Local Council

The Local Council is the provincial institution where Chichikov seeks to register the serfs he has bought, including men already dead but still carried on official rolls. The transaction exposes the machinery that gives his fraud administrative form: an application and purchase list must pass through clerks, witnesses, and the Council President, while informal connections and discretionary treatment shape both its speed and its cost. The Council’s imposing façade promises institutional purity; inside, paperwork, personal favor, and casual corruption tell another story.

Setting and Institutional Character

The Council occupies the largest building on the town square, a chalk-white structure three stories high. Its exterior seems to advertise purity, but the interior immediately unsettles that impression: the corridors and rooms are dirty, and the narrator likens the goddess of justice to someone receiving visitors in a dressing gown. Officials peer from upper-floor windows and disappear when a superior enters. The building’s public grandeur and neglected working spaces make the difference between the appearance of administration and its everyday practice visible before Chichikov has even begun his business.

The Council President, Ivan Grigorievitch, is one of the provincial magnates whom Chichikov has cultivated during his calls on the town’s officials. The President had not risen above the rank of State Councillor, but Chichikov had addressed him as “Your Excellency,” a mistake that delighted him. The Council is therefore not encountered as a remote, impersonal authority: Chichikov approaches it through relationships he has already been building across the local administration.

Registration Procedure and Discretion

Chichikov first asks at a desk where business concerning serf indentures is handled. A young clerk responds by demanding to know the nature of the business, and the matter then passes to Ivan Antonovitch, who confirms that the desk deals with serf affairs. Chichikov presents his case as a transfer: he has purchased peasants from local landowners, brings the purchase list, and wants it registered. Some vendors are present; for the others, he says, he has powers of attorney. He also has his written application and asks whether the work can be completed that day because he wants to hurry.

Ivan Antonovitch refuses an immediate completion, saying that further proof is needed that no impediments exist. Chichikov responds by invoking his intimacy with the Council President, but the clerk makes clear that the President’s support alone is not the customary requirement. A clerk is then assigned to conduct Chichikov and Manilov to the President’s room. The exchange shows both the formal demands of registration and the limits of a single personal connection: access and influence help move the business forward, but the process still calls for additional officials, documentation, and witnesses.

At the President’s office, Manilov’s affectionate assistance becomes an awkward counterpoint to the business at hand. He supports Chichikov so energetically over even minor unevenness in the floor that Chichikov hurries to escape his arm. The room itself contains massive chairs, several thick books, and a large mirror. Behind that mirror, Sobakevitch has been seated out of sight. His sudden appearance brings together two landowners who sold souls to Chichikov in strict privacy, revealing that the supposedly discreet purchases have entered the very office that must formalize them.

The President congratulates Chichikov on the sales, having apparently just discussed them with Sobakevitch. Chichikov is embarrassed by the encounter, but the President is willing to act as attorney for Plushkin after reading a letter from him. He asks whether Chichikov wants the purchase deeds registered immediately or later. Chichikov insists on that day, explaining that he intends to leave town the next day; the President agrees to have the deeds completed but says Chichikov must remain in town. His orders initiate the next stage of the process rather than simply ending it.

Witnesses, Fees, and Official Favor

Sobakevitch reminds the President that witnesses must attend, at least two for each party. He proposes summoning the Public Prosecutor and the Inspector of the Medical Department, dismissing them as men with little to do; the President agrees and sends a clerk to fetch them. Chichikov also requests the accredited representative of a landowner with whom he has done business, identifying him as the son of Father Cyril and a clerk in the Council offices. The registration thus draws in officials and representatives not because they are central to the underlying bargain, but because the transaction must be witnessed and authenticated.

The summoned group includes the blinking Public Prosecutor, the Inspector of the Medical Department, other officials, and substitutes drawn from subordinate staff. Father Cyril and his son also arrive. Each witness signs with a list of titles and qualifications; their signatures range from printed letters and flowing handwriting to forms so oddly shaped that the narrator jokes they seem unknown to the Russian alphabet. Ivan Antonovitch handles the paperwork with considerable address. Once the indentures have been signed, docketed, and registered, Chichikov owes only a small amount in government percentage and publication fees. The President has ordered that only half the usual charges be collected from him, with the other half somehow debited to another applicant. Procedure is completed, but its financial application has been altered by official favor.

The formalities end in an invitation to celebrate the bargain. The President proposes that they “wet the bargain,” and Chichikov offers to provide champagne. The convivial close makes the Council’s administrative work part of a social network: officials who have authenticated the purchase are also companions at its celebration. The transaction acquires a public legal record and a friendly after-hours ritual at once.

Limits and Wider Significance

The Council’s procedures do not make the sale substantively honest. Its forms allow Chichikov to register purchases of dead serfs as transfers, while the officials’ attention is directed toward documents, powers of attorney, witnesses, signatures, and fees. The institution’s own working methods thereby give the scheme a usable bureaucratic shape. The episode’s comedy depends on the distance between what the paperwork certifies and what the purchased souls actually are.

Elsewhere in the novel, the Council’s bureaucratic logic reappears in a grotesquely extended form. At Colonel Koshkarev’s estate offices, Chichikov is told that his statement must pass from the Office for the Reception of Reports and Returns to the Estate Works Committee and through further administrative review before reaching the authorities. When he explains that he wants souls who are, so to speak, dead, the request is treated as something to be written into the statement. The contrast sharpens the Council episode: the Council’s registration is not free of delay or formal requirements, but there Chichikov’s dealings can be brought to completion through personal connections, available witnesses, and the President’s intervention.

The Council is also part of a wider information network whose consequences escape its walls. When the women who have been discussing Chichikov’s purchases and the alleged plan to abduct the Governor’s daughter inform the Public Prosecutor, the story spreads through the town in less than half an hour. Officials investigate Chichikov’s identity but learn little: his servants offer scant information, and their inquiries leave them uncertain who he is or whether he ought to be detained. Later, as legal claims and rumors gather around the Khanasarova inheritance, the authorities receive information about both the dead-soul purchases and Chichikov’s earlier customs dealings. The Council’s world of records and officials thus stands between private transactions and public judgment, but its paperwork cannot contain the rumors and revelations that eventually widen the case.