Marshal of the Nobility

Reading notes

• A Daughter of Albion §1 the district marshal of nobility

  An elected head of the nobility of a Russian district or province, a real provincial-gentry office of the period; Ottsov holds this post.

• The Crafty One §7 marshal of nobility

  An elected head of the nobility of a Russian district or province, invoked here as the late father's respectable office, set against the disgrace of the son's present conduct.

• A Nightmare §1 Непременный член по крестьянским делам присутствия

  Kunin's title, 'permanent member of the board for peasant affairs,' names a real post created after the 1861 Emancipation: a salaried district official, typically a local landowner, who sat on the board supervising peasant self-government and land arrangements, working alongside (and reporting indirectly to) the elected marshal of the nobility. It is a bureaucratic, not a landed, income -- which is why Kunin can plausibly claim, a few lines later, that his mortgaged estate leaves him living 'entirely on the salary of a permanent member.'

• My Life: A Provincial's Story §281 the marshal of the provincial nobility

  Губернский предводитель дворянства, the elected head of a province's assembly of nobility, a real administrative office with informal authority over the conduct of its members; Misail's father's appeal to this office, and the governor's own semi-official reprimand that follows, dramatize the informal social machinery available to a provincial family for disciplining an errant son even without any actual legal charge.

• On the Road §44 marshal of the nobility

  An elected head of the nobility (предводитель дворянства) of a Russian district or province -- a real provincial-gentry office of the period. Likharev's brother holds this respectable local post, the pointed contrast to Likharev's own ruin being part of the story's characterization of him as the disgraced black sheep of a proud family.

• An Unpleasantness §105 The marshal of nobility

  An elected office representing the interests of the local nobility (dvoryanstvo) in district and provincial affairs; the doctor accuses the marshal of treating the zemstvo's doctors as suspected 'nihilists' and interrogating hospital staff behind his back.

• A Letter to a Learned Neighbor §3 Marshal of the Nobility

  An elected head of the nobility of a Russian district or province, a real provincial-gentry office; the narrator drops it in mid-joke as though visiting the Marshal's house were a routine weekly errand.

• The Dowry §29 the marshal of the nobility

  An elected head of the local gentry with certain administrative and judicial functions; the widow repeatedly threatens, but never manages, to bring her complaint about Yegor Semyonych to him.

• A Trivial Incident §22 district marshal of nobility

  The uezdny predvoditel dvoryanstva (district marshal of the nobility), an elected local office representing and overseeing the interests of the gentry in a district -- named here only as the recipient of Kandurin's travel letters from Cairo, a detail underscoring how far removed the husband has placed himself from any real domestic role.

• A Failure of Compensation §2 district marshal of the nobility

  An elected head of the landed gentry of a Russian district, a real provincial office of the period. It is the only thing the opening sentence tells us about Mikhail Ilyich before the sickroom scene begins.

• At the Marshal's Widow's §2 district marshal

  The Marshal of the Nobility (predvoditel dvoryanstva) was an elected head of the local gentry, a real office of provincial imperial Russia; the story's title identifies the widow only by her late husband's rank.

• They Abolished It! §116 marshal

  The elected head of the nobility of a Russian district, a real provincial-gentry office; Vyvertov travels to him hoping for authoritative clarification of his own uncertain status.

• To Paris! §16 уездный предводитель

  The marshal of the nobility (predvoditel dvoryanstva) was an elected head of the local gentry, a real office of considerable informal authority in a Russian district -- his casual, almost bureaucratic decree that the two men must go to Paris shows how far institutional anxiety about propriety and appearances could outrun both medical judgment and financial common sense.