person
Mikheich
also: Михеич, департаментский сторож Михеич
"The departmental watchman Mikheich," invoked by Chekhov as the byword for a certain flavor of low-level bureaucratic hand and mind: he says the Moscow University administration's own counter-broadsheets (posted for students to sign, in response to the 1890 student disturbances) are edited so badly that they "fairly reek of" this figure -- i.e. they read as though drafted by a minor departmental factotum rather than an educated official. Distinct from (Yefim Mikheich Vonmiglasov, the sexton of "Khirurgiya"), who shares only the name/patronymic Mikheich and is otherwise unrelated.
Reading notes
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 17 March 1890. Moscow. §8 fairly reeks of the departmental watchman Mikheich
Chekhov turns from the students' proclamations to the university administration's own competing broadsheets -- handed to students to sign in answer -- and judges these official documents even worse-drafted, "reeking of" a minor departmental watchman's hand. The joke cuts both ways: the same complaint about poor, inauthentic draftsmanship that he levels at the (presumed non-student) authors of the unrest literature applies, in his telling, equally to the university's own response.