Anton Chekhov

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich

Born Jan. 17 (29), 1860, in Taganrog; died July 2 (15), 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany; buried in Moscow. Russian writer.

Chekhov’s father, a merchant of the third guild, owned a grocery store. As a boy, Chekhov helped his father in the store; he entered the Taganrog Gymnasium in 1868. In 1876 the father went bankrupt and left for Moscow, followed by his family. Left to himself, Chekhov continued his studies, earning his living by tutoring. In 1879 he finished school and moved to Moscow. He studied medicine at the University of Moscow, graduated in 1884 with the title of district physician, and for some time practiced medicine.

Chekhov began writing in the late 1870’s. He contributed to various humor magazines, such as Oskolki, using different pen names—for example, Antosha, A Man Without a Spleen, Brother of My Brother, and, most frequently, Antosha Chekhonte. A collection entitled At Leisure (later called The Prank) was prepared for publication in 1882 but never appeared in print, apparently because of censorship. Chekhov’s first book of short stories, Tales of Melpomene, was published in 1884; it was followed in 1886 by Motley Tales.

In March 1886, D. V. Grigorovich wrote Chekhov a letter praising his “real talent” and urging him to “give up working under a deadline” and save “[your] impressions for a well-considered work” (see Slovo, collection no. 2, Moscow, 1914, pp. 199–200). This letter was one of the factors that hastened Chekhov’s shift from “trifling” to “well-considered work.” The transition from the purely humorous to the “realm of the serious” occurred between 1885 and 1887. “The Steppe” and “The Name-Day Party” appeared in 1888, followed in 1889 by “An Attack of Nerves” and “A Dreary Story.” This period also saw the publication of several collections of Chekhov’s short stories—namely, In the Twilight (1887; awarded half of the Pushkin Prize in 1888), Innocent Speeches (1887), Tales (1888), and Gloomy People (1890).

Chekhov’s journey to the island of Sakhalin in 1890 made a deep impression on him, which left its mark in his journalistic essay of 1893–94, The Island of Sakhalin (published as a book in 1895), in the short stories “In Exile” (1892) and “The Murder” (1895), and in the novella “Ward No. 6” (1892), which summed up the entire experience. Imbued with a spirit of protest against the horrors of prison life, “Ward No. 6” represented the high point of Chekhov’s critical realism of the late 1880’s and early 1890’s. This is how V. I. Lenin described his impression of the work: “When I finished this story last night I was genuinely terrified, I couldn’t stay in my room, I got up and went out. I felt as though I were locked up in ward no. 6 myself” (cited in Reminiscences of V. I. Lenin by His Family, 1955, p. 36).

In the second half of the 1880’s Chekhov wrote extensively for the theater. His plays included Ivanov (1887–89), the one-act comedy The Wedding (1889; published 1890), The Wood Demon (1889; published 1890, later revised and reissued as Uncle Vanya), and the one-act farces The Bear, The Proposal, and The Anniversary.

In the 1890’s and early 1900’s Chekhov made a number of trips abroad. In 1892 he bought the estate of Melikhovo in the Serpukhov District, 13 versts from the Lopasnia Station (now Chekhov). He administered medical aid to the local peasants, built schools for the peasants’ children, visited some of the famine-stricken provinces in 1892, worked as district physician during the cholera epidemic of 1892–93, and helped in the national census of 1897.

In approximately 1893, Chekhov’s work moved in a new direction. In 1894 he wrote the story “The Student,” in which he asserts that “truth and beauty . . . have continued uninterruptedly to the present day and, it appears, have always been the most important thing in human life and on the earth in general” (Poln. sobr, soch. i pisem, vol. 8, 1947, p. 348). The crowning work of this period is the play The Seagull (1896). As staged at the Alek-sandrinskii Theater, however, the play failed, and the lyricism that colored Chekhov’s works gave way to a different kind of writing. In his novella of 1897, “Peasants,” and in the short stories written in the same year, Chekhov sought to reveal the un-embellished truth and even the harshness of life and to show its terrible underside.

In the 1898 trilogy “The Man in a Shell,” “Gooseberries,” and “About Love,” in the stories and novellas of the late 1890’s and early 1900’s, and in his last story, “The Betrothed” (1903), Chekhov depicted spiritual stagnation and a hero striving toward a better life.

