Pahom
The story introduces Pahom, the story’s protagonist, as an impressionable peasant susceptible to change his life based on others’ opinions. Like his wife, he endorses the self-sufficiency and hard work embodied in the peasantry. However, once he hears his wife's older sister dismiss peasantry as inferior to elite, wealthier lifestyles, he decides to seek out land and a higher economic status. Guided by the Devil, Pahom’s greed and pride become his defining traits, and he willingly demolishes his relationships with his family and commune, loses his compassion and appreciation for the peasantry, and ultimately destroys his own health in his obsessive pursuit for land.
Pahom often complains of feeling cramped and unfulfilled in his estates, which fuels him to continually seek out more lucrative land acquisitions. Pahom associates independence and freedom with limitless property, but his greed prevents his desire for an expansive estate to ever reach satiation and, in turn, attaining a meaningful life. Once he completely devotes himself to land acquisitions and loses sight of his morality and decency, Pahom’s character arc shows us the dangers of putting too much emphasis on material possessions and economic status.
The Devil
As the instigating source of Pahom’s greed, the Devil appears in Pahom's life in several disguises, such as the traveling peasant, the dealer, and the Bashkir chief. The Devil wields his power and disguises to successfully tempt Pahom deeper and deeper into his obsession with land ownership—and ultimately to his death. The Devil treats Pahom’s moral and physical disintegration as one extended joke: he interprets Pahom’s statement "If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!" as a personal dare, and victoriously laughs when Pahom ends up a corpse. The Devil thus views Pahom's tumult and loss of morality as a source of entertainment.
The elder sister
The wife of a merchant and Pahom’s sister-in-law, the elder sister lives a wealthy life in a nearby city and expresses contempt toward her younger sister’s peasantry. Representative of the upper class, the elder sister gloats about her access to lavish entertainment, education, food, and clothes in the city, which prompts Pahom to seek land ownership and upward mobility. Beyond her endorsement of material wealth, tense and argumentative relationship with her younger sister, and general condescension toward peasantry, the elder sister’s characterization is sparse; internal attributes such as her relationship with her husband, her interests, and her religious identity remain unknown.
The younger sister
Married to Pahom, the younger sister embodies the dignity of the peasantry. Her defining characteristics include her forthrightness and intelligence, as evidenced in her passionate defense of rural, country life, where she claims the peasant life allows for self-sufficiency and freedom from higher authorities and perceived immoralities of city life. The younger sister’s warning that affluent people are “very likely to lose all you [they] have” precipitates Pahom’s decline from a well-intentioned peasant to a greedy, exploitative landowner who indeed loses his land, sympathy, sense of community, and his wife. Notably, the younger sister and Pahom’s relationship initially seems congenial: Pahom communicates his frustration over the soldier’s fines to her, and they work together and labor out their son to purchase their first piece of property. As Pahom becomes more obsessed with land procurement, her presence in the story dissipates—until she is left behind altogether when Pahom travels to Bashkiria.
The Bashkirs
The Bashkirs are a group of Turkish people living past the Ural Mountains, and Pahom and his workman travel over three hundred miles to a Bashkirian village to purchase property. The traveling dealer describes the Bashkirs as "simple as sheep," and the narrator supports this characterization after Pahom and his workman arrive in Bashkiria, noting, "They were quite ignorant, and knew no Russian, but they were good-natured enough." The Bashkirs are a carefree community—they value leisure, kumiss, and music, displaying zero interest in working on their land.
The Bashkir Chief
As the leader of the Bashkirs and the Devil in disguise, the Bashkir chief exacerbates and amplifies Pahom’s greed and pride in the concluding sections of the story. He offers Pahom as much land as he can section off in a day, orders Pahom to carry a spade to mark his progress as he walks, and, in his final appearance, he clutches at his sides and laughs at Pahom struggling to reach the starting point, which mirrors the imagery in Pahom’s dream.
The Bashkir chief is highly respected within the Bashkirian community: several of the Bashkirs believe that solely the chief can grant permission to give Pahom land. He is also the only Bashkir who can speak Russian.
The female landowner
The female landowner owns a small estate outside Pahom’s village. She maintains a cordial, affable relationship with the peasants until she hires the greedy, exploitative old soldier as her property manager. When she abruptly sells her land, she again works amicably with the peasants and agrees to their offer for the estate.
The old soldier
The female landowner hires the old soldier to manage her property, and he quickly abuses his position of power to levy ruthless, senseless fines on the peasants for minor transgressions outside of their control. The old soldier does not extend sympathy toward the peasants’ economic constraints and instead exploits their lack of cultural capital and property to gain more profit for himself and the female landowner.
Simon
One of the few named characters in the story, Simon is the peasant that Pahom blindly accuses of stealing trees from his property. While the case is dismissed due to lack of evidence, Simon’s character represents Pahom’s increased hostility toward peasantry and lower class lifestyles.
