Russia During Chekhov's Lifetime  

by Ben Marks

An informal review of events between 1860 and 1905

Anton Chekhov's lifetime is bounded by two singular events in Russian history. His life began a year before the 1861 Russian emancipation, saw the rein of three Tsars, and ended within months of the Bloody Sunday event. The forces at work within Russia shaped the outlook of all citizens of the Empire, including this brilliant writer.

Serfdom in Russia had matured into slavery by the ascendancy Alexander II in 1855. While including oppression of ideas and the lack of possession, Russian serfs of the early 19th century were also tied to the land on which they worked and lived, and taxed mercilessly to fund the lifestyle of the owners of that land. The Russian Empire had been the largest in Europe, but Alexander wanted the glory of being the best as well. To this end, he re-established a policy of westernization, emulating his ancestor Peter the Great.

This meant emancipation for the peasantry. Tsar Emperor Alexander II was one of the more powerful men on the planet at the time and a symbol of his populace. On one hand, he had a majority population of unhappy slaves and overtaxed workers, willing to remind him of their unhappiness with terrorist acts; on the other an aristocracy, to which he belonged and with which he empathized, holding a great deal of the nation's purse strings, rapidly growing disenfranchised with the autocracy.

No one who owns it particularly relishes the prospect of losing any property. This was demonstrated well for a Tsar planning emancipation in 1860: look across either ocean to the United States, where independent states led by wealthy landholders were seceding swiftly and a war was tearing the new nation apart. Similar conflicts arose in almost every culture that had emancipated a slave population.

Alexander II struck a one-sided compromise between landowners and an underrepresented peasantry: the serfs would be freed in a series of social reforms. Tax rates would be shifted and limitations on movement would be eased. In addition former serfs would be granted the opportunity to buy plots of land carved from huge estates.

The trade-off was huge: the peasantry would repay the landowners for property received by paying special taxes for a period of fifty years, effectively a life tax. However, the Empire paid the landowners immediately in the form of government-issued bonds, putting undue pressure on government coffers. Another deficiency of the plan was an agency for controlling land distribution. Using existing agencies controlled by local landowners resulted in a system whereby the new landowners were sold the worse tracks of land. This outcome alone was an inequality. Coupled with inadequate agricultural technologies and techniques, this system would bring disaster to Russia's agrarian economy.

This was the country into which Anton Chekhov arrived in 1860, removed from the forced servitude of serfdom by a grandfather who bought his own freedom. Ultimately this meant that Chekov was able to move relatively freely within the Empire of Russia and also throughout Europe.

Also moving throughout Europe, the Russian military participated in several campaigns in foreign lands, allowing many returning soldiers to see emerging liberal policies in action. Frustration with slow acting reforms led to the rise of grassroots radical political movements, some of which used terrorist tactics.

While these forces worked to change the Empire, Anton Chekhov was growing up in Taganrog, a small town near the Black Sea. At 16, his father's business went belly-up, and the family moved to Moscow. Anton stayed in his hometown for an additional three years to finish schooling. He followed his family in 1878, and attended medical school at Moscow University.

The appearance of Chekhov's first published writing in 1880 and the subsequent focus on that craft as Anton was published more, coincided with a change of regime. In 1881, a hand-made grenade fashioned by a terrorist group ended the reign of Tsar Emperor Alexander II, sweeping into power his conservative traditionalist son, Alexander III. The new Tsar blamed not only the influence of foreign powers but also the new reforms for unrest in the Empire and the death of his father.

Alexander III first shut the doors of his empire, promoting a strong nationalism through a renewed policy of Russification, the systematic erasure of all cultures but Muscovy Russian. He strengthened the internal espionage unit designed to hunt down and eliminate the radical groups he felt plagued his empire. He cared little about the effects of policies that delayed or reversed his father's emancipation reforms. His policies had a negative effect on the economy, by reducing international exchange of both ideas and goods. Unfortunately for Alexander III and his administration, his draconian measures were successful in fomenting further resentment among the populous.

It is during this time that Anton cemented his reputation as a writer, winning acclaim for his short stories. While receiving many lauds for his writing, by 1889 Chekhov had refocused on his medical career. He visited an exile colony north of Siberia, interviewing and examining the entire populace. After this, Chekhov traveled, eventually buying an estate outside Moscow in 1892. Here Chekhov meditated upon village life, and returned to a career in writing.

Alexander III died in late 1894, leaving his son Nicholas II at the reigns of this powerful Empire. Viewed by his father to be soft-handed, Nicholas II was unprepared to rule effectively.. The state of unrest in the populous and the shortcomings in Russian infrastructure were shown to him very early. His coronation festival featured a riot following rumors of shortages of gifts for the attendees. Sever hundreds were killed.

The Tsar spent the day among the wounded, yet that night attended a ball thrown on his behalf by French dignitaries at the French consulate in Moscow. Both the unrest present in the masses at the event and the inadequacy of authorities to maintain order were indications of the state of Russian infrastucture and the ineffectiveness of domestic policy. However, the new Tsar was determined to continue in his father's conservative footsteps. As the next decade passed, Nicholas proved uncompromising in his dealings with his populace and the world at large.

The decade following the coronation of the new Tsar would find Anton completing those works for which he is best known, not only short stories, but also plays: among them The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. This last proved to be Anton Chekhov's final work: he died in Germany, July 15, 1904.

This culmination of his career coincides with another climax in Russian history. The catalyst of revolution came on January 22, 1905, during a peaceful march through St Petersberg organized to present a petition to the Tsar. Troops took aim at the crowd and fired. That event, known as Bloody Sunday, was to prove catalyst of the 1905 Russian revolution.

Even though Chekov died of consuption a few scant months before Bloody Sunday, he lived and worked with the people involved. Through his writing, he did what he could to express the attitudes and feelings of people with which he shared his country, his culture, and his life.