Chekhov’s skill as a dramatist came into full flower in the 1890’s and early 1900’s. In 1896, after The Seagull, he wrote the play Uncle Vanya (published 1897), followed in 1900–01 by Three Sisters (awarded the Griboedov Prize) and in 1903–04 by The Cherry Orchard. The four plays were all produced at the Moscow Art Theater, which opened in 1898; the triumphant premiere of The Seagull took place on December 17 of that year.

In 1898, after the death of his father and because of his own deteriorating condition (due to tuberculosis), Chekhov moved from Melikhovo to Yalta, where he built a house. There he met with L. N. Tolstoy, M. Gorky, I. A. Bunin, A. I. Kuprin, and I. I. Levitan. Chekhov’s position during the Dreyfus trial, his break with A. S. Suvorin’s reactionary newspaper Novoe Vremia, and his sympathetic attitude toward student disturbances were indicative of his rapid ideological development and heightened interest in public life. Chekhov was elected an honorary academician in 1900, but together with V. G. Korolenko he renounced the title in 1902 in protest against Nicholas IPs refusal to grant the same title to Gorky.

Chekhov’s work mirrors a broad cross section of postreform and prerevolutionary Russian life. Even his early comic pieces cannot be reduced to pure humor. In all the kaleidoscopic variety of his early stories, the author increasingly reveals his basic themes—man and his rank, poetry and prose, life’s facade and its reverse side. Many of Chekhov’s early stories show the triumph of the mercantile spirit. Antosha Chekhonte’s characters belong entirely to the banal and philistine world that has given them birth; these are “the fat and the thin,” the “chameleons,” “windbags,” “philistines,” “bridegrooms and papas,” and “barroom philosophers” who never dream of opposing their environment.

The creative turning point that Chekhov experienced in the mid-1880’s resulted in the appearance of new protagonists who do oppose their environment and who suffer precisely because of their humanity, such as the characters in “An Upheaval,” “Aniu-ta,” and “Misery.” The basic direction of Chekhov’s mature work of the late 1880’s and early 1900’s is clearly apparent; the author strives to analyze what N. G. Chernyshevskii called the influence “of social relations and everyday conflicts on character” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 3, 1947, pp. 422–23). Chekhov’s unique field of inquiry is the soul of modern man. Hence his main theme—man’s indifference, or his “somnolent stupor,” as represented by the peculiar ordeal of a hero who either rouses himself from spiritual slumber or else gives up and submits to it.

The two basic groups on which Chekhov’s mature work was focused were the intelligentsia and the common people. Likewise, the theme of indifference is developed in two different ways: the hero is either an educated man who is spiritually content and has locked himself up inside a “shell,” or a man of the people—downtrodden, worn out by life, and made dull and indifferent. For Chekhov, the “shell” is the symbol of a life built on lies and violence, on the gluttonous satiety of some, and on the hunger and suffering of others. “The Student,” in which the hero Ivan Velikopol’skii finds the way to the heart of two peasant girls, Va-silisa and Luker’ia, was the prototype of the two types of works that Chekhov wrote between 1890 and 1900. The hero of “The Student” is followed by the characters in the novellas “Three Years” (1895), “The House With the Attic,” or “An Artist’s Story” (1896), and “My Life” (1896), the short trilogy consisting of “The Man In a Shell,” “Gooseberries,” and “About Love,” and the stories “Ionych” (1898), “The Lady With the Dog” (1899), and “The Betrothed.” Vasilisa and Luker’ia, on the other hand, are followed by the peasants in the novella “Peasants” and in the story “The New Country House” (1899), the rural police assistant in the story “On Official Business” (1899), and the heroes of the novella “In the Ravine” (1900).

The gulf between the intelligentsia and the common people is a theme that pervades Chekhov’s work and is closely linked to the theme of the “shell.” During these years Chekhov wrote distinctive cycles of works on this theme—”artistic investigations” of life. In addition to the “intelligentsia” and “peasant” cycles, he wrote stories depicting the world of the merchant and the shopkeeper’s storehouse, as well as the inhumanly harsh life of the factories. “Three Years” (1894), “A Woman’s Kingdom” (1894), and “A Doctor’s Visit” (1898) belong to this group of stories.

In his late works, including the short story “A Visit to Friends” (1898) and the play The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov develops the theme of the impoverishment and ruin of the “nests of the gentlefolk.” Thus the theme of human indifference is resolved not only in moral and psychological terms but also on the scale of different social situations.

