“The Relationship Between Chekhov’s Works and the Natural World”

An Honors Thesis

by

Bradley R. Britvich

California, Pennsylvania
2018

Bradley Britvich
English, concentration in Journalism
Dr. Keat Murray, Dr. Kim Vanderlaan, Loring Prest, Ryan Sittler
Keywords: ecocriticism, Anton Chekhov, realism, Russian literature

Acknowledgements
I would like to offer the sincerest thanks and appreciation to those following who
have helped me in the writing process involved with this project. Without them, none of
it would have been possible.
My advisor, Dr. Keat Murray, for his continued insight and assistance in the
development of this paper, which stemmed from one of his classes in 2016.
To my other committee members, Dr. Kim Vanderlaan and Loring Prest: thank
you for the help you provided, the time you took out of your schedules to help make this
paper what it is, and for being two of the kindest people I know.
To all of the faculty and staff of the English department, the Manderino Library,
and the University Honors Program, the three places I’ve called home throughout my
time at Cal U.
To Amanda Sloan, for keeping me sane throughout the process.
And finally to my parents, for without them and their support, none of this would
have been completed.

Abstract
Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the
environment where texts that illustrate environmental concerns also investigate the ways
characters in literature treat the natural world around them. There are certain authors who
are widely considered preeminent writers in the study of ecocriticism. However, I believe
that the works of many other writers could benefit from being examined with
ecocriticism in mind, such as the 19th century Russian realist Anton Chekhov. During his
lifetime, Chekhov saw the emancipation of the serfs in Russia by Tsar Alexander II in
1861. Because of this, many former serfs who lived in the country were propelled to
move to the cities to find work, Chekhov’s own family among them. Stemming from this
vast change in environment, his writings deal with the changing relationships between
people and their surroundings, particularly peasants who find themselves in unfamiliar
situations in the cities of Russia.
In this paper I would like to make the case that some selected works of Anton
Chekhov (particularly the short stories “Misery,” “Peasants,” “The Evildoer,” along with
his play The Cherry Orchard) should be read with the lens of ecocriticism because they
then reveal the ways in which the elimination of serfdom changed the way people viewed
the natural world in late 19th century Russia and their respective places in it.

Britvich 1

Bradley Britvich
Honors Thesis
April 11, 2018
Ecology, Economy and Estrangement in Chekhov’s Works
Anton Chekhov is certainly different from any other Russian writer but he was the
essential writer of the late 19th century. Born in 1860, Chekhov’s writings were devoid of
the political stances seen in Leo Tolstoy and the deep psychological and moral questions
found in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s works. Chekhov was a dedicated realist, focused only on
giving the necessary information to a story without attempting to persuade a reader in one
way or another. In a letter to an influential Russian publisher at the time, Aleksey S.
Suvorin, Chekhov wrote:
You accuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference to good and evil, lack of
ideals and ideas, and so-on. You would have me, when I describe horse-thieves,
say: ‘Stealing horses is an evil.’ But that has been known for ages without my
saying so. Let the jury judge them; it’s my job simply to show what sort of people
they are. I write: You are dealing with horse-thieves, so let me tell you that they
are not beggars but well-fed people, that they are people of a special cult, and that
horse-stealing is not simply theft but a passion. Of course it would be pleasant to
combine art with a sermon but for me personally it is extremely difficult and
almost impossible, owing to the conditions of technique. You see, to depict horsethieves in seven hundred lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and

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feel it in their spirit, otherwise, if I introduce subjectivity, the image becomes
blurred and the story will not be as compact as all short stories ought to be. When
I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective
elements that are lacking in the story.
This lengthy quote shows Chekhov’s dedication to objectivity in his work, to simply
present the facts and ways of life as he sees them and letting the reader make their own
decisions. This was very different from the attitudes of other 19th-century Russian
writers. But Chekhov was the right voice for his time, one that gave the poorest people of
society a literary outlet and told their stories, no matter how unflattering they were. This
would be an advantageous ability of his since a year after his birth Tsar Alexander II
emancipated all of the serfs in Russia, radically changing the relationships between the
nobility and the peasantry. Chekhov’s grandfather was a serf who bought his family’s
freedom before the emancipation. His father was a grocer, and when his business failed in
1875, his family went to Moscow but left young Anton behind to finish his education.
When he was able to join them in the city, he supported himself and his family through
his writings while he attended medical school (Rayfield 2). During this move, Chekhov
would’ve been able to witness firsthand many people like him and his family that were
propelled to move from the country to the city. Because of his own background, his
writings clearly deal with the changing relationships between people and their
environment, as well as the changing socio-economic structure in Russia, particularly
regarding peasants who find themselves in unfamiliar situations.
By applying the lens of ecocriticism to Chekhov’s writings a reader can infer
that, while he aimed for objectivity, he held certain thoughts about the environment and

