An elderly and authoritative bureaucrat with fame and high office in St. Petersburg's state and political circles, who holds religious and moral rules above all else. While maintaining his marriage of convenience with Anna in a respectable manner by societal standards, he is shaken by her illicit affair with Vronsky. His only concern is to maintain his social status and avoid appearing 'ridiculous.' Due to his moral principles, he begins a process of forgiving Anna, claiming he chooses to remain honorable rather than seek revenge, but his heart and mercy are extremely formalistic. When his path is completely separated from Anna, he turns into a pathetic, rigid man buried in religious and magical (mystical) obsessions under the patronage of the fake, devout, and deceitful Countess Lydia Ivanovna, and refuses Anna's request for divorce to the end.
Losing his parents as a child, Alexei was raised by his uncle in a noble but loveless administrative environment. He dedicated himself entirely to the state, ambition, and the ideals of the state by graduating at the top of his class at every level. His marriage to Anna occurred more as a result of a sense of necessity than an organic love within him.
Tall, old, balding, forehead full of wrinkles; has large, prominent (sometimes even found intimidatingly coarse) bat-like ears. He has a protruding chin and large, vein-covered hands. His mustachioed formal bureaucratic face is always tired, pale, and emotionless.
Seryoja
His own son by blood; however, because he harbors within him a hatred and distance that reminds him of his wife's sin, he is a child he also fails to love.
Anna Karenina
His wife, who was merely a symbol of his social reputation but whom he led to disaster while failing to make her taste love or emotion, and for whom he harbors resentment.
Aleksey Vronski
His enemy, whom he hates intensely for stealing his wife, but whom he avoids confronting face-to-face and never challenges to a duel due to his cowardly nature.
Lidiya İvanovna
His mystical confidante/friend to whom he handed over the entire management of his household after Anna left, who strokes his ego by giving him spiritual fervor and fake admiration.
Stepan Oblonski (Stiva)
The flippant brother-in-law whose carefree ease he finds repugnant to his own formal order when he intervenes to resolve Anna's situation.