The Chekhovian image of “the man in a shell” grows into a symbol of callousness and conventionalism, simultaneously intimidating and fearful. V. I. Lenin often referred to this satirical symbolic image.

The essence of Chekhov’s thoughts on faith in man and on the truthfulness of artistic portrayal is conveyed by an entry in the writer’s notebooks: “Man will become better when you have shown him what he is” (Poln. sobr. soch. i pisem, vol. 12, 1949, p. 270). Chekhov believed in the possibility of human renewal and the victory of man over the “shell.” In Chekhov, man is constantly being tested by the harsh truth of life. Another important aspect of Chekhov’s observation is that literature should show man his own image, without trying to persuade and without resorting to ennobling deceptions, generalized arguments, or attempts by the author to sway the reader’s emotions.

Chekhov’s artistic style is profoundly and organically linked to the ideological direction of his work—that is, the desire to awaken “the living soul” in modern man. His writing firmly establishes the principle of restrained and outwardly unemphatic narration: the greater the author’s objectivity, the stronger the impact. Chekhov’s terseness of expression, conciseness, and condensed narration (“Brevity is the sister of talent,” ibid., vol. 14, 1949, p. 342) stemmed from his faith in the reader’s ability to catch the author’s hidden and complex meaning. Linked to this is the heightened role of details that at first glance seem minor and of little importance; such details, which are not in the least incidental, are psychologically and emotionally significant. Chekhov’s details not only hint at what is important and characteristic but also serve as vehicles for the internal movement of the story, novella, or play. Examples of such details are Iuliia’s umbrella in “Three Years,” the carriage in which Dr. Startsev rides in “Ionych,” and the dead bird in The Seagull.

The mature Chekhov avoided tense action, intrigue, and external diversion, shifting the center of gravity to the internal plot, the story of the hero’s soul, and the hidden dynamics of the hero’s struggle against circumstance, the environment, and the mire of a parochial existence. The tragic meaning of many of Chekhov’s works lies precisely in the fact that nothing happens—everything remains as it was. Complex plotting, which played an important role in the anecdotal novellas of Antosha Chekhonte, is put aside in the works of the mature Chekhov. Events “dissolve” into the flow of daily life or into psychology. In this respect the plot structure of Chekhov’s prose works resembles that of his plays.

An integral trait of Chekhov the artist is the profound realization that tragedy does not consist of what is terrible, exceptional, or out of the ordinary but of what is prosaic, everyday, and commonplace. The “tragedy of the prosaic” is all the more dangerous because it destroys the hero imperceptibly, by lulling him to sleep and convincing him that a different kind of life—one that is not prosaic—is impossible. For Chekhov, terror lies in that which is not terrible; the benign and the bloodless are what is fatal. This is also related to the evolution of Chekhov’s humor. The writer’s development as an artist did not consist of the transition from the comic to the serious but rather of his deeper understanding of the comic as tragicomic, uniting laughter, irony, and sadness. Few of the Russian satirical writers have created such a complex yet outwardly simple mixture of laughter and seriousness, satire and lyricism. Chekhov’s laughter is not a separate facet of his art; it is the very atmosphere of his works, representing a complex gamut of feelings. What is encompassed in his laughter ranges from accusation, derision, and disdain aimed at an entire way of life to the revelation of the grievous rootlessness and humanity of the “little souls” who are Chekhov’s protagonists.

Chekhov laid out new paths for the development of Russian and world drama. He refused to divide his characters into angels and villains, or one-sided representatives of good and evil. Just as in his prose works, he avoided plot intrigue and shifted the center of gravity to the hidden, internal plot involving the mental world of the hero. Plot emerges not as a chain of events but as the story of man’s desire to act and his attempts to break out of his daily routine—out of the bonds of “prosaic tragedy.”

Chekhov’s plays are built around many themes and leitmotifs that unfold on many different levels and are associated with various men’s fortunes. The theme developed in Chekhov’s prose works emerges in his plays as well—namely, the loss of inner connections between people. The characters in Chekhov’s plays are separated from each other by invisible barriers; each is immersed in his own condition. The dialogue in Chekhov’s plays tends toward monologue; each character speaks his own particular “mi-cromonologue.” Nevertheless, the overall lyrical atmosphere unites the seemingly isolated heroes.