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humanity’s role in it that ultimately come through in his writings. Ecocriticism is the
study of the relationship between literature and the environment where texts that illustrate
environmental concerns also investigate the ways characters in literature treat the natural
world around them. A relatively young field of criticism, those who study it believe that
works from predominately American authors (such as Walt Whitman, James Fenimore
Cooper, Willa Cather, and Henry David Thoreau, to name a few) include important
statements about humanity’s relationship to the Earth in their works. William Howarth,
one of the earliest and most prominent of the scholars who defined and explored
ecocriticism, says that
Eco and critic both derive from Greek, oikos and kritis, and in tandem they mean
‘house judge,” which may surprise many lovers of green, outdoor writing. A longwinded gloss on ecocritic might run as follows: ‘a person who judges the merits
and faults of writings that depict the effects of culture upon nature, with a view
toward celebrating nature, berating its despoilers and reversing their harm through
political action.’ So the oikos is nature, a place Edward Hogland calls “our widest
home,” and the kritos is an arbiter of taste who wants the house kept in good
order, no boots or dishes strewn about to ruin the original décor (Howarth 69).
Going from Howarth’s definition of ecocritic, we can see how ecocriticism can be
applied to many different types of literature. But expanding the scope of ecocriticism to
other authors, such as Chekhov, can illuminate similar concerns despite being from a
different culture. Unlike other authors in Russia at that time, his writings deal with
peasants who find themselves in unfamiliar situations in the cities of Russia. Reading
Chekhov’s short stories “Misery,” “Peasants,” and “The Evildoer,” as well as his popular

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play The Cherry Orchard, with the lens of ecocriticism, reveals the ways in which the
elimination of serfdom changed the way people viewed the natural world and their
respective places in it in late 19th century Russia.
But before delving in to Chekhov’s works and how they benefit from being read
with ecocriticism in mind, it is first important to understand Chekhov’s own relationship
with the environment. Growing up in Tagnarog, a small but important port town in
Russia, Chekhov would have spent many days of his youth surrounded by nature,
something that would not have been afforded him had he grown up in the city. His
grandfather paid for his family’s freedom from serfdom but that did not save his family
from poverty. Chekhov’s father was a business owner who had to move his family to
Moscow after he went bankrupt, leaving young Anton behind to complete school and
work. He went on to become a doctor and from 1892 to 1899 lived in Melikhovo, a slum
outside of Moscow where he provided medical services free of charge to the local
peasants. There he saw the impact that the end of serfdom had on the natural world
around them and the ways the peasants suffered for it. But he was no stranger to standing
up for the ethical treatment of the environment and respect for the creatures that lived in
it. In 1882, when he was just 22 years old, Chekhov was writing for a publication called
Nature and Hunting, edited by Leonid Sabaneev, a popular nature writer of the time in
Russia. He was reporting on an incident in Moscow where wild wolves were captured
and taken to the local horse racetrack where they were killed by hunting dogs in front of
spectators. Chekhov wrote of the experience:
The wolf falls, taking with it to the grave a poor opinion of human beings…It’s no
joke, man has brought shame on himself by this quasi-hunt!...It’s one thing

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hunting in the steppe, in the forest, where human bloodthirstiness can easily be
excused by the possibility of an equal battle, where the wolf can defend itself and
run (Bartlett 108).
His concerned tone and passionate writing condemning this practice that was meant to
keep the population of wolves out of the villages contributed to the public outcry that led
to it never happening again. While not ever specifically coming out and speaking his own
beliefs about the environmental changes happening in his fiction pieces, his works reveal
the inner machinations of a man who clearly carefully considers the importance of the
role people play in relation to the natural world and vice versa. In the above quote,
Chekhov is speculating about the wolf and the consciousness of the animal. He is also
commenting on the shame and the greed of humans who can abide by such actions. By
understanding his beliefs on these things, such as the ‘opinion’ creatures have of people,
we can begin to see that he expresses similar feelings in his works of fiction. To say that
the creature has an ability to have an ‘opinion’ of people and that humanity should feel
‘shame’ for their treatment of the natural world and upsetting the order of it, he is also
projecting his thoughts about this supposed travesty in to the thoughts of the animal.
Perhaps nowhere is this underlying projection of human thoughts and opinions on
to that of an animal more clear than in “Misery,” written in 1886, a mere four years after
having witnessed the wolf killing. In this short story, Chekhov tells the story of Iona
Potapov, who has moved from the country to St. Petersburg where he works as a sledge
driver. His son had recently died, but he finds no comfort in those he tries to speak to
about his remorse for his son. In fact, he finds the people of St. Petersburg cold and
unsympathetic. The only one who seems to listen to him is his own horse, the only

