Captain Kopeikin’s petition to the Temporary Committee

Captain Kopeikin’s petition to the Temporary Committee is an embedded story told by the Postmaster to explain the identity of Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov. It recounts a wounded veteran’s attempt to obtain support from the state, only to meet procedural delay, a small interim payment, and eventual removal by the police. The Postmaster presents the tale as the answer to the crowd’s question about Chichikov, but its final turn makes the story’s role in the investigation as important as Kopeikin’s appeal: the Head of the Police Department notes that Chichikov has neither the missing arm nor the wooden leg that define the veteran in the account.

The Postmaster’s identification

The story begins as an explanation offered amid the provincial officials’ excitement over Chichikov’s identity. The Postmaster announces that he can say who Chichikov is, and identifies him as Captain Kopeikin. Asked who Kopeikin might be, he takes snuff and launches into the veteran’s history. The tale is therefore not an independently witnessed episode in the main action but the Postmaster’s attempt to make sense of the mystery surrounding Chichikov.

That framing matters to the episode’s outcome. The Postmaster does not merely recount a petition; he uses it as evidence for an identification. Yet the story’s detailed account of Kopeikin’s lost limbs supplies the very test that disproves the claim. The Head of the Police Department observes that Kopeikin lost an arm and a leg, whereas Chichikov has both. The Postmaster immediately recognizes his error and calls himself a fool. His later excuse—that English mechanical science could produce a wooden leg with a spring enabling its wearer to vanish—extends the comic failure rather than repairing it.

A veteran’s claim and the capital

In the Postmaster’s account, Kopeikin was wounded after fighting in the campaign of 1812. He had lost an arm and a leg, could not work with only his left arm, and received no state provision for wounded soldiers. He went first to his father, but his father could barely support himself. Kopeikin then decided to seek assistance in St. Petersburg, reasoning that he had risked his life and shed blood for his country.

The capital is presented through the contrast between its apparent abundance and Kopeikin’s meagre means. He arrives on a baggage wagon and sees grand streets, spires, bridges, and imposing buildings, but has only a few score coppers and a little silver. Rather than take an expensive lodging, he rents a room for one rouble a day at an inn where he receives cabbage soup and bread. Unable to sustain himself on that fare, he asks what course is open to him and is directed to a Temporary Commission, since the government is absent and the troops have not yet returned from war.

The Commission’s president lives in a luxurious house on Naberezhnaia Street, surrounded by glazed windows, mirrors, statues, servants, and polished fittings. Kopeikin reaches the reception room with his wooden leg and waits among other petitioners. After four hours, the president appears and asks each person what they want. Kopeikin explains that he has lost an arm and a leg in his country’s service and can no longer work; he asks for assistance, a gratuity, a pension, or whatever the regulations allow. The president acknowledges the visible evidence of his disability and tells him to return in a few days.

Delay, expectation, and confrontation

Kopeikin interprets the first appointment as a promise that his request is effectively settled. Believing that he has done his job, he spends freely: he orders food and wine, goes to the theatre, and briefly follows a young Englishwoman before deciding to wait until his pension is secured. By the time he returns to the Commission, he has spent about half his money. The second interview changes his expectation. The president says that no decision can be made without authorization from the Supreme Government, and that matters must wait until the Minister returns and the military authorities convene. He gives Kopeikin a small amount to live on in the interim, while assuring him that a man who served his country will not be overlooked.

The assistance does not meet what Kopeikin believes he is owed. He had expected a gratuity of a thousand roubles, not an instruction to wait, and the prospect of continued poverty sharpens his frustration. The Postmaster emphasizes the pressures surrounding that frustration: Kopeikin is a man in the prime of life, short of money, while the city’s restaurants and shops display foods he cannot afford. Rather than accept the Committee’s limited provision, he decides to return and demand what he wants.

At the third visit, Kopeikin says plainly that he wants cutlets, French wine, and the means to enjoy himself at the theatre. The president replies that the Commission cannot finance those pleasures and advises him to find his own resources while awaiting a decision. Kopeikin refuses to accept the distinction between temporary relief and the lifestyle he has begun to expect. He creates a disturbance, accuses the officials of neglecting their duties, and attacks the clerks. When a general arrives, the president orders that Kopeikin be removed and placed in gaol.

Removal and the story’s unresolved ending

A constable puts Kopeikin into a police wagon. Kopeikin takes some comfort in not having to pay for the ride and recalls the Commission’s instruction that he make his own means of enjoyment; the Postmaster leaves the implication unresolved. No one knows where Kopeikin goes after this removal. The narrator of the embedded tale says that he disappears into oblivion, then adds that less than two months later a band of robbers appears in the forests of Riazan, whose chieftain he is about to identify as Kopeikin.

The identification is interrupted before it can be completed. The Head of the Police Department points out the physical difference between Kopeikin and Chichikov, and no further explanation is needed. Thus the Postmaster’s narrative ends not with confirmation that the veteran became a robber, but with the collapse of his attempt to identify Chichikov. The story leaves Kopeikin’s later fate uncertain while exposing how the officials’ urgent search for an explanation can turn an elaborate anecdote into unreliable evidence.

Institutional and narrative significance

The petition episode sets personal need against administrative procedure. Kopeikin’s service and disability establish the grounds of his appeal, but the Committee defers action to authorities who are not yet available and offers only temporary help. His escalating demands and assault on the clerks bring the impasse to a forceful end: instead of receiving a settled pension, he is removed from the capital. The account presents both the institutional delay and Kopeikin’s refusal to live within the limits of the assistance offered, without resolving what became of him.

The episode also works as a comic misidentification. The Postmaster’s vivid, extended account gives the crowd a seemingly complete explanation of Chichikov, but one concrete discrepancy undoes it. Its embedded form makes the error visible: a story told to clarify the investigation becomes another sign of how little the officials know. Kopeikin’s fate remains open, while the Postmaster’s claim is decisively rejected.