Even in his early plays Chekhov did more than re-create everyday reality. But The Seagull marks a new advance. Running through the entire play is an image that is raised to a symbol and is pregnant with meaning—the image of the seagull, symbolizing Treplev’s and Nina Zarechnaia’s dream of a new kind of art, pure and bold; also related to this image is the theme of wounded and tragic love. There is yet another side to the multifaceted image of the dead bird, representing a soulless, lifeless, mediocre art.

Discouraged by the failure of The Seagull, Chekhov retreated somewhat from the use of such devices. In The Cherry Orchard, however, he turned to them once again. Chekhov’s notion of the dramatic genre acquired new content as well. The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard were called comedies by their author, but the comic components of these plays are inseparable from the tragic ones. The past experience of Russian and world theatre attests to the failure of those directors who view Chekhov as a “mere satirist” whose writing is based on farce or of those who go to the opposite extreme and adopt a lyrical approach to the plays while ignoring their comic elements. We are now entering the stage of integrated and multifaceted analysis of Chekhov the dramatist in all his dialectical complexity and inimitable mixture of lyricism and satire.

Chekhov inherited and carried forward the best realistic traditions of Russian literature. L. N. Tolstoy’s definition—”Chekhov is Pushkin in prose” (Ezhemesiachnyi zhurnal dlia vsekh, 1905, no. 7, p. 427)—illuminates the role of A. S. Pushkin’s poetry as an influence on Chekhov the prose writer and dramatist. Pushkin’s perfect sense of rhythm and his attempt to achieve harmonious integrity, clarity, and musicality were interpreted by Chekhov in his own way. Chekhov was profoundly influenced by M. Iu. Lermontov, the author of “Thought” and of the novel A Hero of Our Time, who wrote of the “cooling” of the soul of modern man. Lermontov’s “Taman”’ was for Chekhov an unsurpassed model of prose. It has also been noted that I. S. Turgenev’s plays foreshadowed the hidden lyricism characterizing Chekhov’s dramatic work.

Among Chekhov’s predecessors and contemporaries, the one who took first place in the writer’s creative consciousness was Leo Tolstoy, whose brilliant artistic creations invariably earned Chekhov’s enthusiastic praise. Although Chekhov was definitely influenced by Tolstoy’s philosophy, the ideological differences between the two writers became more pronounced in the late 1890’s. Tolstoy’s concept of nonviolent resistance to evil aroused Chekhov’s opposition. Tolstoy reproached Chekhov for his lack of a consistent moral position—in other words, for his skeptical attitude toward faith; he had, however, a high opinion of Chekhov’s writing talent and called him “an incomparable artist.” “Thanks to his sincerity,” said Tolstoy, “Chekhov has created forms of writing that are new—entirely new, in my opinion—for the entire world [and] the likes of which I have not encountered anywhere” (cited in P. Sergeenko, Tolstoi i ego sovremenniki: Ocherki, Moscow, 1911, p. 226).

Chekhov exerted a strong influence on Russian and world literature—both prose and drama. His pupils included the young Gorky (particularly in drama), Bunin, Kuprin, and to some extent L. N. Andreev. K. A. Trenev and A. N. Arbuzov have written about Chekhov’s role in the education of Soviet dramatists, and many European and American writers have noted the part he played in the art of the 20th century. G. B. Shaw’s play Heartbreak House, published in 1919, was clearly written under Chekhov’s influence; Shaw called it “a fantasy in the Russian style on English themes” (Izbr. proizv., vol. 2, Moscow, 1956, p. 286). J. Galsworthy wrote of Chekhov’s salutary effect on English literature. A. Wurmser, F. Mauriac, E. Triolet, and the French directors J.-L. Barrault and J. Vilar have pointed to the impact of Chekhov’s work. In “A Word on Chekhov,” T. Mann revealed in depth the Russian writer’s unique position in terms of his creative ideology and his unpretentious and selfless goal—namely, the use of unvarnished artistic truth in the people’s service.

Chekhov is one of the most popular playwrights of contemporary Soviet and foreign theater. Many of his works have been filmed for the cinema and television, including The Wedding, The Lady With the Dog, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, and the early drama Without Fathers.