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remnant of his time spent in the countryside. In the beginning of the story, we find
Potapov and his horse being covered with snow. The coldness surrounds them through
the weather and the wealthy city-dwellers’ attitudes and neither can find the strength to
shake it off. The weather as well as the people are unrelenting, with Potapov’s
relationship and understanding of his horse growing stronger in this new environment.
Potapov watches his horse and thinks “She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has
been torn away from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this
slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to
think” (416). It is easy to see how this comment about his horse could be related to the
character Potapov but also to all of the former serfs that had to move from their lives in
the country to the urban landscape to find work. Potapov is projecting his own
consciousness and emotions to his horse. The problems he faces are also being projected
toward the animal here as he relates his sorrows by talking to his horse. This connection
between the human and the animal, when thought of eco-critically, shows the thoughts
that this connection is a part of a delicate balance of power and hierarchy. This is
specifically true for the horse, who, even though subservient to Iona, had to have been
broken and trained by someone to complete the tasks on the farm and now has been
afforded a new status in the city. This is also similar with the life of the former serf, who
was taught how to live in regard to their subservience but now is propelled to a different
task and status. Chekhov’s use of the word “monstrous” when describing the lights of the
city shows how daunting he aimed to portray this move to be for peasants. The lights and
the lifestyle of the city would indeed be threatening to someone such as Potapov, who, it
can be inferred, lived his entire life working in the country. Though he is thinking of his

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horse when he says this, it would be hard not to see how this can also reflect his own
thoughts of himself. He relates himself to the animal that he is depending on, literally and
figuratively, for he relies on the creature for his work and also to provide some much
needed companionship. His environment has greatly changed, and he cannot cope with
all the differences in his life now. He is alone in the city; and though he still has a
daughter in the country, he has not made enough money to bring her there to live with
him yet, just as Chekhov’s family had to leave him behind after his father’s business
failed. The only relationship he has with anyone in the story is his horse, who has also
been thrown in to this unfamiliar situation and trying to cope just as he is.
“Misery” has many themes that are common in Chekhov’s tales. It features a poor
peasant and how his relationship to the world around him has changed because of the
changing socio-political landscapes. Many serfs would have experienced a similar
circumstance after being liberated in 1861. In some cases, this change would not have
been pleasant, much like Potapov’s experiences in “Misery.” Their livelihoods, which
many took a great deal of pride in, had been shattered. Their identity was purely situated
on the fact that they were “only serfs.” After the serfs were emancipated, they were
responsible for finding their own way of life. This left many angry, feeling as though the
Tsar who emancipated them should have cared for them more once he had done so. Many
young peasants became revolutionaries and attempted to assassinate Alexander II
throughout the 1860s and 1870s. As historian Anne Harnett writes:
Viewing Alexander II as the literal embodiment of oppressive despotism, the
formerly peaceful radicals who adopted primarily violent means in the spring and
summer of 1879 not only held the tsar ultimately responsible for the complete

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disenfranchisement of the Russian masses, but they also condemned him for the
lives lost and the minds ruined through the regular imprisonment and exile of
Russia’s radical youth (93).
It wasn’t until 1881 that the revolutionaries would be successful in their attempts to kill
Alexander, when he fell victim to a bombing while on his way to a routine military roll
call. Through understanding the social and political background of Russia at this time
period, it is possible to understand better what Chekhov was trying to do with his writings.
He was attempting to show the struggles of the common man and make his readers consider
for a moment the roles they play in the lives of those around them.
After the assassination of Alexander II, the decade following was a period of
political repression and stagnation in Russian life (Eekman 131). But despite this
stagnation, in regards to politics, societal views and expectations were changing,
specifically regarding what former serfs were having to do to provide for themselves and
their families. As W.H. Bruford writes in Chekhov and his Russia:
Agriculture had failed to keep pace with the growth of the population, and the
peasantry as a whole, as well as the landowners, were living through a long
drawn-out crisis while Chekhov was writing. The famine of 1892 showed him
things at their worst. The only peasants who were fairly prosperous were,
generally speaking, those who were not entirely dependent on the produce of their
own land. It had long been the custom for some members of the joint families to
make their living away from home, in town, or in a factory, or as agricultural
laborers. In the days of serfdom, no serf could leave his village unless he paid his

