Sanka Pafnutkin

Sanka Pafnutkin emerges at the intersection of illness, conscription, and revolt: a young man called up for service who refuses a recruiting-office examination, overturns the proceedings, and flees with other recruits. His sudden act becomes the immediate cause of their flight toward the forest, though the account does not establish that he planned a political uprising or threw the bomb later associated with the disturbance.

Identity and Circumstances

In a conversation among young men, Sanka is reported to have an incurable disease that will eventually affect his spine. The speakers regard his condition as serious, and one says that Sanka had wanted to shoot himself. He is undergoing a medical examination at Ermolaï while being called up for military service. These circumstances place his personal crisis alongside the state’s attempt to classify and recruit him, without clarifying either the cause of his illness or what becomes of him medically.

The same conversation reports that Sanka said he would join the partisans to avenge the ills of society. This is the clearest evidence of a political intention attributed to him, but it is a reported declaration, not proof that he joined a partisan group. The contrast between his stated purpose and the later, rapidly unfolding escape matters: the recruits themselves cannot explain the disturbance as a coherent political action.

The Recruiting-Office Uprising

A participant later recounts that Sanka was at the recruiting office with the others, who were lined up awaiting the doctor’s examination. When his turn came, he refused to undress. The clerk initially addressed him politely and asked him to comply; Sanka answered that he would not expose himself to everyone and struck the clerk. He then overturned the office table, scattering its contents, including an inkstand and army lists. The sequence turns a refusal to undergo examination into a public disruption of the machinery of conscription.

The official Strese entered, denounced the disorder, and demanded to know who had led it. Sanka responded by telling his comrades to take their belongings because trouble was coming. He broke a window and ran outside; the narrator of the episode and one or two others followed, dressing as they fled. Officials pursued them, shouting. The recollection presents the flight as improvised and urgent rather than as a carefully organized plan.

Rumor, Responsibility, and Flight

The recruits’ later discussion separates Sanka’s actions from the bomb or grenade that was said to have been thrown during the disturbance. Asked who had thrown it, the speaker insists that he and the other recruits had not done so and speculates that a political outsider from Pazhinsk might have exploited the commotion. This is conjecture, not a confirmed account of the explosion’s authorship. The distinction prevents Sanka’s documented role in starting the disorder from being conflated with responsibility for the bomb.

With Strese’s men returning, one of the fugitives tells another that he, his companion, Sanka, and Goshka have only one place to go for now: the forest. He presents this as temporary concealment until the authorities calm down, after which they might consider returning. The passage thus ends not with Sanka’s capture, return, or confirmed enlistment among partisans, but with the expectation that he and his companions will seek refuge in the forest.

Narrative Role

Sanka’s refusal is the immediate spark for a chain of events whose political meaning remains uncertain. The recruiting office is a place of official examination and enlistment; his refusal, the overturned table, the broken window, and the ensuing flight briefly frustrate that process. Yet the participants’ bewilderment and the disputed bomb resist any simple heroic account of a planned revolt. Sanka’s reported wish to avenge social wrongs gives his defiance a political dimension, while the episode itself shows how quickly individual resistance becomes entangled with rumor, pursuit, and the practical need to escape.