person
Ivan Ivanych
also: Иван Иваныч, Ivan Ivanovich
Anna Akimovna's late uncle, the factory's founder, a hard, unyielding man devoted to Old Belief who kept watch over his own household and his clerks' morals alike, living himself in a single icon-crowded room in the office while keeping the mansion's grand rooms locked except for feast days. He held his easygoing brother Akim Ivanych at arm's length for his religious indifference until a late reconciliation a few years before his death, at which point he had a governess hired for the young Anna Akimovna (Anyutka). Aunt Tatyana Ivanovna's unguarded remark late in the story reveals that, for all his outward saintliness, he quietly fathered children out of wedlock with Varvarushka and sent them to the foundling home.
Reading notes
- A Woman's Kingdom §15 Old Belief
Старообрядчество (Old Belief) -- the tradition of Russian Orthodox Christians who rejected the liturgical reforms imposed by Patriarch Nikon in the 1650s-60s and were subject to varying degrees of legal disability and social suspicion into the late 19th century, while also being strongly associated, as here, with the merchant and industrialist class's reputation for strict personal austerity and hard dealing. Ivan Ivanych's inclination toward Old Belief, his private hosting of Old Believer bishops despite having been baptized and married in the official Church, and his harsh, watchful piety are of a piece with the story's recurring interest (see also Nazarych, Section 109, also called an "Old Believer") in a specifically merchant-class religious rigor that coexists with, rather than precludes, moral compromise -- as the revelation of his and Varvarushka's illegitimate children (Section 205) makes clear.