Preobrazhensky’s principle of persuasion

Preobrazhensky’s principle of persuasion is the belief that living beings should be influenced by kindness and persuasion rather than terror or beating. First expressed in his care for the dog Sharik and later applied to the humanized Sharikov, it becomes both a practical method and an ethical limit: even when Sharikov’s conduct and potential danger alarm those around him, Preobrazhensky rejects violence and criminal action.

Kindness as a Method

When Preobrazhensky explains how he brought Sharik to follow him, he describes kindness as the only possible method for dealing with a living creature. Terror, he argues, paralyzes the nervous system and is useless regardless of its political or other color. His example is concrete: he had bought Sharik Cracow sausage and arranged for him to be fed after he recovered from nausea. The dog’s response to the food and the gentleman who offered it makes the principle visible as an exchange of care rather than an abstract maxim.

The principle is not limited to winning an animal’s trust. After Sharik has become destructive in the apartment, Zina proposes that he needs a whipping; Preobrazhensky answers heatedly that no one is to be beaten and that animals and people can be influenced only by persuasion. His immediate question is whether Sharik has been given his meat. The juxtaposition joins discipline to daily care: he refuses punishment while continuing to attend to the creature’s needs.

Persuasion and Sharikov’s Identity

The same commitment shapes Preobrazhensky’s dealings with Sharikov, whose name and social identity are being established through conversation and paperwork. When Sharikov proposes the name Poligraph Poligraphovich, Preobrazhensky tells him to stop playing the fool and clarifies that he is asking seriously. Later, when Shvonder suggests preparing a certificate identifying Sharikov and describing him as born in the apartment, Preobrazhensky rejects the proposal as absurd. These exchanges show persuasion operating in a setting where naming and official recognition are also contested: Preobrazhensky addresses Sharikov as someone to reason with, while resisting an account of his origins that he considers false.

Restraint in the Face of Danger

The principle is tested most sharply when Doctor Bormenthal fears what Sharikov may become under Shvonder’s influence. Preobrazhensky acknowledges that he foresaw the danger soon after the operation, but he does not accept violence as a remedy. He tells Bormenthal that he is too old not to offer advice and urges him never to do anything criminal, whatever the reason, and to keep his hands clean throughout his life. His appeal extends the prohibition on beating into a broader rule of conduct: fear of future harm does not, in his view, justify criminal action.

That restraint does not mean that Preobrazhensky underestimates the conflict. He predicts that Sharikov may become more dangerous to Shvonder than Shvonder understands, and imagines the consequences if someone turns Sharikov against him. The warning makes the tension within the principle plain: persuasion remains his stated ethical method even when he anticipates destructive consequences and recognizes that others are shaping Sharikov’s loyalties.

Principle and Outcome

The rule’s final test comes when officials accuse Preobrazhensky, Bormenthal, Zinaida Bunina, and Darya Ivanova of murdering Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov, described in the charge as a sub-department controller for the City of Moscow Cleansing Department. Preobrazhensky answers by disputing the identity presupposed by the accusation, saying that the officials mean the dog he operated on. The accusation and his reply place medical creation, personal naming, and legal identity in direct conflict, while the earlier insistence on nonviolence remains an ethical counterpoint to the threat of force.

Across these episodes, persuasion is both a practice of care and a limit on what its practitioners may do. The movement from feeding Sharik, to refusing punishment, to warning Bormenthal against criminal conduct gives the principle a consistent shape, while Sharikov’s contested name and dangerous potential expose how difficult it is to sustain that principle amid competing efforts to define and control him.