The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants

The personal circumstances of Fyodor Dostoevsky's life, having found himself in exile, tied the writer to the Russian province for several years.
 
The conflict of the story "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" about the provincial life of a patriarchal... estate is built on the opposition between the ideal landowner and the petty burgher-parasite. Ignorance, servility, and envy of the hero fill the well-established life in the estate with squabbles, scandals, and disputes.
The satirical depiction of the character despised by Dostoevsky undoubtedly continues the Gogolian tradition.
 
Psychologically disadvantaged Foma Opiskin, painfully aware of his spiritual inadequacy, a formerly humiliated man, turns into a tormentor, about whose dangerous emergence the writer warned.