Collegiate Assessor

Reading notes

• The Darling §2 collegiate assessor

  The eighth rung of Russia's civil-service Table of Ranks, a modest grade that nonetheless carried hereditary nobility; Olenka's now bedridden father held it before retiring.

• From the Diary of an Assistant Bookkeeper §14 collegiate assessor

  The eighth grade in the imperial Table of Ranks, a solid mid-level civil-service rank -- Kleshchev's undeserved advancement despite his string of scandals is the story's running joke about bureaucratic promotion having nothing to do with merit.

• My Life: A Provincial's Story §15 a collegiate assessor

  Коллежский асессор, the eighth grade of the imperial Table of Ranks, a solid middle rung of the civil service; that the bank manager's son -- Misail's exact contemporary -- has already reached it is offered as proof of how far Misail has fallen behind his peers.

• The Husband §6 коллежский асессор

  Collegiate assessor was the eighth of the fourteen grades in Peter the Great's Table of Ranks, a solidly middling civil-service rank; that Shalikov now identifies himself by rank alone, having once read radical critics at university, marks the flattening of an idealistic young man into an embittered functionary who counts a title as his whole remaining identity.

• An Exceptional Man §5 Collegiate Assessor

  Kollezhsky asessor, the eighth of fourteen grades in Peter the Great's Table of Ranks -- a solidly respectable mid-level civil-service rank that by this period conferred only personal, not hereditary, nobility. Kiryakov leads with his rank before his errand, and it is the source of the 'solidity' and 'positiveness' the narration keeps attributing to him.

• The Orator §1 коллежского асессора

  Collegiate assessor was the eighth grade in the imperial Russian Table of Ranks, a modest mid-level civil-service rank -- an unglamorous office post, which sets up the story's comic irony that so pedestrian a bureaucrat is about to be sent off with grandiose, Cicero-worthy funeral rhetoric.

• To N. A. Leikin, 11 August 1887. Babkino. §8 collegiate assessor

  "Kollezhsky asessor" -- the eighth of the fourteen grades in the imperial Table of Ranks, roughly equivalent to a mid-level civil servant; a modest but respectable rank that by this period conferred hereditary nobility. Chekhov invokes it here half-ironically as a comic label for Gruzinsky's mild, unassuming temperament, playing against the bureaucratic gravity the title implied.

• Drowsy Stupor §8 Коллежский асессор / Collegiate Assessor

  Коллежский асессор (Collegiate Assessor) was the 8th of the fourteen civil ranks in the Table of Ranks instituted by Peter the Great, a solidly mid-level bureaucratic rank -- appropriate for a minor witness or complainant in a financial fraud case being read out in the indictment.

• Fat and Thin §10 Collegiate assessor

  Eighth grade in the Russian Table of Ranks (Petrine civil hierarchy of fourteen grades); a modest middling rank that once conferred hereditary nobility.