could do little more than limit the misconduct of venal officials by placing people of superior rectitude over them. Lasting remedies require each person to take a stand against dishonesty, just as people once took up arms during a time of upheaval. Speaking as a Russian bound to the officials by common blood, he calls on them to remember their obligations regardless of rank and to keep their country’s welfare before their own feelings. The speech’s intended transformation is from fear of punishment to a sense of civic responsibility: officials are asked to act not only because authority can punish them, but because the country’s future depends on their conduct.

Abrupt Ending and Unresolved Appeal

The Governor-General’s final appeal grows darker as he warns that the future looms dark, but the address does not reach a conclusion. The original manuscript ends abruptly while he is still speaking, and the surviving text marks that break as the end of the work. Consequently, his offers of pardon, proposed court-martial, and call to resist corruption remain intentions and appeals within an unfinished scene; the passage supplies no outcome for the meeting or confirmation that the officials reform.

That formal break shapes the scene’s significance. The address sets out an ambitious remedy—justice joined to personal responsibility and patriotic service—but the narrative cannot show whether the officials accept it or whether the shadow administration can be dismantled. Its final movement toward the duty of rescuing the fatherland is therefore also a suspended one: the speech names the crisis and demands action, then stops before either the response or the promised future can be narrated.