In Russian, коллежский асессор (kollezhsky assessor), "collegiate assessor" (our translation), was the eighth of the fourteen grades of the civil career in the Table of Ranks, created by Peter the Great in 1722. It is the only identity the narrator gives himself when he imagines readers asking who he is: he served only to have something to eat, and retired when he inherited six thousand rubles from a distant relative.
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