Russian prerevolutionary and Soviet studies of Chekhov have produced a wealth of textual information and commentary. In articles appearing even before the Revolution, Chekhov’s prose works and plays were searchingly analyzed by such writers as M. Gorky, V. G. Korolenko, N. K. Mikhailovskii, F. D. Batiushkov, D. N. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, and the Marxist critics V. V. Vorovskii and A. A. Divil’kovskii. In the Soviet period, enormous efforts have been devoted to the collection and publication of Chekhov’s literary legacy and the study of his life and work. Among those who have contributed to this undertaking are A. V. Lunacharskii, S. D. Balukhatyi, Iu. V. Sobolev, A. B. Derman, A. I. Roskin, K. I. Chukovskii, I. S. Ezhov, G. A. Bialyi, E. N. Konshina, N. I. Gitovich, M. L. Semanova, V. V. Er-milov, and G. P. Berdnikov. New works and publications (such as Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 68) were issued in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Chekhov’s birth.

The A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR is publishing the complete works and letters of Chekhov in 30 volumes. A series of collected research studies is being published to accompany the academy edition: the first such collection. In Chekhov’s Creative Laboratory, was issued in 1974; the second, Chekhov and His Times, in 1977; the third, Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy, is being prepared for publication.

There are Chekhov museums in Taganrog and in Moscow (in the house where the Chekhov family lived from 1886 to 1890), as well as in Melikhovo, in the village of Luka in Sumy Oblast, and in Yalta.

WORKS

Poln. sobr. soch., vols. 1–23. St. Petersburg, 1903–16.
Poln. sobr. soch., vols. 1–12. Edited by A. V. Lunacharskii and S. D. Balukhatyi. Moscow-Leningrad, 1930–33.
Poln. sobr. soch. i pisem, vols. 1–20. Moscow, 1944–51.
Poln. sobr. soch. i pisem v 30 tomakh, 1974–.

