Kikichov participated in smuggling and was exposed

Chichikov’s rise and fall in the Customs Department is a compact demonstration of how public authority can be converted into private fortune. He first makes himself known as an almost superhumanly diligent and incorruptible inspector; once promotion gives him the power to direct searches, he turns that reputation and official authority to the service of a smuggling association. The contraband scheme brings him wealth in a year, but a quarrel with his accomplice leads to exposure, confiscation, and another forced beginning.

From career setback to customs service

After earlier reversals, Chichikov resolves to start his career anew, moving between low-ranking posts and enduring hardship without surrendering his fastidious habits or ambition for a respectable official life. He has long coveted the Customs Department, attracted by the fine goods its officers could obtain and by the elegant linen and French soap associated with service near the frontier. When he finally enters the department, he treats the appointment as the opening he has been waiting for.

His early performance is strikingly thorough. Within four weeks he has mastered customs procedure, can estimate the contents and weight of goods, and searches travelers with patient precision and an unruffled politeness. He examines clothing and luggage as well as the hidden spaces of carts and carriages. The effect is both comic and consequential: his searches make life difficult for smugglers, while his refusal to divert confiscated goods earns him a reputation for unusual rectitude. His superiors respond with promotion and, eventually, extensive authority to investigate suspected contraband.

Authority converted into opportunity

Chichikov’s public incorruptibility is not the end of his ambition but the means by which he enlarges his power. Before he has sufficient standing to profit substantially, he declines the smuggling association’s attempt to recruit him. Once he has obtained broad investigative authority, however, he signals that the time has come, negotiates terms, and brings a vulnerable fellow official into the arrangement. The contrast is central to the episode: the same official vigilance that had obstructed smugglers now enables their operation under his protection.

The association’s best-known venture sends Spanish sheep across the frontier with valuable Brabant lace concealed between their outer and inner fleeces. Chichikov is now head of the Customs Department, and the narrative stresses that the enterprise could not have succeeded without his participation. After three or four such crossings, he and his accomplice have acquired about 400,000 roubles each; some accounts put Chichikov’s share as high as half a million, attributing the difference to his greater industry. The fortune comes not from years of ordinary service but from a single year of fraud made possible by control over enforcement.

Quarrel, exposure, and punishment

The partnership breaks down in a quarrel. The account offers competing explanations: the officials may have fallen out during an argument, or their conflict may have involved a woman; rumors also describe an attempted assault that did not succeed. The narrator withholds certainty about these explanations, but the decisive fact is clear: one accomplice sends an anonymous document to the authorities. The quarrel turns a concealed arrangement into an investigation.

The officials are questioned, deprived of their property, and required to put their actions in writing. Chichikov cannot prevent the exposure of the smuggling operation, but he conceals some of his gains and uses personal persuasion, flattery, and occasional bribes to reduce the consequences. Unlike his accomplice, he escapes an actual criminal trial, though he is stripped of his capital and imported goods and forced out of office. The episode thus gives both sides of his resourcefulness: the same keen calculation that built the scheme helps him survive its collapse, but cannot preserve the fortune it created.

A reduced inventory and another beginning

Chichikov emerges with 10,000 roubles saved for an emergency, two dozen linen shirts, a small bachelor’s britchka, and his two servants, Selifan and Petrushka. Customs officials also set aside a few cakes of the soap he had prized for its effect on the complexion. These remnants sharply measure the distance between his recent riches and his present circumstances. He describes his losses to himself as suffering in the service of truth, a self-serving formulation that recasts the consequences of his own fraud as undeserved misfortune.

Retirement to a quiet provincial existence might seem the natural conclusion, but Chichikov does not withdraw. Angry at fate and dissatisfied with other people, he remains energetic and seeks further experience. His customs career therefore repeats the larger pattern of his life: a setback strips away the assets and status he has accumulated, yet does not extinguish the appetite that drives him to begin again. The smuggling episode is both a rise and a reversal, ending not in moral reform but in renewed readiness for another attempt.