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master an annual due, but as there were very few alternative sources of labor in
the towns…many left the village for seasonal employment (Bruford 53).
While Chekhov wrote a majority of his works after the assassination of Alexander II, he
still captured the mood of the transitions happening in the culture after the emancipation,
particularly that of the peasants and former serfs. In his own life, Chekhov became a
country doctor and provided services to the poor people outside of Moscow who could
not afford to come to the city for treatment. His experiences doing this influenced the
short story “Peasants.” In this story, written in 1897, Chekhov writes about Nicholas
Chikildeyev, who falls ill and loses his job as a waiter at a fancy restaurant in Moscow.
While not following the steps of the former serfs who were able to find work in factories
in town or off the land, he was able to find moderate success in Moscow. He then moves
back to his village with his family. This time, the roles have reversed – instead of having
a longing for the way things were and reminiscing for a time in which he and his family
were able to depend on the environment, Nicholas and his family had grown accustomed
to living comfortably in the city and now they find themselves back in a dusty village,
with “great heaps of brown and red broken pottery piled around” (145). This is unlike the
industrialized Moscow to which the family had grown accustomed and more like
something akin to a demolished area, surely a depressing sight for someone who had
grown accustomed to life in the city. Not only that, it would also be the complete
opposite environment. By focusing on how dirty everything would have been in this
village, Chekhov is showing the impact of the area in which the peasantry had to live.
The hut in which Nicholas’s siblings, who torment him and his family relentlessly for
they believe that living in the city for so long has made them useless in the village, is just

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as decrepit as the world that surrounds it. Nicholas, unsurprisingly, struggles with this
new lifestyle. We are told he is “worn out by the incessant din, hunger, fumes and stink,
hating and despising their poverty, Nicholas was ashamed of the impression his parents
made on his wife and daughter…’Oh God, for one more glimpse of Moscow!’ he went on
in anguish. ‘If only I could dream of dear old Moscow town!’” (134). This change in
environment deeply affects Nicholas, causing him to eventually pass away without ever
seeing his beloved Moscow again. As he died, he was being treated by the village doctor
who decided it was best that he do some bloodletting on Nicholas. This does not help
matters, and he dies soon after. The irony here lies in the fact that, perhaps if he had been
able to stay in Moscow, he may have received better medical care. But because he was
forced to change his surroundings, he passed away sooner, leaving his family behind.
“Peasants” gave Chekhov the opportunity to write openly about what many of the
poor peasants were thinking at the time and what he experienced working as a doctor in
Melikhovo. Nicholas’s mother and father are examples of the older generation that
believed the peasants thrived under serfdom:
‘We were better off as serfs’ said the old man, winding his silk. ‘You worked, you
ate, you slept – everything in its proper turn. There was cabbage soup and gruel for
dinner and the same again for supper. There was cucumbers and cabbage aplenty
and you could eat away to your heart’s content. Things were stricter too – we all
knew our place’ (159).
Nicholas’s father is reminiscing about the times he and his family were serfs and the
structure that institution gave to their lives. When they were serfs, they were able to rely
more on the land to provide them everything they needed – cabbage, cucumbers – and their

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masters or mistresses to provide anything else. But now that serfdom was over, their
environment changed and now they must find a way to provide for themselves. That is how
Nicholas ended up working in Moscow in the first place, though it is implied that he found
success there. Not only that, he longed to be back there, not in the dusty old village.
Meanwhile, he father longs for the way things used to be, and that includes the environment
itself. We are told there is hunger and filth in this village, though from the quote from the
father we see it wasn’t always that way. The ground was, at some point, fertile here, at least
enough to grow vegetables to eat. But it doesn’t seem that is the case any longer, and this
was probably brought about by the industrialization of the surrounding areas. The din,
hunger and fumes that Nicholas despises so much were not there in the years his parents
feel nostalgia for. Nicholas most likely does not remember the times his parents reflect on,
just as Chekhov would not have been exposed to serfdom, neither would this young
character. He is used to life in the village being what it is, not what it was. But not only did
he find success in the city, he also found himself a new identity while away from his family
in the country. Nicholas is different than most other Chekhov characters in the fact that his
outlook was actually improved as serfdom was eliminated. He exemplifies the younger
generation, that of Chekhov, whose family members may have been serfs but now much
forge their own identity outside of this political system. This character could easily stand
in for Chekhov himself, who went off to the city from a small town and gained success
there, but found it hard to truly turn away from his humble roots, only to die at a young age
before really carving out his role in the world around him. It is only in his return to his
home that he must face the reality that he cannot escape the life of a peasant.

