Plyushkin

Plyushkin, drawing by Alexander Agin (1846-1847)

Stepan Plyushkin (Russian: Степан Плюшкин) is a fictional character in Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls. He is a landowner who obsessively collects and saves everything he finds, to the point that when he wants to celebrate a deal with the protagonist Chichikov, he orders one of his serfs to find a cake that a visitor brought several years ago, scrape off the mold, and bring it to them. At the same time, his estate is incredibly inefficient; the cut wheat rots on the ground and any potential income is lost.[1]

His surname is derived from the Russian word for flat bun pastry (plyushka [ru]).

  1. ^ Gogol, Nikolai. Dead Souls. Penguin Books.