office

Permanent Member (of the District Peasant Affairs Presence)

permanent member

also: непременный член, nepremenny chlen

In the years before the 1889 land-captain reform, the "permanent member" (nepremenny chlen) of a district's peasant affairs presence was the standing official charged with overseeing peasant self-government and adjudicating peasant petitions -- the office an old peasant directs Kirila to as the one authority with real say over his brother's case.

Reading notes

Ivanov §6 permanent member of the peasant affairs board
Renders "непременный член по крестьянским делам присутствия," a salaried post created after the 1861 Emancipation to supervise peasant self-government and adjudicate land disputes between former serfs and landowners at the district level. It is Ivanov's civil-service post throughout the play, though the play itself never shows him at this work; the title marks him as an educated man of modest, un-landed officialdom rather than pure gentry, in contrast to the hereditary landowners (Lebedev) and titled aristocracy (Count Shabelsky) around him.
To M. V. Kiseleva, 6 January 1888. Moscow. §19 To the Permanent Member
A joking honorific salutation to Alexei Sergeyevich Kiselev by his official title -- the "permanent member" (nepremenny chlen) of the district peasant affairs presence -- rather than by name, in keeping with the letter's mock-formal closing greetings.
Darkness §37 the permanent member
Before the 1889 land-captain reform, the nepremenny chlen ("permanent member") of a district's peasant affairs presence was the standing official with real authority over peasant petitions and disputes -- the office the old man on the road correctly identifies as the one Kirila actually needs, in contrast to the doctor, the justice of the peace, and the police captain, none of whom have jurisdiction over his brother's case.