Prokhor Kharitonovich Prituliev

Prokhor Kharitonovich Prituliev, the cashier among the labor conscripts, is introduced through an abrupt chain of displacement: detained in Petrograd because he carried a ration book issued to nonworkers, he is swept into a transport whose destination changes, cut off from his wife, and eventually placed on a train with other conscripts. His later disappearance is part of a collective escape whose circumstances remain unclear. Through Prituliev, the novel makes the consequences of arbitrary administration legible in the interrupted particulars of one man’s life.

Identity and Background

Prituliev is one of several labor conscripts in car fourteen, guarded by Private Voroniuk. The narrative singles out three men among the car’s occupants: Prituliev, a former cashier in a government liquor store in Petrograd; Vasia Brykin, a sixteen-year-old ironmonger’s apprentice; and Kostoied-Amursky, an older revolutionary co-operativist who has experienced forced-labor camps under both the old and new regimes. Prituliev’s familiar designation in the car is simply the cashier, a job title that becomes the principal label by which the group and the reader know him.

His origins connect him to the others’ route. Prituliev comes from Malmyzh, in the Viatka government, the same part of the country as Vasia’s home. As the conscripts gradually get to know one another, they discover that the train will pass through their native villages. The possibility of passing close to home sharpens the contrast between familiar geography and their lack of control over where they are being taken.

Arrest and Forced Transport

The account of Prituliev’s arrest begins with an ordinary walk through Petrograd. One autumn day, as he goes down the Nevsky, he is caught in a militia roundup at the corner of Liteiny Street. Asked to show his papers, he is found to possess a fourth-class ration book, issued to nonworkers and unusable for obtaining purchases. That classification is enough to detain him alongside others in the same position.

The arrested group is escorted to barracks and is initially meant to be sent to dig trenches on the Archangel front, following an earlier group. Instead, the unit is diverted and sent east through Moscow. The changed route turns an administrative detention into a prolonged separation from home, without any indication that Prituliev has chosen the journey or knows where it will lead.

Prituliev has a wife in Luga, where he worked before the war. When she hears indirectly of his misfortune, she travels to Vologda, the junction for Archangel, hoping to find him and secure his release. But the transport has not gone there. Her search fails, and she loses track of him. The account stresses not a reunion or resolution, but the way a redirected convoy makes even a determined attempt to locate a detained person useless.

Pelagia and the Convoy

In Petrograd, Prituliev has also been living with Pelagia Nilovna Tiagunova. At the time of his arrest, he has just said goodbye to her because he is setting out in another direction for an appointment. From Liteiny Street, he can still see her back receding into the crowd. The detail gives his arrest an immediate personal setting: the roundup interrupts a separation that was meant to be temporary, before either of them can anticipate the journey that follows.

Pelagia later joins the convoy, having volunteered to accompany Prituliev. Her presence sets her apart from the other people named in the labor train episode: she is not described as having been detained with him, but as making the choice to follow. The contrast between his involuntary removal and her voluntary accompaniment defines their connection in the evidence without resolving what happens to them after the escape.

Escape and Uncertain Fate

The next morning, Antonina reports that Prituliev and Vasia have escaped, as have Tiagunova and Ogryzkova; Voroniuk, the guard, has also run away. She emphasizes that nobody knows whether the prisoners vanished together or separately, or in what order. Even the possibility that one of the women may have killed the other is raised only as speculation, not established as fact. Prituliev’s escape is therefore one part of a larger, unresolved disappearance rather than a fully narrated individual exploit.

The report also reveals the confusion left behind. The escort commander demands that the train not move until the prisoners have been recovered, while the commanding officer insists that he is carrying replacements to the front and will not wait. They turn to Kostoied, blaming him for failing to restrain the escape, but he rejects the assumption that a prisoner should be responsible for guarding a soldier. The dispute underscores the breakdown of authority around the escape: the train’s officials argue over responsibility, while Prituliev and the others are already gone. The narrative gives no later confirmation of where Prituliev goes or whether he reaches Malmyzh, leaving his escape a decisive break from the convoy but not a completed return home.