Other characters
Claudia Ivanovna Petukhova is Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law, owner of the jewelry.
Madame Gritsatsueva is a middle-aged woman, naive, loving, trusting, Bender’s wife.
Alexander Yakovlevich is the caretaker of the 2nd house of Starsobes, a shy thief.
Bartholomew Korobeinikov is the head of the Stargorod archive, a cunning and greedy old man.
Ella Shchukina (Ellochka the Ogre) is a young, beautiful, but stupid, narrow-minded woman.
Summary
Part 1. Stargorod Lion
Chapters 1-8
“In the district town of N” lived Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, a former leader of the nobility, who “served in the registry office, where he was in charge of the desk for registering deaths and marriages.” The fifty-year-old widower led a frankly boring, insignificant life. He was kept company by his elderly mother-in-law, Claudia Ivanovna Petukhova, who, before her death, reported that in troubled times she sewed all her diamonds into one of the chairs of the living room set, which remained in Stargorod.
“The priest of the Church of Frol and Lavra, Father Fyodor Vostrikov,” who confessed to Madame Petukhova, also learned about the hidden jewelry. Both Vorobyaninov and Vostrikov immediately left for Stargorod. Ippolit Matveyevich stopped at his former janitor's, where a fateful meeting took place with the young adventurer Ostap Bender, who became his companion in search of treasure.
Chapters 9-11
From the janitor, the newly minted diamond hunters learned that all the furniture of the Vorobyaninov family had been taken away. Only one chair ended up in the possession of the caretaker of the “2nd Social Security House”, Alexander Yakovlevich, a shy thief who stole everything that was in bad shape, and at the same time was “constantly ashamed.” Under the guise of a fire inspector, Bender found himself in the former Vorobyaninovsky house, where lonely old women lived out their days, but there was no chair anywhere - it was sold by the enterprising brother of the caretaker’s wife.
It turned out that the chair was purchased by Father Fyodor, whom he accidentally met in the city of Vorobyaninov. A fight broke out between the men over a chair, which they quickly began to gut, but “there were no diamonds.”
Chapters 12-16
Meanwhile, the companions settled in a local hotel, and Bender went to the archivist to look for a trace of the missing walnut set. He turned out to be the cunning and greedy old man Varfalomey Korobeinikov. From him, the great schemer learned that one of the chairs was in Gritsatsuev’s possession, and the rest were kept in the Moscow Furniture Museum. Following Bender, Father Fyodor appeared at Korobeinikov’s, and the archivist slipped him orders for another set.
Having learned that citizen Gritsatsuev had died, Ostap Bender decided to marry the widow - “a sultry woman - a poet’s dream” - and check her remaining chair for diamonds. But the search did not lead to anything, and the companions went to Moscow.
Part 2. In Moscow
Chapters 17-23
In Moscow, the companions settled in a “dormitory for chemistry students,” with one of Bender’s many acquaintances. First of all, they went to the furniture museum, where they learned that the next day there would be an auction at which the coveted set would be exhibited. In the museum they accidentally met Lisa, the wife of a poor draftsman student. Vorobyaninov, fascinated by the inexperienced girl, began to complain to her about the “lack of female affection.” Wanting to show off Lisa, Ippolit Matveevich invited her to a restaurant, where he spent all the money he had set aside to buy chairs.
The next day, the partners hurried to the auction, and Ostap Bender carried out the deal brilliantly, buying all the chairs for two hundred rubles. He did not yet know that Vorobyaninov had no money. As a result, the chairs were sold individually. Ostap paid the street children, and they tracked where each chair “went”. In order to get the furniture, Bender had many “tried and tested techniques” at his disposal: 1) simple introduction, 2) love affair, 3) burglary introduction, 4) exchange, 5) money and 6) money. The last one is the most correct.”
Chapters 24-33
Ostap’s first “victim” was Ellochka Shchukina, a young beautiful woman “with the imagination of a woodpecker” and an almost complete lack of vocabulary. In a tiresome struggle with the American millionaire Vanderbilt for the right to be called the most beautiful and luxurious, Ellochka purchased two chairs at auction. At one glance at the hostess and her room, Ostap “immediately understood how to behave in secular society.” He easily exchanged the treasured chairs for an ordinary tea strainer, but they turned out to be empty.
