Makarkin

Makarkin, also called Makar Devkin, is a peasant convict sentenced to hard labor for an attempted murder and robbery, a crime he describes as the work of a devilish force rather than his own intention. His role in the novel is small but morally significant: he secretly approaches Nekhludoff in the prison corridor to expose a dangerous identity-swap plot, an act that could cost him his life. Through Makarkin, Tolstoy illustrates how even a man convicted of violent crime can possess a conscience and a capacity for self-sacrifice that the legal system refuses to acknowledge.

Identity and Crime

Makarkin is a man of medium height and the most ordinary peasant type, about thirty years old, condemned to four years' hard labor. His crime, as he recounts it to Nekhludoff, was not premeditated but arose from a sudden, inexplicable compulsion. A traveler hired his father's sledge for a thirty-mile journey, offering two roubles. Makarkin's father told him to drive the stranger. While drinking tea together before departure, the traveler mentioned that he was going to be married and had five hundred roubles with him, earned in Moscow. Hearing this, Makarkin went out into the yard and put an axe into the sledge under the straw. "And I did not myself know why I was taking the axe," he said. "'Take the axe,' says HE, and I took it." During the journey, as they neared the village, a voice whispered to him: "What are you thinking about? ... If you mean to do it, now's the time." Makarkin stooped over the sledge as if to arrange the straw, and the axe "seemed to jump into my hand of itself." The traveler turned, saw him, and jumped out, seizing Makarkin's hands. Makarkin did not struggle but gave in at once. The traveler bound his arms with a girdle, threw him into the sledge, and took him straight to the police station. The commune gave Makarkin a good character, saying he was a good man and that nothing wrong had been noticed about him. His employers also spoke well of him, but he had no money to hire a lawyer, and so he was condemned to four years' hard labor.

The Secret Intervention

Makarkin's most significant action in the novel occurs when he risks his own safety to help a fellow villager. A prisoner named Karmanoff had persuaded a young man who resembled him in appearance and was sentenced only to exile to change names with him, so that Karmanoff would go to exile while the young man went to the mines in his place. This exchange, if discovered, would mean certain death for the conspirators at the hands of other prisoners. Makarkin, knowing this, nevertheless approached Nekhludoff in the prison corridor. Stepping quickly with his bare feet and holding up his chains, he came close to Nekhludoff, enveloping him in the strong, acid smell of perspiration, and whispered mysteriously: "Help the lad, sir; he's got into an awful mess. Been drinking. To-day he's given his name as Karmanoff at the inspection. Take his part, sir. We dare not, or they'll kill us." Then, looking uneasily round, he turned away. Nekhludoff nodded as a sign that he understood and would do what was in his power. Later, when Nekhludoff told Kryltzoff about Makarkin's action, Kryltzoff responded with fervor: "You call them beasts, and Nekhludoff was just telling me about such an action! ... That is not the action of a beast, it is heroism." Novodvoroff dismissed it as sentimentality, but Kryltzoff's defense underscores the moral weight of Makarkin's deed.

Thematic Significance

Makarkin embodies Tolstoy's argument that the legal system's classification of "criminal" is arbitrary and that the men it condemns are not monsters but ordinary human beings capable of both terrible weakness and genuine altruism. Makarkin himself does not understand his own crime; he attributes it to an external, diabolical force. Yet he is willing to risk being throttled by fellow prisoners in order to save a comrade from an unjust fate. His brief appearance serves as a counterpoint to the dehumanizing logic of the penal system, which sees only the crime and not the person. Through Makarkin, Tolstoy insists that the capacity for moral action survives even in those whom society has labeled irredeemable.