Osip

Nikolai and Kiryak's father, referred to throughout Chekhov's novella "Peasants" (Мужики, 1897) mostly as "the old man": a shiftless, unreliable peasant kept working only by his wife's scolding, fond of recounting old grievances and memories of life before the emancipation; he is humiliated when the village headman Antip Sedelnikov confiscates the family's samovar for tax arrears, and is dismissed by the visiting district inspector without being heard.