Meanwhile, Vorobyaninov went to the professional comedian Absalom Iznurenkov, but his attempt to get a chair was unsuccessful. Then Bender intervened in the case, who, under the guise of a bailiff, removed the furniture.
Next, Ostap Bender went to the editorial office of the Stanok newspaper, where he opened Vorobyaninov’s chair right on the spot. The opening of the chair in the apartment of the rhymer Nikifor Lyapis-Trubetskoy also turned out to be unsuccessful. By this time, of the entire set, four chairs from the Columbus Theater, which was about to go on tour across the country, remained unexamined, as well as one chair that had disappeared in an unknown direction from the freight yard of the Oktyabrsky Station.
All the worries and ordeals he experienced left an imprint on Vorobyaninov - “Ippolit Matveevich gradually became a sycophant.” This did not escape the attention of Bender, who began calling his companion Kisa. The great schemer felt that “the last act of the comedy My Mother-in-Law’s Treasure was approaching.” He decided to focus all his efforts on getting chairs from the theater, reasonably believing that there were better chances there.
Part 3. Treasure of Madame Petukhova
Chapters 34-37
Having learned that the theater was left without an artist, Ostap offered his services without a twinge of conscience. So Bender and Kisa ended up on the ship, and their duties included “executing artistic posters, inscriptions and finishing the banner.” For a long time they managed to maintain the illusion of working on posters, but in the end they were kicked off the ship in Vasyuki for a poorly written poster. By that time, the companions had opened only one chair, and they pinned all their hopes on the last chairs that floated away with the theater. The resilient Ostap quickly formulated a new plan of action - “to overtake the circulation tank and meet with the Kolumbians on land - in Stalingrad.” Posing as a famous grandmaster, Bender, who was playing chess for the second time in his life, organized a simultaneous game. Having lost all the games and taking the “earned” money, the partners took off running.
Chapters 38-40
On the dacha train, Kisa and Bender reached Pyatigorsk. Having caught up with the Columbus Theater, the companions sadly realized that now “it was impossible to penetrate the theater, as they had assumed.” Ostap agreed with the theater fitter that he would bring them the remaining three chairs for twenty rubles. In order to get the required amount, the great strategist insisted that Vorobyaninov begin “begging for alms in French, German and Russian.” Bender himself went to the main attraction of Pyatigorsk - Proval, for passage to which the enterprising young man began to charge money from gullible tourists. Having collected twenty rubles, the partners received only two chairs from the fitter, but they also turned out to be “dummy.”
Meanwhile, Father Fedor also traveled around the country in search of a “fake” headset. Having found it, he wrote a letter to his wife asking her to sell the property and send all the money to purchase chairs. When, in anticipation of the diamonds, Father Fyodor methodically opened them one by one, the chairs were empty.
Chapters 41-43
The always drunk mechanic did not keep his promise and did not bring the third chair to his companions. They had to walk behind the theater, which headed to Tiflis. On the way, Kisa and Ostap met Father Fyodor, who, due to the failure with the diamonds, had completely lost his mind.
When the heroes arrived in Tiflis, the theater had already left for Yalta, and they had no choice but to follow him to Crimea. They were already holding the chair in their hands when suddenly “the impact of the great Crimean earthquake of 1927” tore it out of their hands. When the companions opened it, it turned out to be empty. Of the entire set, the last chair remained, lost at the Moscow train station.
Bender and Kisa returned to Moscow, where they continued their search. During this time, “Ippolit Matveyevich changed extraordinary” not only externally, but also internally - in Kisa’s character, “features of determination and cruelty that were not characteristic of him before” appeared. When Ostap discovered the location of the last chair, he began to tease Vorobyaninov that he would take most of the treasure for himself. Unable to withstand the tension, Ippolit Matveevich cut his companion's throat. When he went to the railway workers’ club to open the chair, it turned out that the diamonds had already been found and this very club was built with the proceeds - “the treasure remained, it was preserved and even increased.”
A short retelling of “12 Chairs”
Summary of “12 Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov:
On Good Friday, April 15, 1927, the mother-in-law of Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, the former leader of the nobility, dies in the city of N. Before her death, she tells him that she sewed all the family jewelry into one of the chairs in the living room set that remained in Stargorod, from where they fled after the revolution.
Vorobyaninov urgently leaves for his hometown. Priest Fyodor Vostrikov, who confessed the old woman and learned about the jewelry, goes there.
