Mayor summons officials to deal with the arrival of the imperial envoy

The Governor’s emergency meeting is the town’s first response to the threatened inspection, and it reveals the logic that will govern the officials’ conduct: they treat scrutiny not as a reason to repair their offices, but as a danger to be managed. Anton Antonovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky announces that an inspector is coming from Saint Petersburg, then turns the warning into hurried instructions, surveillance, and staged appearances. The meeting makes the town’s disorder visible before the inspector even arrives.

The Warning and Its Stakes

Anton Antonovich calls the officials together to deliver what he calls unpleasant news: a Government Inspector is on the way. The threat becomes more alarming when he clarifies that the visitor comes from Saint Petersburg incognito and carries secret instructions. The concealed identity and confidential mandate leave the officials unsure what the inspector knows, or whom he may question.

The Governor presents the news as something he had already sensed. He recalls dreaming of two enormous black rats that entered, sniffed about, and departed, then reads from a letter sent by Andrei Ivanovich. The letter reports that an official has arrived with instructions to inspect the whole government, with the Governor’s district singled out in particular. The dream lends the warning an ominous, almost absurd prelude; the letter supplies its practical force. The danger is not merely a visit but an investigation whose scope may reach beyond any one department.

A Rush to Put Offices in Order

Anton Antonovich immediately assigns responsibility for visible repairs. He warns Artemy Filippovich Zemlianika, the Superintendent of Charities, that the inspector is likely to begin with his department. The patients, he says, must not go about as grimy as blacksmiths, and the nightcaps must be clean. Artemy treats the change as easy to arrange. The exchange exposes the narrowness of the proposed reform: the instruction concerns how the institution will look during inspection, not the conditions that made the patients appear neglected.

The Governor’s instructions to Ammos Fiodorovich Liapkin-Tiapkin, the judge, are similarly specific and similarly limited. The courthouse entrance hall, where petitioners wait, has become a poultry yard: geese and goslings poke their beaks between people’s legs. The Governor says they should be moved to the kitchen, while admitting that he had meant to raise the matter earlier and forgotten. The impropriety has evidently been familiar enough to persist; the inspector’s approach is what makes it urgent.

He also calls the officials’ minor abuses peccadilloes and insists that no one is without sins. Ammos, for his part, openly distinguishes his own bribes from more serious wrongdoing by describing them as white greyhound puppies. Their frank exchange makes the meeting’s underlying standard plain: the officials do not dispute that misconduct exists so much as argue over what kind of misconduct should count. The impending inspection threatens exposure, but does not produce a shared commitment to honest administration.

Controlling Information and Appearance

Anton Antonovich’s anxiety extends beyond departmental tidying to the flow of information. He suspects that someone may have denounced him and asks Ivan Kuzmich Shpekin, the postmaster, to open letters passing through the office and look for material against him. The request is framed as serving the common good, but its purpose is personal protection: the Governor wants advance notice of accusations and the option of resealing or delivering opened mail. Ivan Kuzmich says he already opens letters, not chiefly as a precaution but from curiosity, and enjoys reading them. A routine breach of correspondence thus becomes a tool the Governor hopes to enlist in his own defense.

As the preparations continue, the same logic turns public space into a stage. Anton Antonovich orders the tall Sergeant Pugovichyn to stand on the bridge for appearance’s sake. He directs that an old fence near the bootmaker’s be pulled down and a post planted with a wisp of straw so it will look as if grading work is under way. The more debris the work produces, he reasons, the more active the Governor will appear—even though about forty cartloads of rubbish already lie against the fence. His exasperation at the town’s filth briefly breaks through the plan, but the proposed remedy is still to make official activity legible to a visitor, not to complete the work.

He also dictates the answer officials should give if asked whether they are satisfied: they must report that everything is satisfactory. Anyone who says otherwise, he threatens, will have cause for dissatisfaction later. His pious admission of sin sits beside the threat, and he promises a great candle offering if he can get through the ordeal; he even imagines levying a hundred pounds of wax from each merchant. The scene gathers private fear, religious bargaining, and coercion into one performance of authority.

The Performance Continues

The meeting’s instructions anticipate the Governor’s later presentation of the town to the supposed inspector. Anton Antonovich claims that the local authorities think only of winning the Government’s esteem through order, vigilance, and efficiency. That public account stands against the hurried staging already witnessed and against the merchants’ later complaint that he quarters soldiers on them, seizes goods for his household, and demands more than the clothes they provide for his wife and daughter. The gap between his official language and the complaints of those he governs gives the inspection its moral stakes.

The officials also perform their ranks before the visitor. Ammos Fiodorovich presents himself with a sword in hand as the district-court judge and a College Assessor, making his title part of the encounter. When the supposed inspector boasts of access to ministers and high office, the Governor and the others rise in awe. The threat announced at the meeting has thus helped create the conditions for a larger misrecognition: instead of assessing the visitor carefully, the officials respond to the status they imagine he possesses. Anton Antonovich soon turns that imagined connection toward personal advancement, asking whether he might rise to generalship.

Dramatic and Historical Significance

The meeting establishes the comic pattern of the inspection plot in miniature. A warning from above produces urgent motion, but the motion is directed toward appearances, controlled testimony, and protection from blame. The officials’ knowledge of their own irregularities makes the secret inspection terrifying; their response shows how readily an administrative structure can be bent toward the interests of its agents when they control local information and reporting.

The comedy’s own public appearance carried a related tension. Under the strict censorship of Nicholas I’s reign, powerful influence was needed to secure permission for production; Zhukovsky obtained the Czar’s personal intercession. Nicholas attended the first production in April 1836 and laughed and applauded. That historical reception sharpens the scene’s irony: an attack on official evasion reached the stage through courtly intervention, and the ruler himself was present for the laughter.