Anfim Samdeviatov

Anfim Samdeviatov is a capable and well-connected provider whose assistance reaches into the private lives of Lara and Yurii. His horse, provisions, and ties to local suppliers make him useful in a landscape of scarcity; at the same time, that usefulness fuels Yurii’s suspicion and gives Lara a chance to distinguish material dependence from emotional attachment. Samdeviatov’s importance lies less in a private story of his own than in the practical power—and uneasy intimacy—of being the person others must ask for help.

Identity and Practical Influence

Samdeviatov is known to Yurii from the period when the doctor and his household lived in the area. He had been in and out of their house and helped the newcomers settle. Lara likewise acknowledges that he lent her a horse and had done a tremendous amount for her. His assistance is tangible rather than abstract: he can provide transport, bring supplies, and connect people to those who have food to sell.

The support also establishes an asymmetry. Lara says she is enormously in his debt, while Yurii recalls that Samdeviatov had once supplied his own household with everything it needed. Yurii had found accepting such help irksome even before Lara became part of the picture. What had been a practical discomfort now becomes emotionally charged: dependence on a resourceful benefactor is difficult for him to separate from questions of intimacy and obligation.

The Logs and Yurii’s Jealousy

The tension sharpens when Yurii lights a stove in Lara’s house using logs he has carried in from the kitchen. One bears the stamp K.D., which he recognizes as the mark for the Kulabish Division in Varykino. The detail identifies the wood’s source and suggests to him that Samdeviatov has been supplying Lara as he once supplied Yurii’s household. From that material clue, Yurii leaps to a personal conclusion: Samdeviatov’s help, he thinks, cannot be sheer goodness of heart, and there must be something between the two.

The scene makes the distinction between evidence and inference central. The stamped log supports the conclusion that Samdeviatov’s resources reach Lara; it does not establish a romance. Yet as the dry wood catches and the fire grows, Yurii’s jealousy hardens from suspicion into certainty. The fire’s visible transformation gives the scene its emotional shape: an ordinary object of fuel becomes, in his mind, apparent proof of a private relationship.

Lara’s Account of Their Relationship

When Yurii raises Samdeviatov’s character and asks about the terms on which Lara stands with him, Lara answers directly that there is nothing between them beyond friendship. She does not deny the scale of his assistance. Even if he gave her his weight in gold or his life, she says, it would not bring her closer to him. Her indebtedness is real, but it is not affection.

Lara describes Samdeviatov as resourceful, self-confident, and masterful, qualities she considers invaluable in practical matters but repellent in matters of feeling. She objects to the male complacency she associates with men of his kind and says that she has nothing in common with them. Her judgment is not merely a comparison between two possible suitors: she says that morally he reminds her of someone more repulsive, and that this other man is responsible for what she has become. The disclosure places her response in the history of damage she then describes—having been made to encounter life too early and through the distorted perspective of an older, self-assured exploiter. The passage thus separates Samdeviatov from that unnamed figure even as Lara explains why the resemblance troubles her.

Dependence, Varykino, and Departure

Later, faced with the prospect of going to Varykino in winter without food, strength, or hope, Yurii proposes that he and Lara accept the risks rather than remain where they are. His plan openly depends on Samdeviatov’s reach: they would ask him to lend them a horse and seek flour and potatoes on credit from the speculators who depend on him. Yurii also wants to negotiate the terms of that dependence, asking that Samdeviatov not visit immediately to claim the favor and instead wait until he needs his horse. The request for help is therefore inseparable from the lovers’ wish to be alone.

Yurii frames the journey as a last period together, conscious that death and separation seem close. His proposal turns an awkward debt into a chosen means of reaching Varykino, without making the underlying dependence disappear. Samdeviatov’s practical usefulness enables their plan, while their attempt to limit his visits shows the boundary they hope to preserve around their relationship.

After Lara and her daughter leave with Komarovsky, Samdeviatov visits Yurii at Varykino. He arrives by railway handcar, brings more vodka, and tells the doctor what has happened. He rebukes Yurii for failing to care properly for the horse and takes it back, declining to leave it for the additional three or four days Yurii had wanted. Yet he promises to return within the week and personally take Yurii away from Varykino for good. The episode closes Samdeviatov’s role as an active provider with another concrete offer of transport: even after the household and its relationships have broken apart, he remains the person who can arrange a way out.