Richard Pevear
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
PHILLIP CALLOW, Chekhov: The Hidden Ground: A Biography, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1998.
JULIE W. DE SHERBININ, Chekhov and Russian Religious Culture, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1997. An excellent study of an essential and often ignored aspect of Chekhov’s artistic vision.
MICHAEL FINKE, Metapoesis: The Russian Tradition from Pushkin to Chekhov, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1995.
VERA GOTTLIEB and PAUL ALLEN, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Chekhov , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2000. Essays by various hands on Chekhov’s fiction and plays.
ROBERT LOUIS JACKSON, ed., Reading Chekhov’s Text, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1993. An interesting collection of recent critical studies.
SIMON KARLINSKY, ed., Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary, translated by Michael Henry Heim, commentary by Simon Karlinsky, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1997.
VLADIMIR KATAEV, If Only We Could Know: An Interpretation of Chekhov , translated by Harvey Pitcher, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2002. An important new work by a leading Russian Chekhov scholar.
AILEEN M. KELLY, Views from the Other Shore: Essays on Herzen, Chekhov, and Bakhtin, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1999. Studies by a reputed intellectual historian.
CATHY POPKIN, The Pragmatics of Insignificance, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1993.
V. S. PRITCHETT, Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free, Random House, New York, 1988. A critical biography by an English master of the short story and longtime admirer of Chekhov.
DONALD RAYFIELD, Chekhov: A Life, Henry Holt, New York, 1997.
The most complete and detailed biography of Chekhov in English to date.
———, Understanding Chekhov, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1999. An update of Rayfield’s Chekhov: The Evolution of His Art, Elek Books Ltd., London, 1975.
SAVELY SENDEROVICH and MUNIR SENDICH, eds., Anton Chekhov Rediscovered , Russian Language Journal, East Lansing, MI, 1988. A collection including some fine recent studies and a comprehensive bibliography.
LEV SHESTOV, Chekhov and Other Essays, translation anonymous, new introduction by Sidney Monas, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 1966. Essays by a major Russian thinker of the twentieth century, including ‘‘Creation from the Void,’’ written on the occasion of Chekhov’s death in 1904 and still one of the most penetrating interpretations of his art.
CHRONOLOGY
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Alexander II (tsar since 1855) following a reformist policy, in complete opposition to his predecessor, the reactionary Nicholas I. Port of Vladivostok founded to serve Russia’s recent annexations (from China). Huge investment in railway building begins.
Emancipation of the serfs (February), the climax of the tsar’s program of reform. While his achievement had great moral and symbolic significance, many peasants felt themselves cheated by the terms of the complex emancipation statute. Outbreak of American Civil War. Unification of Italy. Bismarck prime minister of Prussia. 1860s and 1870s: ‘‘Nihilism’’ – rationalist philosophy skeptical of all forms of established authority – becomes widespread among young radical intelligentsia in Russia.
Polish rebellion. Poland incorporated into Russia. Itinerant movement formed by young artists, led by Ivan Kramskoi and later joined by Ivan Shishkin: drawing inspiration from the Russian countryside and peasant life, they are also concerned with taking art to the people.
The first International. Establishment of the Zemstva, organs of self-government and a significant liberal influence in tsarist Russia. Legal reforms do much towards removing class bias from the administration of justice. Trial by jury instituted and a Russian bar established. Russian colonial expansion in Central Asia (to 1868).
Slavery formally abolished in U.S.A.
Young nobleman Dmitry Karakozov tries to assassinate the tsar. Radical journals The Contemporary and The Russian Word suppressed. Austro-Prussian war.
St. Petersburg section of Moscow Slavonic Benevolent Committee founded (expansion of Pan-Slav movement). Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic poem Sadko .
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Chemist D. I. Mendeleyev wins international fame for his periodic table of chemical elements based on atomic weight.
Lenin born. Franco-Prussian war. End of Second Empire in France and establishment of Third Republic. Repin paints The Volga Boatmen (to 1873).
Paris Commune set up and suppressed. Fall of Paris ends war. German Empire established.
Three Emperors’ League (Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary) formed in Berlin. During the late 1860s and early 1870s, Narodnik (Populist) ‘‘going to the people’’ campaign gathers momentum: young intellectuals incite peasantry to rebel against autocracy.
First performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s first opera, The Maid of Pskov.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; first performance of Boris Godunov.
Bulgarian Atrocities (Bulgarians massacred by Turks). Founding of Land and Freedom, first Russian political party openly to advocate revolution. Death of anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. Official statute for Women’s Higher Courses, whereby women are able to study at the universities of St. Petersburg,
Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and Kazan. By 1881 there are two thousand female students. Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India.
Russia declares war on Turkey (conflict inspired by Pan-Slav movement). Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Congress of Berlin ends Russo-Turkish war; other European powers compel Russia to give up many of her territorial gains; partition of Bulgaria between Russia and Turkey. Mass trial of Populist agitators in Russia (‘‘the trial of the 193’’). Shishkin, pioneer of the plein-air study in the 1870s, paints Rye, a classic evocation of Russian countryside.
Birth of Stalin. The People’s Will, terrorist offshoot of Land and Freedom, founded. Assassination of Prince Kropotkin, governor of Kharkov. Tchaikovsky: Evgeny Onegin. Death of historian S. M. Solovyov, whose history of Russia had been appearing one volume per year since 1851.
Oil drilling begins in Azerbaidzhan; big program of railway building commences. Borodin: In Central Asia. During 1870s and 1880s the Abramtsevo Colony, drawn together by railway tycoon Mamontov, includes Repin, Serov, Vrubel, and Chekhov’s friend Levitan. Nationalist in outlook, they draw inspiration from Russian folk art and the Russo-Byzantine tradition. Assassination of Alexander II by Ignatius Grinevitsky, a member of the People’s Will, following which the terrorist movement is crushed by the authorities. Revolutionary opposition goes underground until 1900. ‘‘Epoch of small deeds’’: intelligentsia work for reform through existing institutions. The new tsar, Alexander III, is much influenced by his former tutor, the extreme conservative Pobedonostsev, who becomes chief procurator of the Holy Synod. Resignation of Loris-Melikov, architect of the reforms of Alexander II’s reign. Jewish pogroms.