figure
Ilya Martynych Yanshin
Yanshin
also: Яншин, Яшкин, Илья Мартыныч, Ilya Martynych
A prison warden who, sweating through a sultry midday with vodka and a drinking companion, works himself up into a string of increasingly nihilistic pronouncements -- against punctuation, against the letter yat, against learning itself, and finally against everything -- the titular "thinker" of the story.