Preobrazhensky and Shvonder’s ongoing conflict

Preobrazhensky and Shvonder’s ongoing conflict pits the professor’s authority within his home against the house committee chairman’s power to define residents through rules and paperwork. The dispute grows as Shvonder helps establish the transformed dog as a named tenant and public employee, then joins accusations against the professor; at the end, their mutual hostility remains explicit while the dog is once again lying beside the professor.

Household Authority and Political Pressure

The conflict is rooted in competing claims over the apartment and the right to determine who belongs there. Shvonder’s committee-backed interventions give administrative form to the transformed dog’s claim on the household, while Preobrazhensky rejects the premise that official papers can make the creature’s history ordinary. Their opposition is therefore not merely a personal quarrel: the committee’s authority reaches into the professor’s private rooms, and the professor resists that intrusion from within his own home.

The consequences extend beyond the apartment. As rumors about the experiment spread, crowds gather in the street, dogs collect below the windows, and newspapers circulate reports that distort what has happened. The public attention makes the household dispute harder to contain, while the professor’s scientific work and his home become subjects of public speculation.

Naming and Administrative Recognition

The conflict sharpens when the transformed dog is asked to choose a name. He proposes “Toligraph Poligraphovich,” but the exchange moves toward the surname he will use; he insists on his real name. Shvonder then offers to help produce a certificate identifying him as Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov and even describes him as born in the apartment. The proposed document turns an implausible origin into an administratively legible identity. Preobrazhensky objects that Sharikov was not born at all, exposing the gap between the committee’s paperwork and the history the professor knows.

Sharikov’s papers later become leverage in a dispute over housing. He presents three differently colored sheets and claims membership in the residential association, asserting an entitlement to thirty-seven square feet from the tenant in charge of flat No. 5, Preobrazhensky. The precise figure gives the claim the appearance of a measurable rule, while its effect is to convert Shvonder’s political support into pressure on the professor’s living space. Preobrazhensky’s response is an angry threat against Shvonder, showing how administrative conflict has become personal.

Work, Allegation, and Escalation

Shvonder’s influence also helps Sharikov obtain a position in the Moscow Cleansing Department. His typewritten appointment names him controller of the sub-department responsible for eliminating vagrant quadrupeds, including cats. The appointment extends the committee’s role beyond residence: the identity it has helped establish now carries public employment and authority. For Preobrazhensky, this is another consequence of Shvonder’s intervention in Sharikov’s life.

The conflict turns more dangerous when Sharikov submits a written accusation, countersigned by Shvonder. It alleges that Preobrazhensky threatened to murder the house committee chairman, made counter-revolutionary speeches, ordered Zinaida Prokofievna Bunina to burn Engels, and was secretly housing an unregistered assistant, Ivan Arnoldovich Bormenthal. These claims translate household antagonisms into political and administrative charges. A later accusation names Preobrazhensky, Bormenthal, Zinaida Bunina, and Darya Ivanova as responsible for the supposed murder of Sharikov, identified by his departmental title. The charges thus depend on the paper identity that had earlier been constructed for him.

The Unresolved Ending

After the accusation is read in the apartment, Preobrazhensky denies its premise by treating Sharikov as the dog he had operated on. In the turmoil that follows, Bormenthal declares that he will personally throw Shvonder downstairs if he appears in the professor’s flat again; Shvonder asks that the remark be entered in the report. The exchange condenses their opposing methods: Bormenthal answers with a direct threat, while Shvonder immediately turns the threat into another recordable statement.

The final scene returns the reader to the apartment after the struggle. Preobrazhensky sits in his chair, and Sharik lies on the carpet beside the couch, settled again into doghood. The restoration changes the household’s immediate circumstances but does not reconcile its human antagonists. Shvonder’s request to preserve Bormenthal’s words in the report leaves the conflict poised between physical confrontation and bureaucratic documentation; neither side has withdrawn its claim to authority.