A summary of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s "Provincial Essays"

This book is a satirical chronicle of life in the fictional town of Krutogorsk, written in 1856 and 1857. The work draws on the writer’s personal experience of exile in Vyatka. Saltykov-Shchedrin mercilessly exposes the tyranny, corruption, and stupidity of provincial bureaucracy during the era of serfdom.

Krutogorsk customs and past times

The narrator arrives in the remote town of Krutogorsk. Local officials spend their evenings playing cards, concealing their greed behind a veneer of propriety. An old clerk recounts the customs of bygone days. The district doctor, Ivan Petrovich, made his fortune by faking autopsies, smallpox vaccinations, and recruiting. For a fee, he exempted healthy peasants from military service. The mayor, Feyer, a former hussar, mercilessly extorted money from merchants, locking them in prison cells until the full amount was paid.

When General Alexei Dmitrich arrives in the district town of Chernoborsk, the local mayor, Zhelvakov, panics. The general reprimands him for the tired fire horses. Police captain Maremyankin, nicknamed Zhivoglot, reports to his superior about a headless body found. The general demands that the head be found immediately. The police captain bitterly curses his own invention. Landowner Peregorensky tries in vain to complain to the general about Zhivoglot’s excesses. The official ignores the complaints, rushing off to a card game.

Local acquaintances

The city is home to a whole gallery of typical provincials. Retired Second Lieutenant Zhivnovsky wanders the country, hoping to find a naive merchant and extort money from him. Porfiry Petrovich, now a respected elder of the noble assembly, began his career as an errand boy. He became rich by blackmailing his superior with incriminating documents. Later, he secured a promotion by covering up the secret meetings of his new superior’s wife with a local teacher.

Princess Anna Lvovna, an aging maiden, desperately seeks a husband. She imagines herself a misunderstood sufferer and turns her attention to the poor, barely literate scribe Tekhotsky. Arranging a secret meeting with him in a forest grove, she awaits his sublime confessions. Tekhotsky falls to his knees and begs the princess to secure him a position as a police officer. The princess’s illusions are shattered by harsh reality.

The Razmanovsky family is renowned in the city for its hospitality. Their hostess, Marya Ivanovna, forces her daughters to play the piano and recite poetry. Beneath the veneer of hospitality lies a stingy gossip, methodically ruining the reputations of her guests. The head of the family, Alexei Dmitrich, obediently repeats the words of others and silently endures the visitors’ ridicule.

Wanderers and travelers

The cathedral square fills with pilgrims and beggars in the spring. They sing spiritual verses about the Last Judgment. Retired soldier Pimenov tells of the holy fathers living in the dense forests. He relates the legend of the wanderer Pakhomovna. This brave woman defeated a demon in the form of a bear and found the way to the righteous city of Jerusalem.

At an inn, Ivan Onufrich Khreptugin, a wealthy former tavern worker, mocks the coachmen and refuses to help beggars. He boasts of his enormous carriage, drinks rosé champagne, and eats Strasbourg pie. The collegiate secretary, Maria Petrovna Muzovkina, appears. This woman lives on the compassion of others. She tells a long story about her runaway husband and cruel neighbors, trying to wheedle five rubles from the narrator. It soon emerges that she is writing false denunciations against those who refuse her alms.

Dramatic scenes

Prince Chebylkin’s reception room is crowded. The prince suffers from indigestion and entrusts the handling of complaints to his favorite, Leonid Sergeyevich Razbitny. The young official cynically refuses petitioners. Peasants complaining of beatings and livestock theft by local officials leave empty-handed. The minor clerk Dernov is forced to marry the daughter of his hard-drinking colleague Rybushkin. The management threatens Dernov with dismissal if he refuses. The bride despises the groom, openly kisses another clerk, Bobrov, and threatens Dernov with connections to his patron, Zmeishchev. Dernov realizes his complete lack of power in his own family.

At the tavern, businessmen discuss the decline of commerce. The timber merchant Izhburdin complains about the new order. Merchants are accustomed to conducting business through bribing clerks and swindling government contracts. The emergence of shipping companies frightens them. Fair competition is destroying their traditional methods of enrichment.

Types of administrators

Various officials demonstrate their attitudes toward their duties. Mikhail Trofimych tries to act honestly, but is completely incapable of conducting an investigation. Wanting to frighten a suspect, he dresses up as a ghost. The peasants brutally beat him for this prank. He writes absurd reports, and the real killer remains free.

A secular capital administrator treats peasants with contempt. He considers the common people a savage mass. This man controls people for the sake of an abstract theory, caring only about comfort and expensive wines. Investigator Filoveritov calls himself a service dog. For a paltry salary, he mercilessly destroys people on orders from his superiors. He has suppressed all human emotion. Filoveritov even sends to hard labor those peasants who committed crimes out of despair or stupidity.

Prison inmates

The city’s casemates house representatives of various social classes. One peasant hacked his beloved Paranya to death with an axe because she mocked his feelings. Another poor man threw a stone at a fellow villager and took one ruble and seventy kopecks. He needed the money to pay his cruel tax collector. The bourgeois Kolesov cold-bloodedly drowned a wealthy employer after tying his hands. Now he quotes novels, playing the innocent victim of circumstance.

Peresechkin is in the nobles’ cell. He took one ruble per hive to free the peasants from a fictitious insect census. The clerk Borovikov was arrested for beating a merchant senseless during a drinking binge. Titular Councilor Peregorensky writes endless denunciations of the mayor. He demands retribution for the beatings and pompously calls himself the sole champion of truth.

Secret hermitage

An investigator unravels a complex case involving schismatics. Hermits seeking salvation once hid in the dense forests. Gradually, their refuges became hideouts for runaway soldiers and drinking holes. Management passed to the cunning townswoman Mavra Kuzmovna. She bribed the police and organized a lucrative operation. The monastery reliably sheltered wealthy people from justice.

Moscow businessman Tebenkov forcibly sent his daughter Varvara to Kuzmovna’s monastery. The girl became pregnant by a poor official. Kuzmovna starved her in a cold closet and forced her to take monastic vows under the name Varsonofia. The abbess secretly gave the resulting child to a stranger. Varvara miraculously escaped from the skete. An investigator arranges a confrontation. This meeting breaks Kuzmovna’s stubbornness. The police capture the underground schismatic bishop, who turns out to be a fugitive Kazan janitor. Tebenkov and Mavra Kuzmovna are arrested.

Winter road

The narrator leaves the city in the snowy winter. The horses gallop the kibitka through the silvery frosty dust. The journey evokes melancholy and heavy thoughts about aimlessly lived years. Falling asleep to the monotonous ringing of a bell, the author sees a strange procession. The old Prince Chebylkin, the cunning Porfiry Petrovich, the merciless Feyer, the pitiful Peresechkin, and other employees slowly trudge through the deep snow. Their faces are filled with anxiety and fear. Their friend Buerakin whispers to the narrator the meaning of the vision. This frightened crowd is burying the past. Buerakin says, "They’re burying the past!" The era of unpunished tyranny and bribery is fading into oblivion, giving way to the rule of law.