Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is presented as both the seat of imperial power and a city of conspicuous abundance, where official magnificence and luxurious consumption stand in sharp contrast to the precarious circumstances of those who arrive seeking help or advancement. Captain Kopeikin encounters its grandeur while petitioning for support after the campaign of 1812; Chichikov later comes there to enter the Civil Service, carrying with him an ambition shaped by the city’s material rewards.

Capital and spectacle

Kopeikin arrives in Saint Petersburg after losing an arm and a leg in the campaign of 1812. With no provision made for wounded soldiers, and unable to work with only his left arm, he first visits his father, who can barely support himself. Kopeikin then goes to the capital to ask for assistance in return for his military service. The city appears to him as an extraordinary field of possibility: the Nevski Prospect and Gorokhovaia Street, tapering spires, and bridges that seem to have no visible support form a scene of metropolitan scale and splendor.

That spectacle is immediately tested against Kopeikin’s means. He cannot afford the richly furnished lodgings he sees around him and instead rents a room for a rouble a day at a tavern offering cabbage soup and bread. The capital seems to promise wealth everywhere, but his own purse contains only a few score coppers and some silver. Saint Petersburg’s magnificence is therefore not merely scenery: it makes visible the distance between the city’s abundance and the limited resources of a wounded veteran who has come to claim a debt owed by the state.

The petition and the machinery of authority

Kopeikin is directed to a Temporary Commission because the Government is away and the troops have not yet returned from the war. He sets out to see its President, shaving himself with his left hand to avoid paying a barber. The President’s residence, on Naberezhnaia Street, is described through its glazed windows, mirrors, statues, servants, and brass fittings. At the entrance, a grand Swiss footman stands between the petitioner and the official world he hopes will hear him.

Kopeikin waits four hours among a crowded reception room before the President arrives. When his turn comes, he explains that he has shed blood for his country, lost both an arm and a leg, and can no longer work; he asks whether the regulations permit a gratuity, pension, or other assistance. The President acknowledges his injuries and tells him to return in a few days. At first Kopeikin takes this as a hopeful answer and spends some of his remaining money on food and an evening at the theatre.

On his return, however, the President explains that nothing can be decided without the Supreme Government’s authority, which cannot be obtained until the Minister comes back. He advises Kopeikin to wait and gives him only a small interim payment. Kopeikin had expected immediate and substantial help, not a token sum and an indefinite delay. The episode sets the formal grandeur of Saint Petersburg beside the slow, conditional process through which a supplicant must pursue relief.

A city that alters expectations

The delay changes Kopeikin’s relation to the city. Initially, he has allowed himself the pleasures of its restaurants and theatre on the assumption that his petition will soon succeed. Once he learns that no decision is forthcoming, he must reckon with the cost of remaining in a place where the food and goods on display exceed his means. The contrast between luxurious offerings and his modest tavern meals sharpens the practical urgency of his situation: he has little money, no work he can perform, and no clear date for assistance.

Saint Petersburg thus operates in Kopeikin’s story as a place of attraction and exclusion at once. The capital’s streets and shops open before him a vision of comfortable living, while the commission’s response leaves him waiting for authority located elsewhere. The city supplies the scene of his appeal, but its magnificence does not itself secure the aid he seeks.

Chichikov’s arrival and ambitions

Saint Petersburg becomes a different kind of destination in Chichikov’s early life. After his father dies, leaving four worn waistcoats, two old frockcoats, and a small sum of money, Chichikov sells the family house and land for a thousand roubles. He moves to the capital with his one serf and the serf’s family, intending to establish a new household and enter the Civil Service. Where Kopeikin comes as a veteran seeking support, Chichikov arrives to begin a career.

His later preference for the Customs Department reflects the way Saint Petersburg’s material attractions have informed his ambitions. Chichikov has observed the foreign elegancies associated with Customs officials, including fine linen and gifts of china and cambric for relatives and women friends. He has also fixed on a particular French soap, available only near the frontier, for the whiteness and freshness it promises. The prospect of such goods helps explain why the Customs service becomes a long-standing goal rather than simply another government post.

The capital as an intersection of need and acquisition

The two episodes give Saint Petersburg distinct but related functions. For Kopeikin, its official buildings and commission embody the hope of public assistance, while its abundance makes his inability to live comfortably more acute. For Chichikov, it is the setting of a deliberate new start and a place associated with the refinements and possessions he wants to obtain through service. Neither account treats the capital as an abstract symbol alone: its streets, lodging, official reception rooms, shops, and career opportunities shape what each man can ask for and expect.

The city’s narrative significance lies in this contrast. It concentrates wealth, authority, and social advancement, yet access to those powers is uneven: Kopeikin waits on a decision he cannot control, while Chichikov seeks entry into a department whose privileges he has carefully studied. Saint Petersburg is at once a destination, a test of resources, and a measure of the ambitions its visitors bring with them.