Moscow

Moscow is the central urban stage of Resurrection, the city where the novel's pivotal trial occurs and where Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff first confronts the consequences of his past. It is the seat of the Law Courts, the aristocratic homes of the Korchagins, and the bureaucratic offices that Nekhludoff navigates, making it the geographical heart of the social and legal systems the novel critiques.

The Law Courts and the Trial

The most significant event in Moscow is the trial of Katerina Maslova at the Criminal Court. The novel opens on the morning of April 28, as Maslova is led from her prison through the city streets to the courthouse. The building itself is described in detail: a large, long room with a raised platform for the judges, a green cloth-covered table, high-backed oak chairs, a portrait of the Emperor, and an icon of Christ crowned with thorns. It is here that Nekhludoff, serving as a juryman, recognizes Maslova as the woman he seduced and abandoned years before. The trial, with its flawed jury verdict and the subsequent sentencing of Maslova to four years of penal servitude in Siberia, is the catalyst for Nekhludoff's entire spiritual journey. The Moscow Law Courts are thus presented not as a temple of justice but as a stage for a tragic judicial error, where the president of the court is preoccupied with a romantic rendezvous and the public prosecutor is more concerned with his own eloquence than with the truth.

Aristocratic and Bureaucratic Society

Moscow is also the home of the aristocratic Korchagin family, whose daughter, Princess Mary Korchagin (Missy), is expected to marry Nekhludoff. Their lavish house, with its noiseless English hinges, handsome footmen, and elaborate dinners, represents the world of wealth and privilege from which Nekhludoff is increasingly alienated. It is in this house that Nekhludoff feels the falseness of his social circle most acutely, seeing the wrinkles on Missy's face and the cruelty in her father's past. The city is also where Nekhludoff consults the advocate Fanarin in his splendid office, and where he visits the Vice-Governor Maslennikoff, a former army comrade now a complacent administrator. These encounters in Moscow's bureaucratic and aristocratic spaces force Nekhludoff to recognize the hypocrisy and moral decay of the society he once belonged to.

The Prison and the City's Underbelly

Moscow's prisons are a constant presence. The novel begins in the prison office, and Maslova is held in the preliminary detention prison before her trial. After the verdict, Nekhludoff attempts to visit her at the old temporary prison, a gloomy building where the inspector's daughter plays a Liszt rhapsody on the piano. The city's streets themselves become a site of contrast: Nekhludoff walks past butchers' shops, clothiers, and eating-houses, seeing the well-fed shopkeepers and the pale washerwomen, and he reflects on the peasants who have flocked to the city because there is no land for them in the country. The Moscow streets, with their isvostchiks and crowds, become a living illustration of the social inequality that the novel condemns.

Nekhludoff's Domestic and Moral Transformation

Nekhludoff's own Moscow residence, the large house he inherited from his mother, is the scene of his initial moral awakening. After the trial, he returns to this house, filled with luxurious fittings and memories of his mother, and experiences a profound "cleansing of the soul." It is here, in his study, that he decides to break all his false relations, to tell the truth, and to atone for his sin against Maslova. The house, with its unnecessary furs and carpets being aired, symbolizes the idle, luxurious life he resolves to abandon. His decision to move to a modest lodging-house near the prison marks his physical and moral departure from the world of Moscow's aristocracy. Moscow, therefore, is not merely a backdrop but the crucible in which Nekhludoff's old life is shattered and his new one begins.