Governor-General(Prince)

The Governor-General (Prince) is the senior authority confronting the corruption and confusion that have gathered around Chichikov’s fraud. His final role is not simply to punish: as competing reports make ordinary civil procedure seem unusable, Murazov urges him to distinguish degrees of guilt, acknowledge his own errors, and appeal to the officials’ conscience. The Prince’s response moves from anger and despondency toward a public demand for accountability and service to the fatherland.

Authority Under Pressure

The Prince receives a dossier swollen by Samosvitov’s maneuvers. False intimations have turned the local Governor, the Chief of Gendarmery, and a confidential official against one another, until all three seek Samosvitov’s advice. Reports then multiply, mixing the dead-souls affair with a jumble of alleged private scandals. The resulting papers so confuse the Prince’s exceptionally capable secretary that he nearly loses his reason trying to summarize them; the Prince himself is flabbergasted.

The dossier arrives when the province is already beset by emergencies. Famine has struck one district, where officials distributing food have performed badly. Elsewhere, Old Believers have been stirred by a rumor that an Antichrist is buying the dead; while trying to seize him, they beat people they believe are not Antichrist’s followers. In a third district, peasants have risen against landowners and police superintendents after hearing that they would become landowners while the existing landowners returned to peasant status. One fiscal district refuses to pay taxes, prompting forcible measures. These overlapping crises leave the Prince despondent even before the old man who stood bail for Chichikov is admitted.

Confrontation with Murazov

The Prince greets Murazov angrily, condemning Chichikov as a man whose conduct is beneath even the lowest thief and reproaching Murazov for defending him and going bail. When Murazov says he does not understand the charge, the Prince points to the woman who impersonated the deceased and announces that he will have her interrogated in Murazov’s presence. He also stresses that the fraud has implicated leading officials, including the local Governor. Murazov answers that the Governor is an heir under the will and therefore has a right to intervene; the involvement of other fortune hunters, he argues, is a predictable consequence of a rich woman’s death without a precise, regular disposition of her property. The Prince remains troubled by the apparent scarcity of honest officials.

Murazov turns the discussion back on the Prince, accusing him of injustice in the case of the young Dierpiennikov. The young man had been convicted of treason under the Fundamental Laws, but Murazov distinguishes his culpability from that of the principal participant, Voron-Drianni: both received equal punishment despite unequal responsibility. The Prince is taken aback and asks for any further information, explaining that he has already recommended to Saint Petersburg that part of the sentence be remitted. Murazov does not claim to possess secret evidence. Instead, he argues that the Prince may have reached his conclusion too hastily and recalls that Dierpiennikov refused to admit a circumstance that might have helped him because doing so could have injured another person.

Judgment and Pardon

Murazov’s criticism is also a lesson in how authority should question the accused. Drawing on his own former service as a chief of gendarmery, he says that an investigator should consider a person’s past conduct and approach him calmly rather than condemn him at once. Alarm, he warns, can prevent a real confession; questioning a man as a friend might question a friend may elicit the truth without making him demand mitigation or resent the law. The distinction is not between guilt and innocence, but between judging a deed and treating every accused person as equally corrupt.

The Prince initially doubts that such an appeal could change venal and exacting officials, and fears it would only expose him to ridicule. Murazov counters that even baser people retain some sense of equity. If the officials consider him proud, ambitious, and inaccessible, the Prince should speak openly and let them see the truth; he should address them as though delivering not his own message but one from God. The Prince agrees to think over the advice and thanks Murazov. At Murazov’s suggestion, he also pardons Chichikov but orders him to leave town as quickly as possible and go as far away as he can. The Prince makes clear that the pardon is due to Murazov’s efforts.

The Address to the Officials

After Chichikov departs, the Prince summons officials of every rank and grade to a private meeting before his own departure for Saint Petersburg. They wait with trepidation and self-searching. The Prince enters with a proud bearing and assured step, greets them with a slight inclination of the head, and explains that a scandal in their midst has exposed further dishonorable affairs, implicating people he had believed honorable. He says he knows the purpose of those who have made the case almost impossible to resolve by ordinary means and knows the identity of the ringleader despite attempts to conceal his role.

The Prince proposes setting aside ordinary documentary procedure in favor of a court-martial, for which he will seek imperial authorization. He cites the destruction of necessary documents and the use of excessive false evidence and fictitious reports to make an already obscure inquiry still more confused. Though he speaks calmly, the prospect of this proceeding sends a shudder through the assembled officials. He presents the choice as a matter of duty rather than personal anger: he must put aside private feeling and act as an instrument of the retribution justice requires.

Bribery, Responsibility, and the Fatherland

The Prince’s threat of severe process is followed by an appeal. He offers to intercede with the Throne for the officials if they grant his request, while acknowledging that penalties and preventive measures cannot by themselves eradicate dishonesty whose roots have spread too deeply. Bribery, he says, has become a necessity and even a mainstay for some who are not naturally venal, while others find it impossible to swim against the current. His speech therefore treats corruption not only as the wrongdoing of individuals but as an entrenched system that sustains itself through dependence and habit.

He calls on anyone possessing a Russian heart and a spark of nobility to respond when the country is calling for saviors and every citizen must contribute and sacrifice. The Prince includes himself in the reckoning: he may bear the greatest blame for having been too reserved and for too hastily rejecting people who wished to serve him. Yet he also argues that subordinates must adapt to the tone of their superior, since one director must coordinate many subordinates. He then sets aside the contest over individual blame to name the larger danger: alongside the lawful administration, a second administration has arisen with greater power than the system established by law. His final appeal makes the crisis a test of public responsibility, not merely a prosecution of Chichikov or a contest over who will be punished.