Pavel Ivanovitch Chichikov—Sobakevitch relationship

Pavel Ivanovitch Chichikov and Sobakevitch meet as buyer and seller in a transaction for deceased serfs, but their relationship extends beyond the private bargain: Sobakevitch later helps preserve its appearance before provincial officials by describing the dead men as living workers. The exchange is at once practical and grotesque. Chichikov needs the names for his scheme; Sobakevitch treats the sale as ordinary business, prices its supposed goods aggressively, and finally presents the deal as a favor to a friend.

The bargain begins

Sobakevitch listens to Chichikov’s approach with his head bent, his massive, usually immobile face giving little away. When Chichikov cautiously asks for a response, Sobakevitch cuts through the euphemism and identifies the subject plainly: Chichikov is after dead souls. He shows no surprise, treating the subject as matter-of-factly as a discussion of grain. Chichikov confirms the intention, then softens the expression, revealing his discomfort with stating the transaction directly even as he pursues it.

Sobakevitch immediately takes the role of seller. He says the souls are available and proposes one hundred roubles per head, a price so startling that Chichikov stares at him in disbelief. The disparity between the thing being sold—men who are dead—and the confident language of appraisal makes the conversation’s underlying absurdity impossible to miss. Sobakevitch nevertheless negotiates as if the value were self-evident, asking Chichikov to name his own price.

Haggling over the dead

Chichikov counters that the men exist only in idea and offers no more than two roubles per head. Sobakevitch resists the reduction by insisting on the individual worth of the supposedly dead workers. He recalls Michiev as exceptionally strong at heavy tools, with the strength of a horse in his shoulders, and points toward a portrait of Bagration as though an unrelated painted figure could corroborate his claim. The comic gesture sharpens the contrast between Chichikov’s effort to treat the souls as abstractions and Sobakevitch’s insistence on selling them as substantial, skilled laborers.

Sobakevitch lowers his demand to seventy-five roubles in assignats, casting the reduction as a friendly concession. Chichikov protests that the situation resembles a stage comedy and asks what a dead soul is worth or useful for. Sobakevitch continues to press the price, saying that a soul should not be valued like a boiled turnip and demanding at least three roubles. Chichikov refuses. The negotiation thus turns on two incompatible performances: Chichikov tries to minimize the worth of the purchase, while Sobakevitch invents practical value for men whose deaths make them useful to the scheme precisely as names on a list.

At last Sobakevitch says that he cannot refuse to please a friend, even though the bargain will mean a dead loss to him and Chichikov has shown little generosity. The language of friendship does not replace the commercial calculation; it becomes the final device for closing it. Sobakevitch asks whether a purchase deed should be drawn up to put everything in order. Chichikov agrees, and Sobakevitch proposes that they go into town for that purpose. The formal deed gives bureaucratic shape to a transaction whose central commodity is neither present nor alive.

A public defense of the sale

Later, in conversation with the President, Sobakevitch brings Chichikov’s purchases into the open. Rather than let the official ask what Chichikov has bought, he prompts the question himself and praises the lot of serfs. He names Michiev, his wheelwright, as one of the men sold. The President recognizes the name and recalls Michiev as a fine craftsman who once made him a low, four-wheeled carriage. He also remembers that Sobakevitch had said Michiev was dead.

Sobakevitch answers by distinguishing Michiev from his brother: the brother was dead, he claims, while Michiev himself is alive, healthy, and capable of making a carriage unavailable even in Moscow. He adds that Michiev is now bound to work for only one master. The explanation converts the sale of a dead serf into the transfer of a living employee, directly contradicting the premise on which Chichikov’s purchase depends. Sobakevitch does not merely keep quiet about the transaction; he supplies a confident alternative account that lets it pass as an ordinary change of ownership.

He expands that account beyond Michiev, naming Probka Stepan the carpenter, Milushkin the bricklayer, and Teliatnikov the bootmaker, and declaring that he sold the whole lot. When the President asks why he would part with skilled workers indispensable to a household, Sobakevitch says that he did so on a whim and calls the sale an act of folly. Hanging his head, he says that, though grey-haired, he has not yet learned wisdom. This show of regret supports the cover story while lending it the appearance of candid self-criticism.

Commercial intimacy and mutual advantage

The exchange gives their relationship a deliberately unstable character. In private, Chichikov and Sobakevitch know that they are bargaining over dead men; Sobakevitch’s unembarrassed opening and Chichikov’s evasive wording expose different ways of managing that knowledge. In public, Sobakevitch speaks of the same men as living craftsmen transferred to a new master. His account protects the fiction required by the purchase, although the President’s memory of Michiev’s death makes the contradiction visible.

Sobakevitch’s appeal to friendship at the point of agreement does not make the deal disinterested: he has opened with an extravagant price, defended it with invented descriptions of the workers’ usefulness, and continued haggling down to a smaller amount. Yet the friendly framing matters because it turns a sale between calculating parties into a favor supposedly done for Chichikov. Their association is therefore sustained by both calculation and concealment. Chichikov secures the purchase deed he needs; Sobakevitch secures payment while later presenting the transfer as a sale of valuable living labor. The relationship’s defining irony is that the men collaborate most effectively when the transaction’s truth is masked by the language of ordinary business, friendship, and household management.