Around the same time, a young man of about twenty-eight in a green waist-length suit, with a scarf and with an astrolabe in his hands, the son of a Turkish citizen Ostap Bender, enters Stargorod. By chance, he stops to spend the night in the janitor's room of Vorobyaninov's mansion, where he meets his former owner. The latter decides to take Bender as his assistant, and something like a concession is concluded between them.
The hunt for chairs begins. The first one is kept here, in the mansion, which is now the “2nd social security building.” The head of the house, Alexander Yakovlevich (Alkhen), a shy thief, brought a bunch of his relatives into the house, one of whom sold this chair for three rubles to an unknown person.
It turns out that he is Father Fyodor, with whom Vorobyaninov gets into a fight for a chair on the street. The chair breaks. There are no jewelry in it, but it becomes clear that Vorobyaninov and Ostap have a competitor.
The companions move to the Sorbonne Hotel. Bender finds on the outskirts of the city the archivist Korobeinikov, who keeps in his home all the warrants for the furniture nationalized by the new government, including the former Vorobyaninovsky walnut set by master Gumbs.
It turned out that one chair was given to the disabled war veteran Gritsatsuev, and ten were transferred to the Moscow Museum of Furniture Craftsmanship. The archivist deceives Father Fyodor, who came after Bender, by selling him warrants for General's wife Popova's set, which was once handed over to engineer Bruns.
On May Day, the first tram line is launched in Stargorod. Vorobyaninov, accidentally recognized, is invited to dinner with his longtime mistress Elena Stanislavovna Bour, who now works part-time as a fortune-teller.
Bender presents his partner to the “former” people gathered for dinner as “a giant of thought, the father of Russian democracy and a person close to the emperor” and calls for the creation of an underground “Union of Sword and Ploughshare.” Five hundred rubles are being collected for the future needs of the secret society.
The next day, Bender marries the widow Gritsatsueva, “a sultry woman and a poet’s dream,” and on her wedding night he leaves her, taking other things in addition to the chair. The chair is empty, and he and Vorobyaninov leave to search for Moscow.
The concessionaires stay in the student dormitory with Bender's acquaintances. There Vorobyaninov falls in love with the draftsman Kolya’s young wife, Liza, who is quarreling with her husband over forced vegetarianism due to lack of funds.
Accidentally finding herself in a museum of furniture craftsmanship, Lisa meets our heroes there looking for their chairs. It turns out that the desired set, which had been lying in a warehouse for seven years, will be put up for auction in the Petrovsky Passage building tomorrow. Vorobyaninov makes a date with Lisa.
With half the amount received from the Stargorod conspirators, he takes the girl in a cab to the Ars cinema, and then to Prague, now an “exemplary MSPO canteen”, where he shamefully gets drunk and, having lost the lady, ends up in the police station the next morning with twelve rubles in the pocket.
At the auction, Bender wins the bid at two hundred. He has so much money, but he still needs to pay a thirty ruble commission fee. It turns out that Vorobyaninov has no money. The couple is taken out of the hall, the chairs are put on sale at retail. Bender hires local street children for a ruble to trace the fate of the chairs.
Four chairs end up in the Columbus Theater, two are taken away in a cab by a “chic chmara”, one chair is bought in front of their eyes by a bleating and wagging hips citizen living on Sadovo-Spasskaya, the eighth ends up in the editorial office of the Stanok newspaper, the ninth in an apartment near Chistye Prudy, and the tenth disappears in the goods yard of the Oktyabrsky station. A new round of searches begins.
The “gorgeous chmara” turns out to be the “cannibal” Ellochka, the wife of engineer Shchukin. Ellochka got by with thirty words and dreamed of outdoing the billionaire’s daughter, Vanderbiltsha, in her belt. Bender easily exchanges one of her chairs for Madame Gritsatsueva’s stolen strainer, but the problem is that engineer Shchukin, unable to bear his wife’s expenses, moved out of the apartment the day before, taking the second chair.
An engineer living with a friend takes a shower, carelessly steps out onto the landing, soaped up, the door slams, and when Bender appears, water is already pouring down the stairs. The chair was given to the great schemer who opened the door almost with tears of gratitude.
Vorobyaninov’s attempt to take possession of the chair of the “bleating citizen,” who turned out to be the professional humorist Absalom Iznurenkov, ends in failure. Then Bender, posing as a bailiff, takes away the chair himself.
