Samosvitov

Samosvitov is a robust, popular official whose boldness and personal loyalty make him an unusually effective operator within the province’s corrupt administration. When Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov is imprisoned, he turns those qualities into a clandestine rescue operation: he offers to secure Chichikov’s freedom for thirty thousand roubles, retrieves incriminating material from Chichikov’s dispatch-box, and uses disguise and manipulated reports to outmaneuver the authorities. His intervention is daring and loyal, but it depends on the same bribery and procedural deception that sustain the system he exploits.

Character and Position

The narrator introduces Samosvitov as a robust, sensual man, reputed by his comrades to be a rake. He is popular, however, because his word, once given, is dependable. The account imagines that he might have excelled in the army: he has the nerve to storm a dangerous position and capture cannon under enemy fire. With no such military field available, his energy has largely gone into dissipation; in government service, it finds another outlet.

Samosvitov treats his superiors as a hostile battery to be breached at whatever weak point presents itself. This military metaphor defines his practical relationship to officialdom: he is not an advocate for lawful reform, but a resourceful adversary of authority from within its ranks. His combination of audacity, sociability, and loyalty makes him suited to recruit cooperation and turn routine administrative weaknesses into instruments of action.

Bargain with Chichikov

When Samosvitov enters Chichikov’s cell, he says that everyone has heard of the prisoner’s plight and offers to do his best on Chichikov’s behalf. He names a price of thirty thousand roubles, promising complete exoneration and compensation for lost time. The payment is to be divided among Samosvitov’s circle, the Governor-General’s staff, and the Governor-General’s secretary. The proposed rescue is therefore not a private favor outside the administration: it is a coordinated purchase of influence reaching into the offices responsible for Chichikov’s fate.

Chichikov points out that his effects, including his dispatch-box, have been sealed and taken for examination. Samosvitov assures him that they will be returned within an hour and proposes that they seal the bargain with a handshake. After leaving the cell, he acts on the promise. He reprimands the gendarmes guarding Chichikov’s possessions for insufficient vigilance, then tells the Superintendent that more guards are needed. Once he has taken charge of the dispatch-box, he removes every paper capable of compromising Chichikov, seals the remaining papers, and has the box delivered under the pretext that it contains clothing needed for the night. Chichikov receives his papers and money practically intact, along with warm clothes.

The recovered effects bring an immediate change in Chichikov’s hopes. He begins dreaming again of the theatre and a ballet girl after whom he has been dangling; his thoughts move away from a simple country life and back toward a town house and amusement. Samosvitov’s aid thus does more than protect the prisoner from evidence: it helps revive the very worldly appetites that Chichikov had begun, in confinement, to question.

Disguise and the Prisoner’s Substitution

Samosvitov’s audacity extends to the detention of a woman whose arrest could threaten the conspiracy. He first appears at the prison where she is held and passes as a smart young gendarme officer; the sentry salutes him and comes to attention. Samosvitov asks how long the man has been on duty and says that he will arrange for him to be relieved. The exchange gives him a way to return with a replacement and take over the post without raising suspicion.

He then dons a gendarme uniform, adds a false moustache and false whiskers, and makes for the gaol where Chichikov is confined. On the way he recruits a street woman and places her with two young associates. Returning to the prison holding the arrested woman, he presents himself as the relief sentry. Under cover of that assumed duty, he substitutes the recruited woman for the prisoner and has the original woman carried to a hiding place where she is unlikely to be found. The maneuver depends on impersonating the very authority charged with custody and on making an exchange appear to be an ordinary change of guard.

The Paper Campaign

While Samosvitov operates through uniform, access, and physical custody, Chichikov’s lawyer works through rumors and documents. The lawyer sets officials against one another by circulating claims that reports are being prepared against them: first the local Governor is told that the Public Prosecutor is drafting a damaging report; the Chief of Gendarmery is warned of a confidential official; and that official is then led to fear a still more confidential informer. The three become anxious enough to seek Samosvitov’s advice.

Reports multiply into a farcical dossier crowded with scandalous allegations, including claims about illegitimate children, paid mistresses, and unfaithful wives. The mass of competing insinuations is so tangled that no one can decide which story is most absurd. When the dossier reaches the Governor-General, it overwhelms him, and even his capable secretary struggles to summarize it. Samosvitov is not identified as the author of these reports—the lawyer directs the campaign—but he is the official whom the frightened authorities approach. His role connects the document-based operation to the influence network behind Chichikov’s attempted escape.

Loyalty, Risk, and Significance

Samosvitov’s loyalty has a clear limit in neither audacity nor consequence: he is willing to assume authority he does not possess, remove evidence, and falsify a prisoner’s identity to help the person whose cause he has taken up. The operation’s success is precarious. When Murazov later brings Chichikov his freedom on condition that he leave town immediately, he warns that he knows what a certain person has arranged on Chichikov’s behalf. If the conspiracy is discovered, that person may bring others down rather than face the consequences alone. The warning makes Samosvitov’s position legible even without a direct naming: his aid has exposed him and his associates to serious danger.

As a character, Samosvitov turns the metaphor of military assault into a method of civil service. His disguise exploits the sentry’s trust; his seizure of the dispatch-box turns custody into an opportunity to destroy the force of an investigation; and the bribery proposal makes bureaucratic influence available at a price. Yet his dependable word and popularity are not merely camouflage. They explain why he can command cooperation and why his intervention is framed as loyalty, even as its methods reveal an administration where official procedure is vulnerable to private bargains and calculated deception.