1864. Zemstvos, self-governing rural councils, are created.
1865. Lev Tolstoy begins to publish War and Peace.
1866. An attempted assassination of the tsar prompts a wave of political reaction, especially in education and the press. Chekhov, as a student, will suffer from the new emphasis on Greek, Latin, and grammar.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment published.
1867–1879. Chekhov’s primary and secondary education in Taganrog in very rigorous schools. He gives lessons, frequents the theater, edits a student newspaper, writes plays now lost.
1868. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is published serially.
1871. Dostoevsky’s The Devils is published.
1872. Special court set up to try treason cases.
1873. Only 227 factories in all of Russia.
Nikolay Nekrasov begins to publish his populist poem Who Can Be Happy in Russia?
1874. Trade unions made illegal.
All males over twenty-one, regardless of class, now liable for conscription into the armed forces.
1875. Chekhov writes comic journal The Stutterer to amuse his brothers in Moscow.
Tolstoy begins to publish Anna Karenina.
1876. Chekhov’s father goes bankrupt and moves the family to Moscow, leaving Anton in Taganrog.
1877. Chekhov visits Moscow where he finds his family in penury.
The Russians fight the Turks in the Balkans, ostensibly to free the Christian Slavs from Moslem oppression. An armistice, signed in 1878, greatly reduces the Turkish presence in the Balkans, but the Congress of Berlin humiliates Russia by reducing its spoils to part of Bessarabia.
1878. Chekhov writes plays now lost: Without Patrimony, He Met His Match, and The Hen Has Good Reason to Cluck.
Public outcries against the government and acts of terrorism increase.
1879. Chekhov finishes high school and in June moves to Moscow, where he enrolls in the medical school of the University of Moscow on a scholarship. Starts to write cartoon captions for the humor magazine Alarm Clock.
Dostoevsky begins to publish The Brothers Karamazov.
1880. March. Chekhov’s first short story, “Letter of a Landowner to His Learned Neighbor Dr. Friedrich,” is published in the comic journal The Dragon-fly.
1880–1887. Chekhov writes for Moscow and St. Petersburg comic journals under pen names including Antosha Chekhonte, Doctor Who’s Lost His Patients, Man without a Spleen, and My Brother’s Brother.
1881. Chekhov writes play later known as Platonov (not published until 1923).
Tsar Alexander II is assassinated; his son, Alexander III, initiates a reign of political repression and social stagnation.
Dostoevsky dies.
1882. Platonov is turned down by the Maly Theatre. Chekhov publishes “Late-blooming Flowers.”
The imperial monopoly on theater in Moscow and St. Petersburg is abolished. Several private theaters are opened.
Troops are used to suppress student uprisings at the Universities of St. Petersburg and Kazan.
1883. Chekhov publishes “Fat and Lean,” “At Sea,” and “Christmas Eve.”
1884. Chekhov finishes his medical studies and starts general practice in Chikino, outside Moscow. Publishes his first collection of stories, Fairy Tales of Melpomene, under the name Antosha Chekhonte. His only attempt at a novel, The Shooting Party, serialized in Daily News. Writes one-act play, Along the High Road, which is censored and not published until 1914.
December. Symptoms of Chekhov’s tuberculosis diagnosed.
1885. Chekhov’s first trip to St. Petersburg. Meets the publisher Aleksey Suvorin and the painter Isaak Levitan, who become close friends. Romances with Dunya Efros and Nataliya Golden. Publishes “The Huntsman,” “Sergeant Prishibeev,” and “Grief.”
1886. Chekhov begins writing for Suvorin’s conservative newspaper New Times. Puts out a second collection of stories, Motley Tales, signed both An. P. Chekhov and Antosha Chekhonte.
The eminent Russian writer Dmitry Grigorovich encourages him to pursue his literary career in a more serious fashion. Publishes “The Witch,” “The Chorus Girl,” “On the Road,” and the first version of the comic monologue The Evils of Tobacco.
1887. Chekhov publishes third collection of short stories, In the Gloaming, and fourth collection, Innocent Conversations, which include “Enemies,” “Typhus,” “The Siren,” and “Kashtanka.” Also writes one-act Swan Song.
November 19. Ivanov, a full-length play, performed at Korsh’s Theatre, Moscow. It receives a mixed press.
1888. First serious long story, “The Steppe,” published in St. Petersburg magazine Northern Herald, initiating a new care taken with his writing. One-act farces The Bear and The Proposal produced to acclaim. In the Gloaming wins the Pushkin Prize of the Academy of Sciences.
Student uprisings at the Universities of Moscow, Odessa, Kharkov, and Kazan are put down by the military. The government decrees that all Jews must live within the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Poland and the western provinces of Russia.
Tolstoy publishes his play of peasant life The Power of Darkness, but the censor will not allow it to be staged.
Maksim Gorky is arrested for subversion, and is henceforth under police surveillance.
1889. The Social Democratic Working-man’s Party is founded.
“A Dismal Story,” one of the first of Chekhov’s mature stories, published in Northern Herald.
January 31. Premiere of the revised Ivanov at Alexandra Theatre, St. Petersburg.
October. Chekhov’s play The Wood Goblin finished. Played at Abramova’s Theatre in December. The play is poorly received by the critics; he is scolded for “blindly copying everyday life and paying no attention to the requirements of the stage.”
1890. According to a letter to Sergey Dyagilev, Chekhov reworks The Wood Goblin into Uncle Vanya, which will not be published until 1897. Chekhov publishes collection Glum People, which includes “Thieves” and “Gusev.” Writes one-act comedies, The Involuntary Tragedian and The Wedding.
April-October. Travels through Siberia to Sakhalin Island, where he visits prison camps and carries out a census. Sails in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
1891. Six-week trip to Western Europe. Publication of the novella The Duel and “Peasant Women.” Buys a small farmstead in Melikhovo.
1892. Chekhov settles in Melikhovo with his family.
Work begins on the Trans-Siberian Railway, to be completed in 1905.
Sergey Witte becomes Minister of Finance, and turns Russia into a modern industrial state, increasing industrialism, railways, and Western trade by 1899.