(DOKHODNOE MESTO) describes a rising tide of personal consumption („luxury“) among civil servants and

of education among the young. This education imparts a faith in progress and  a desire to suceed on the basis of honest hard work, and of legality in the regulation of civil administration. Three corrupt officials who have grown wealthy through defalcation understand that the younger generation, with their idealism and their belief in the possibility of succeeding „by the book“, will swamp them. „Such times are soming it will be impossible to live,“ says bureaucrat Iusov. Indeed, in the last act an investigation uncovers the wrongdoing

of the old timers and topples their empire. The ringleader is obliged to make restitution to the full extent of his personal wealth. The promising young man who embraces progress in this play, Zhadov, happes to be

the nephew of one of the malfeasants. A somewhat priggish character, he amuses the clerks with his high principles and insists on succeeding on his own merit, without any favors from his uncle. He marries for love, believing that he can educate his young bride and provide the necessities for her in a stat service career through earned promotions. The play comes alive when he finds he cannot communicate his ideals to his wife, whose upbringing has predisposed her to admire only leisure, wealth, status, and fashion, and who envies her sister living in luxury thanks to a bribe-taking husband. Zhadov finally breaks, worn down by work and poverty, despairing when his wife threatens to leave him. They go togehther to his uncle to beg him

for a lucrative position, only to find, that the powerful official has just been indicted. Zhadov answers Iusov´s taunts by saying that he never believed one generation to be more honest than another, only that some people in each generation are honest and that "society is little by little throwing off its indifference to crime, heeding the energetic cries protesting social evil... that gradually a consiousness of shortcomings is arising,

and in that consciousness is hope for a better future... that a feeling of justice has been inculated in young people that is growing and bearing fruit... Don´t rejoice in my weakness. I am no hero. I am an ordinary, weak man."