Murazov

Murazov is the old man whose counsel reshapes the Prince’s response to the corruption scandal and wins Chichikov’s release. He does not excuse fraud: instead, he argues that justice must recognize human fallibility, address immediate suffering, and require both public honesty and private moral change. In the closing sequence, his influence extends from the Prince’s judgment to famine relief, an appeal to the Old Believers, and the terms under which Chichikov is allowed to leave town.

Identity and Position

Summoned into the Prince’s presence, Murazov enters a conversation already charged with anger. The Prince rebukes him for having defended and gone bail for Chichikov, whom he describes as involved in disgraceful business. Murazov initially says he does not understand the accusation, and the Prince expands the charge: leading officials, including the local Governor, have become implicated in the affair. The immediate question is whether Chichikov should be confined among thieves and rascals.

Murazov’s standing in this room rests on a reputation for honesty: the Prince calls him about the only honest man he knows. Yet Murazov uses that authority not to claim moral superiority, but to challenge the Prince’s stark division between honest men and rogues. His position is that wrongdoing calls for judgment, but the wrongdoer remains a human being whom one may not simply abandon.

Counsel on Justice and Human Fallibility

Murazov explains the Governor’s involvement by noting that the Governor is an heir under the will and therefore has a particular right to intervene. He also places the arrival of outsiders within the circumstances of a rich woman’s death without an exact, regular disposition of her property: fortune hunters gather wherever an inheritance is uncertain. This account does not establish innocence; it asks the Prince to see how self-interest and disorder produce entanglement.

When the Prince asks why people commit fraud, Murazov broadens the question from the accused officials to human conduct generally. Even those he calls rascals remain human beings, he says, and some of their errors arise from ignorance and stupidity rather than deliberate evil. People repeatedly make mistakes and cause unhappiness without intending harm. He presses the argument home by reminding the Prince that he too has committed a grave injustice. The Prince is taken aback, and the exchange turns the inquiry back upon the authority exercising judgment: public punishment cannot be separated from the judge’s own moral responsibility.

Murazov’s defense is therefore neither acquittal nor denial. He asks the Prince to acknowledge degrees of culpability and the possibility of error, while retaining the need to confront wrongdoing. His appeal treats compassion as a form of moral scrutiny: the Prince must see the accused as people, but also examine the injustices committed by those who govern them.

Relief Work and Public Responsibility

The conversation moves beyond the scandal when Murazov proposes direct action against famine. He will send corn to the localities where hunger is worst and personally attend to each person’s needs, explaining that he understands this work better than the officials. He also offers to speak with the Old Believers, reasoning that they may listen to an ordinary man more readily than to an official. He cannot guarantee that he will calm them, but believes a tchinovnik will fail because officials merely prepare reports, lose themselves among documents, and achieve nothing.

Murazov refuses payment for this work. He is ashamed to think of his own pocket while people are dying of hunger, and he has grain in his granaries as well as a new consignment ordered from Siberia before the coming summer. His proposal is at once material and personal: food is to reach the worst-affected places, and he himself will go to those in need rather than leave the response to paperwork.

The Prince accepts that Murazov’s service merits no further words of thanks, but asks whether he has the right to pass over the case and whether it would be just to let the offending officials go unpunished. Murazov advises against concealment. The Prince should speak to the officials as he has spoken to Murazov, openly and without the appearance of pride or inaccessibility. The address should be delivered as though it were a message from God, not merely a message of the Prince’s own. Murazov thus couples mercy toward individuals with transparency and accountability in office; compassion is not a reason to hide the case.

Chichikov’s Release and Warning

Murazov also recommends that Chichikov be ordered to leave town. The Prince agrees, directing that he depart as quickly as possible and go as far away as he can. He makes clear that Chichikov’s pardon is due to Murazov’s efforts. Murazov then carries the decision to the prisoner, whom he finds cheerfully eating a hearty dinner brought under hot covers from an excellent kitchen. The scene contrasts Chichikov’s comfortable meal with the moral danger Murazov sees in his conduct.

Murazov grants freedom only on the condition of immediate departure. He warns that he knows of the prisoner’s dealings with the bribe-takers and of the lawyer’s leading role in them. If the conspiracy comes to light, Murazov says, no one can save the lawyer; in his downfall he may drag others with him rather than face the consequences alone. The warning makes the pardon conditional and precarious: Chichikov is spared confinement, not cleared of the danger surrounding the bribery scheme.

Murazov also notices a change in Chichikov. When they last met, the prisoner had been in a better frame of mind; now he seems to have lost ground. Murazov urges him not to trifle with the matter and asks what wealth is worth when people dispute over it and cut one another’s throats. Temporal possessions, he argues, cannot be put on a sound foundation while a person ignores spiritual wealth. He redirects Chichikov from dead souls to his own living soul and urges him to return to the right path with God’s help.

Moral Influence and Ending

Murazov’s influence works through distinct but connected forms of action: he argues with the Prince, proposes relief that he will personally carry out, counsels openness about the officials’ case, and delivers both freedom and warning to Chichikov. He does not present mercy as exemption from consequence. Chichikov must leave; the bribery conspiracy remains dangerous; and moral renewal, not merely escape, is the standard Murazov sets before him.

After Murazov leaves, Chichikov is plunged in thought, and the gravity of life begins to loom large before him once more. That response gives Murazov’s final intervention its immediate consequence without confirming a lasting conversion. His role is to reopen the possibility of change: he obtains a reprieve, names the spiritual cost of acquisitive striving, and leaves Chichikov facing the difference between preserving worldly goods and recovering his living soul.