Kolya (the assessor's clerk)

The unnamed district police assessor's clerk, encountered near the Tom River crossing: "a fine, intelligent man, a protesting liberal educated in Petersburg, a free spirit who somehow ended up in Siberia," whom Chekhov describes as "infected to the marrow of his bones with every disease and drinking himself to ruin by the grace of his principal, who calls him Kolya" -- the diminutive marking the assessor's condescending, proprietary treatment of him. Chekhov himself is addressed as "Doctor" by the drunken assessor in the same scene and pressed to drink.