Petersburg

Petersburg is the imperial capital of Russia, a city of grand palaces, government ministries, and aristocratic society, which in Tolstoy's Resurrection serves as the central locus of the state's bureaucratic, judicial, and ecclesiastical power, where Nekhludoff confronts the hypocrisy and corruption of the ruling class while pursuing appeals for Maslova and other prisoners.

The Seat of Imperial Power and Bureaucracy

Petersburg is the administrative heart of the Russian Empire, housing the Senate, the Ministry of Justice, the Holy Synod, and the offices of the Procureur and the Governor-General. It is from here that the orders for the persecution of the Doukhobors originated, as noted in the translator's preface, and it is to this city that Nekhludoff travels to lodge appeals for Maslova, Theodosia Birukoff, and the sectarians. The city's architecture reflects its function: the Senate building is described as having a "majestic portal" and "magnificent and imposing staircase," while the offices of officials like the Senator Wolf are "large, quietly and stylishly furnished" studies. The very streets are clean and well-policed, with "fine, clean, polite policemen" and "fine, clean, watered streets," creating a surface of order that masks the moral squalor beneath.

The Aristocratic Circle and Its Hypocrisy

Petersburg is also the home of the aristocratic circle in which Nekhludoff was raised. His aunt, Countess Katerina Ivanovna Tcharsky, lives in a grand house and hosts fashionable religious meetings featuring the preacher Kiesewetter, where richly dressed ladies in "silks and velvets and lace" weep over their sins while remaining indifferent to the suffering of prisoners. The Korchagins, with their "big house" and "patent English hinges," represent the idle rich who move between town and country estates, their lives consumed by gossip about duels and theatre. Nekhludoff's former comrade Schonbock, now a guardian managing a millionaire's affairs, brags about squeezing more rent from peasants, embodying the casual exploitation that Petersburg society takes for granted. The city's "physically invigorating and mentally dulling effect" nearly seduces Nekhludoff back into this comfortable, thoughtless existence.

The Nexus of Judicial and Penal Corruption

Petersburg is where the machinery of injustice is concentrated. The Senate, which hears Maslova's appeal, is staffed by senators like Wolf, who is "un homme tres comme il faut" but has ruined innocent people in Poland and robbed his own sister-in-law, and Skovorodnikoff, a Darwinian materialist who votes against the appeal because Nekhludoff's moral motives personally offend him. The Public Prosecutor Selenin, once Nekhludoff's idealistic friend, has become a compromised official who maintains his position by accepting the lies of state religion. The old General who runs the fortress prison is a veteran of massacres in the Caucasus, now proud of his white cross and convinced that prisoners are well-treated because they get meat cutlets three times a week. The Vice-Governor Maslennikoff, a former regimental comrade, boasts of his "solicitude and firm power" while ordering floggings. The advocate Fanarin, though clever, treats the whole system as a game, laughing at the idea that trials have any real meaning. Petersburg thus reveals itself as a network of comfortable, self-justifying officials who collectively perpetrate immense cruelty without any individual feeling responsible.

The City as a Site of Moral Awakening and Disillusionment

For Nekhludoff, Petersburg is a place of profound disillusionment. His visits to the Senate, the fortress, and the offices of officials like Toporoff (the head of the Holy Synod) strip away any remaining illusions about the possibility of justice within the existing system. He sees that the law is merely "an instrument for upholding the existing order of things beneficial to our class." The city's elegant surface—the Nevski Prospect, the French Theatre, the dinner parties—becomes unbearable to him after he has witnessed the reality of prison life. He feels "hypnotised" by Petersburg, and his final night there is spent in anguish, doubting his own resolutions. Yet it is also in Petersburg that he receives the crucial letter from Mariette securing Shoustova's release, and where he meets Selenin, whose compromised faith mirrors his own struggles. The city thus functions as a testing ground where Nekhludoff's new moral convictions are challenged and refined, preparing him for the final stages of his journey to Siberia.

The Contrast with the Siberian Journey

Petersburg stands in stark contrast to the Siberian road that Nekhludoff will later travel. Where Petersburg is clean, orderly, and superficially civilized, Siberia is muddy, crowded, and raw. The Petersburg officials are well-fed and self-satisfied; the Siberian convicts are starving and dying. The Petersburg aristocrats discuss duels and theatre; the Siberian prisoners discuss survival and death. Nekhludoff's journey from Petersburg to Siberia is thus a movement from the center of power to the periphery of suffering, from abstract bureaucracy to concrete human misery. The city's "true grand monde," as Prince Korchagin calls it, is revealed as a hollow sham compared to the genuine humanity Nekhludoff finds among the political exiles and common convicts. Petersburg, for all its splendor, is ultimately a place of moral death, while the road to Siberia becomes the path to resurrection.