In the endless corridors of the House of Peoples, in which the editorial office of the Stanok newspaper is located, Bender comes across Madame Gritsatsueva, who came to Moscow to look for her husband, whom she learned about from a random note.
In pursuit of Bender, she gets confused in numerous corridors and leaves for Stargorod with nothing. Meanwhile, all members of the “Union of Sword and Ploughshare” were arrested, having distributed among themselves seats in the future government, and then, in fear, denounced each other.
Having opened the chair in the office of the editor of “Stanka”, Ostap Bender gets to the chair in the apartment of the poet Nikifor Lyapis-Trubetskoy. What remains is a chair that disappeared in the freight yard of the Oktyabrsky Station, and four chairs from the Columbus Theater, which is leaving for a tour around the country.
Having visited the premiere of Gogol’s “Marriage” the day before, staged in the spirit of constructivism, the accomplices make sure that there are chairs and go after the theater. First, they pose as artists and infiltrate the ship, which is setting off with the actors to agitate the population to buy bonds of the winning loan.
In one chair stolen from the director's cabin, the concessionaires find a box, but it contains only Master Gumbs's name plate. In Vasyuki they are kicked off the ship for a poorly made banner. There, posing as a grandmaster, Bender gives a lecture on the topic of “fruitful opening ideas” and a session of simultaneous chess play.
In front of the shocked Vasyukinites, he develops a plan to transform the city into the world center of chess thought, into New Moscow - the capital of the country, the world, and then, when a method of interplanetary communication is invented, the universe. Playing chess for the second time in his life, Bender loses all the games and flees the city in a boat prepared in advance by Vorobyaninov, capsizing the barge with his pursuers.
Catching up with the theater, the accomplices end up in Stalingrad at the beginning of July, from there to Mineralnye Vody and, finally, to Pyatigorsk, where the fitter Mechnikov agrees to steal the necessary things for twenty: “in the morning - money, in the evening - chairs or in the evening - money, in the morning - chairs .”
To get money, Kisa Vorobyaninov begs for alms as a former member of the State Duma from the Cadets, and Ostap collects money from tourists for entrance to Proval, a Pyatigorsk landmark.
At the same time, the former owners of the chairs are coming to Pyatigorsk: the comedian Iznurenkov, the cannibal Ellochka and her husband, the thief Alkhen and his wife Sashkhen from social security. The fitter brings the promised chairs, but only two of the three, which are opened (to no avail!) at the top of Mount Mashuk.
Meanwhile, the deceived father Fyodor is traveling around the country in search of chairs for engineer Bruns. First to Kharkov, from there to Rostov, then to Baku and finally to a dacha near Batum, where on his knees he asks Bruns to sell him chairs. His wife sells everything she can and sends money to Father Fyodor. Having bought chairs and cut them up on the nearest beach, Father Fyodor, to his horror, discovers nothing.
The Columbus Theater is taking the last chair to Tiflis. Bender and Vorobyaninov go to Vladikavkaz, and from there they walk to Tiflis along the Georgian Military Road, where they meet the unfortunate father Fyodor.
Fleeing from being chased by competitors, he climbs onto a rock from which he cannot get down, goes crazy there, and ten days later Vladikavkaz firefighters remove him from there to take him to a psychiatric hospital.
The concessionaires finally reach Tiflis, where they find one of the members of the “Union of Sword and Ploughshare,” Kislyarsky, from whom they “borrow” five hundred rubles to save the life of the “father of Russian democracy.” Kislyarsky flees to Crimea, but the friends, after drinking for a week, go there after the theater.
September. Having made their way into the theater in Yalta, the accomplices are already ready to open the last of the theater chairs, when it suddenly “jumps” to the side: the famous Crimean earthquake of 1927 begins. Nevertheless, having opened the chair, Bender and Vorobyaninov do not find anything in it. There remains the last chair, which has sunk into the goods yard of the Oktyabrsky railway station in Moscow.
At the end of October, Bender finds him in the new railway workers' club. After a comic bargaining with Vorobyaninov for interest on the future capital, Ostap falls asleep, and Ippolit Matveevich, somewhat damaged in his mind after six months of searching, cuts his throat with a razor.
Then he sneaks into the club and opens the last chair there. There are no diamonds in it either. The watchman says that in the spring he accidentally found treasures hidden by the bourgeoisie in a chair. It turns out that, to everyone’s happiness, a new club building was built with this money.
