Deputy Prosecutor

Reading notes

• My Ranks and Titles §5 deputy prosecutor

  Tovarishch prokurora, a legal office; the pun rides on 'tovarishch' also meaning 'comrade' or 'companion' in ordinary speech, so being someone's drinking companion becomes a claim to his office.

• The Thinker §4 deputy prosecutor Merinov

  Товарищ прокурора: literally "comrade of the prosecutor," the standard title for an assistant/deputy crown prosecutor in the Imperial judiciary. Chekhov elsewhere plays on the fact that tovarishch also means ordinary "comrade"; here the joke is simpler -- an official notorious for excessive comma use in his prison-visit reports.

• In the Court §14 The assistant prosecutor

  The tovarishch prokurora (товарищ прокурора), literally "comrade/deputy of the prosecutor," was the standard rank of prosecuting counsel who actually appeared in district-court trials, subordinate to the chief prosecutor (prokuror) of the judicial circuit; despite the modest title he is the Crown's sole voice at trial, which makes his absorption in a novel of Byron's rather than the murder case a sharper indictment of the system's indifference.