Although Chekhov grew up and lived under Tzars his whole life, he was prophetic regarding what the future would hold. In The Three Sisters, the character of the Baron seems to see the Russian Revolution coming, although it wouldn’t fully occur until nearly 17 years later:
“…it feels like change is coming, doesn’t it? A big change, like a storm you see in the distance. And when it comes, it’s going to wash over all of us, and all the laziness and indifference will be swept away. In twenty-five or thirty years, we’ll all work! All of us!”
In Uncle Vanya, the character of Astrov has a long speech about his dismay at the amount of deforestation going on within the region depicted in the play. A full hundred years prior to anyone discussing global warming, and nearly seventy years before the modern environmental movement began, Chekhov had a character (who, not coincidentally, was a doctor and likely a stand-in for Chekhov) extolling the importance of preserving forests and trees.
My favorite quote from Chekhov is: “To the physician, nothing is dirty.” And I believe Chekhov’s experiences as a doctor were a crucial source of the profound empathy and deep humanism he brings to bear in his writing. His paternal grandfather was a serf (serfdom was the Russian version of chattel slavery), and his father was, by all accounts, an abusive despot who lead the family to financial ruin. I would also note that Chekhov’s paternal grandmother happened to be Ukrainian, and Ukrainian was spoken in his family’s household.
The main milieu of Chekhov’s plays was the landed gentry, as well as the servants and serfs who served them. He examined the former’s privilege sometimes affectionately, but more often critically, and his sympathy for the class of serfs was evident both in his plays and in his life.
After his father’s financial ruin, Chekhov would end up supporting his entire extended family through his writing, and although he could have made more money serving the medical needs of the wealthy, Chekhov preferred to serve the poor, and would spend three months investigating conditions in a Russian penal colony in Siberia, the conditions of which he would reveal through his interviews with the convicts. His findings were published as a work of social science and led to more humane treatment of convicts across Russia.
So, in addition to the fact that Chekhov died over a hundred years ago, he lived a life that, by all accounts, was one of important good works, both artistic and non-artistic and, based on his life, his work and his writings, I believe he would never support the senseless invasion of one country by another, and would stand with those fighting for justice and peace.
With all this in mind, I would respectfully ask that members of this community not judge or dismiss Anton Chekhov out of hand simply based on his nationality, but allow yourself to experience the breadth of experience this writer was able to bring to his work, creating plays that contain so much humanity. It is this shared humanity that despots and would-be despots try to make us forget, using fear and hatred to divide us.
