Second Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery

The Second Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, a bureau responsible for drafting laws, represents the first professional destination of Selenin, Nekhludoff's former university friend, after he completes his studies. It is within this institution that Selenin's long, corrosive compromise between his youthful ideals and the demands of state service begins.

Selenin's Disillusionment

After graduating, Selenin systematically examined all the activities to which he might devote his life and decided to enter the Second Department of the Chancellerie, where the laws are drawn up. He did so believing that this service would allow him to be useful to humanity. However, despite his most scrupulous and exact discharge of the duties demanded of him, this service gave no satisfaction to his desire of being useful, nor could it awake in him the consciousness that he was doing "the right thing." This dissatisfaction was so much increased by the friction with his very small-minded and vain fellow officials that he left the Chancellerie and entered the Senate. The transfer to the Senate was better, but the same dissatisfaction still pursued him; he felt it to be very different from what he had expected, and from what ought to be.

The Pattern of Moral Compromise

The pattern established at the Second Department—entering a role with high hopes, finding it hollow, and then rationalizing continued participation—repeats throughout Selenin's life. After leaving the Chancellerie, his relatives obtained for him the post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, a position he felt was that of a lackey. However much he tried, he could find no reasonable explanation for the existence of this post, and felt, more than in the Senate, that it was not "the right thing," and yet he could not refuse it for fear of hurting those who felt sure they were giving him much pleasure by this appointment, and because it flattered the lowest part of his nature. A similar dynamic governed his marriage, which very soon proved to be even less "the right thing" than the Government service and his position at Court. His wife began leading a worldly life that poisoned his existence, and all his efforts to alter this life were shattered against her conviction that all was as it should be.

The Religious Accommodation

The most profound compromise Selenin makes, one that echoes the initial disappointment of the Second Department, concerns his attitude towards religion. Like every one of his set and his time, by the growth of his reason he broke without the least effort the nets of the religious superstitions in which he was brought up. However, as he rose in the service, Government service demanded that he be present at all sorts of services, consecrations, and thanksgivings. Hardly a day passed without some outward religious form having to be observed. To avoid this, he would have had to give up the service and his position, and sacrifice his hopes of being useful to humanity. Under this stress, he, a truthful man, allowed a little falsehood to creep in. He said that in order to do justice to an unreasonable thing one had to study the unreasonable thing. This little falsehood sunk him into the big falsehood in which he was now caught. He adopted all the usual sophistries to vindicate the religious teaching in which he was educated, which his reason had long ceased to accept. Although he believed this, he felt with his entire being that this religion of his, more than all else, was not "the right thing," and that is why his eyes always looked sad.

The Encounter with Nekhludoff

Seeing Nekhludoff, whom he had known before all these lies had rooted themselves within him, reminded him of what he then was. It was especially after he had hurried to hint at his religious views that he had most strongly felt all this "not the right thing," and had become painfully sad. Nekhludoff felt it also after the first joy of meeting his old friend had passed, and therefore, though they promised each other to meet, they did not take any steps towards an interview, and did not again see each other during this stay of Nekhludoff's in Petersburg. Selenin's career, which began with a principled choice to enter the Second Department, ends with him as a hollowed-out official, his conscience a casualty of the very system he once hoped to serve.