REFERENCES

Biographies, memoirs, and correspondence
Izmailov, A. Chekhov: Biografich. nabrosok. Moscow, 1916.
Sobolev, Iu. Chekhov. Moscow, 1934.
Derman, A. B. A. P. Chekhov. Moscow, 1939.
Ermilov, V. Chekhov, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1951.
Roskin, A. I. Chekhov: Biografich. povest’. Moscow, 1959.
Berdnikov, G. P. Chekhov. Moscow, 1974.
A. P. Chekhov i V. G. Korolenko: Perepiska. Moscow, 1923.
Perepiska, A. P. Chekhova i O. L. Knipper, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1934–36.
Pis’ma A. P. Chekhovu ego brata Aleksandra Chekhova. Moscow, 1939.
M. Gorkii i A. P. Chekhov: Perepiska, stat’i, vyskazyvaniia. Collection. Moscow, 1951.
Chekhova, M. P. Pis’ma kbratu A. P. Chekhovu. Moscow, 1954.
Chekhova, M. P. Iz dalekogoproshlogo: Zapis’ N. A. Sysoeva. Moscow, 1960.
Bunin, I. A. “O Chekhove.” Sobr. soch., vol. 9. Moscow, 1967.
A. P. Chekhov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov. [Moscow] 1960.
Chekhov, M. P. Vokrug Chekhova, 4th ed. [Moscow] 1964.
Knipper-Chekhova, O. L. [Vospominaniia i perepiska], part 1. Moscow, 1972.
Major critical studies
Vorovskii, V. V. “Lishnie liudi.” Soch., vol. 2. Moscow, 1931.
Lunacharskii, A. V. “Chekhov i ego proizvedeniia kak obshchestvennoe iavlenie.” In his Klassiki russkoi literatury (Izbr. stat’i). Moscow, 1937.
Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, D. N. “Etiudy o tvorchestve A. P. Chekhova.” Sobr. soch., vol. 5,3rded. Moscow, 1923.
Derman, A. B. Tvorch. portret Chekhova. Moscow, 1929.
Sobolev, Iu. V. Chekhov. Moscow, 1930.
Balukhatyi, S. D. Chekhov-dramaturg. Leningrad, 1936.
Stanislavskii, K. S. A. P. Chekhov v Moskovskom khudozh. teatre. Moscow, 1947.
Ermilov, V. Dramaturgiia Chekhova. Moscow, 1954.
Semanova, M. L. Chekhov v shkole, 2nd ed. Leningrad, 1954.
Semanova, M. L. Chekhov i sov. litra, 1917–1935. Moscow-Leningrad, 1966.
Leonov, L. “Rech’ o Chekhove.” Sobr. soch., vol. 5. Moscow, 1954.
Stroeva, M. N. Chekhov i Khudozh. teatr. Moscow, 1955.
Berdnikov, G. Chekhov-dramaturg. Leningrad-Moscow, 1957.
Berdnikov, G. A. P. Chekhov: Ideinye i tvorch. iskaniia, 2nd ed. Leningrad, 1970.
Golubkov, V. V. Masterstvo A. P. Chekhova. Moscow, 1958.
Papernyi, Z. A. P. Chekhov, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1960.
Papernyi, Z. Zapisnye knizhki Chekhova. Moscow, 1976.
Aleksandrov, B. I. A. P. Chekhov: Seminarii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1964.
Erenburg, I. “Perechityvaia Chekhova.” Sobr. soch., vol. 6. Moscow, 1965.
Shakh-Azizova, T. K. Chekhov i zapadnoevrop. drama ego vremeni. Moscow, 1966.
Kataev, V. B. “Geroi i ideia v proizv. Chekhova 90-kh godov.” Vestnik MGU: Filologiia, 1968, no. 6.
Berkovskii, N. Ia. “Chekhov: ot rasskazov i povestei k dramaturgii.” In his Lit-ra i teatr. Moscow, 1969.
Chukovskii, K. O Chekhove. Moscow, 1971.
Chudakov, A. P. Poetika Chekhova. Moscow, 1971.
Skaftymov, A. “Nravstvennye iskaniia rus. pisatelei.” Stat’i i issledo-vaniia o rus. klassikakh. Moscow, 1972.
Anikst, A. Teoriia dramy v Rossii ot Pushkina do Chekhova. Moscow, 1972.
Belkin, A. “Chitaia Dostoevskogo i Chekhova.” Stat’i i razbory. Moscow, 1973.
Bialyi, G. A. Rus. realizm kontsa XIXv. Leningrad, 1973.
Chekhovskie chteniia v Ialte. Collection. Moscow, 1973.
Chekhovskie chteniia v Ialte: Chekhov i teatr. Collection. Moscow, 1976.
Lakshin, V. Ia. Tolstoi i Chekhov, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1975.
Foreign literature
Duelos, H. B Antone Tchékhov, le médecin etl’écrivain. Paris, 1927.
Gasparini, E. ll teatro di Cechov. Milan, 1940.
Triolet, E. L’Histoire d’A. Tchékhov: sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1954.
Laffitte, S. Tchékhov par lui-même: Images ettextes. Paris, 1955.
Magarshack, D. Chekhov the Dramatist. New York, 1960.
Magarshack, D. The Real Chekhov: An Introduction to Chekhov’s Last Plays. London, 1972.
A. Čechov: Some Essays. Edited by T. Eekman. Leiden, 1960.
Düwel, W A. Tschechow: Dichter der Morgendämmerung. Halle/Saale, 1961.
Picchio, R. I raccontidi Čechov. Turin, 1961.
Winner, T. chekhov and His Prose. New York, 1966.
Maegd-Soëp, C. de. De vrouw in het werk en het leven van A. P. Tsjechov. [Brugge-Utrecht, 1968.]
Sliwowski, R. Czechow woczach krytykis’wiatowej. Warsaw, 1971.
Reference and bibliographical works
Masanov, I. F. Chekhoviana, fasc. 1. Moscow, 1929.
Fridkes, L. M. Opisanie memuarov o Chekhove. Moscow-Leningrad, 1930.
Arkhiv A. P. Chekhova: Annotirovannoe opisanie pisem k A. P. Chekhovu, fascs. 1–2. Moscow, 1939–41.
Gitovich, N. I. Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. P. Chekhova. Moscow, 1955.
A. P. Chekhov: Rukopisi, pis’ma . . . . Opisanie materialov TsGALI SSSR. Moscow, 1960.
Polotskaia, E. A. “Bibliografiia vospominanii o Chekhove.” In Lit. nasledstvo, vol. 68. Moscow, 1960.

Z. S. PAPERNYI

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich

WORKS

REFERENCES

Anton Chekhov

Synonyms for Anton Chekhov

noun Russian dramatist whose plays are concerned with the difficulty of communication between people (1860-1904)

Synonyms