View source for Plyushkin

{{Short description|Fictional character in Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls}}
{{More references|date=December 2009}}
{{expand Russian|date=December 2012|topic=cult}}
[[File:Agin pliuskin.jpg|thumb|''Plyushkin'', drawing by [[Alexander Agin]] (1846-1847)]]
'''Stepan Plyushkin''' ({{langx|ru|link=no|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 [[serf]]s 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.<ref name=novel>{{Cite book |last=Gogol |first=Nikolai |title=Dead Souls |publisher=Penguin Books}}</ref> 

His surname is derived from the Russian word for flat [[bun]] pastry ({{ill|plyushka|ru|Плюшка}}).

== Background ==

Plyushkin had two daughters and a son, but upon the death of his wife he became a suspicious [[miser]]. The younger daughter died and the other two siblings left home. When his daughter Aleksandra Stepanovna visited him several times with gifts and grandchildren, but received no money in return, she stopped visiting. When Chichikov meets Plyushkin, he mistakes him for the steward due to his ignoble dress.<ref name=novel/>

== Plyushkin syndrome ==

Today in Russia, the name "Plyushkin" is semi-humorously applied to people who collect and amass various useless things, a behavior known as [[compulsive hoarding]]. Sometimes the terms "Plyushkin symptom" or "[[Plyushkin syndrome]]" are used to describe such people,<ref>Cybulska E., "Senile Squalor: Plyushkin's not Diogenes Syndrome". ''Psychiatric Bulletin'', 1998;22:319–320</ref>and "Plyushkin" is used as a colloquial [[metonymic]] reference to [[wikt:hoarder|hoarders]].

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Dead Souls}}
{{Obsessive–compulsive disorder}}

[[Category:Culture of Russia]]
[[Category:Compulsive hoarding]]
[[Category:Literary characters introduced in 1842]]
[[Category:Characters in Russian novels of the 19th century]]
[[Category:Fictional characters with obsessive–compulsive disorder]]
[[Category:Nikolai Gogol]]

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