Sergeant Prishibeyev

A wizened retired non-commissioned officer (a former quartermaster-sergeant who served in Warsaw, then worked in the fire brigade and as a boys'-school doorkeeper) who has appointed himself the self-styled enforcer of order in his village, breaking up gatherings, banning singing and lit lamps at night, and keeping denunciation notes on his neighbors; tried before the Justice of the Peace for assaulting the constable and other officials, he cannot comprehend his own guilt and, sentenced to a month's arrest, walks out still shouting at the crowd to disperse. His name entered the language as "prishibeyevshchina," a byword for petty officious authoritarianism.