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There was, at this time, the belief in Russian society that former serfs simply
couldn’t be able to support themselves independently. “Since at least the mid-eighteenth
century, some could be heard to argue that the cultural peculiarities of the Russian
peasantry rendered them at worst semi-human and at best simply unable to share the
burdens of civic enlightenment that the serf-owning nobility shouldered unselfishly—and
of necessity” (Wcislo 14). This distinction that some believed serfs were ‘semi-human’
shows just how hard it would have been for them to find their identity in this new social
structure, sans serfdom. It also implies here that there is a hierarchy, not just socially, but
biologically, just as there is in the natural world. The idea of another human being less than
human relates them closer to the animals of the wild than other humans are. It was believed
that the serfs weren’t capable of being independent without the system of serfdom in place,
but just as with the emancipation of American slaves, lack of social support programs left
many of these people displaced. Chekhov intended to use his stories to show the ways in
which the poor struggled and his use of realism to show the ways in which those in poverty
struggled and adapted to their new environments. While Chekhov never purposefully stated
his sympathetic feelings toward the emancipated serfs, his writings and his actions as
serving them as a country doctor suggest his true feelings towards these people. Though he
used his writings to advocate for issues he cared about when he was younger, such as the
wolf massacre in Moscow, in his fiction he aimed to remain objective in all things,
specifically his political beliefs. Chekhov has often been described as apolitical, at least in
his youth. Rayfield writes in Understanding Chekhov:
Chekhov’s political stance was often deplored. It seems strange that a student of
Moscow University in the dark repressive period following the assassination of

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Alexander II in 1881 joined no movement, and spent no sleepless nights, when
fellow-students were being hanged, jailed or deported, but Chekhov was
suspicious of any ‘party line’, any radical gestures; he hated he conformism or the
non-conformist (14).
What his apolitical stance allows him to bring forth in his writings is a radical cynicism
that he can apply to any cultural or political practice. As in “Peasants” and in “Misery”,
he shows how things had changed for his characters but never gets involved with the
politics of why things had changed in regards to the disrupted social order. He was only
interested in the effect it had on the person at a basic level. By simply showing readers
examples of what common people were going through at this time, his meticulous choice
of wording when it comes to showing the beliefs of Nikolas’s parents is an attempt to
acknowledge that there were those of the older generation that still clung to their former
way of life while the younger was ready to forge their own identity in the wake of all this
changes. While remaining objective politically, it is possible to discern from these
selections that he cared deeply about the ways humans affected the environment.
But that is not to say he was completely void of political knowledge while also
commenting on the treatment of the environment. In fact, the story that is considered to
have the most “strong political implications” (Rayfield 157) is the novella My Life,
published in a heavily censored version in 1896. Subtitled as “The Story of a Provincial”
this story focuses on Misail Poloznev, a young man who renounces his status in the town
where his father is regarded highly of due to his work as an architect. Instead he favors
making his living through manual labor. Though not necessarily fueled by strong desires
to see the countryside or appreciate the nature that has been otherwise cleared for the

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building of the town and the progress it has made, Misail instead works in ways to aid
this progress, beginning by his work constructing a railroad line outside of the town. The
use of railroads in Chekhov’s work is frequent, as the following story and play will also
show, but in My Life “the railway…symbolizes the straight onward thrust of ruthless
modernity: the engineer, Dolzhikov, cuts through the countryside, a sort of Peter the
Great, turning old family estates into offices” (Rayfield 159). The idea of “ruthless
modernity” is helpful in the aspect of Chekhov’s views on progress as a whole. While it
may be necessary, there are possible ways to do it without being careless for the
environment. But nature does not play as large a role in this story as it does in other
Chekhov works. In the town, there are cherry trees but they are only there to provide
some aesthetic views to those who are wealthy enough to live there. The addition of the
railway line comes without any reflection on the impact it will have on the farms and the
food they provide for the town in this story. Misail, though he enjoys working outside
with his hands, does not have the time to watch nature as it goes by around him. Instead,
he associates the nature he does comment on while narrating the story with the past, and
with that, the peasantry:
I loved the fields and meadows and kitchen gardens, but the peasant who turned
up the soil with his plough and urged on his pitiful horse, wet and tattered, with
his craning neck, was to me the expression of coarse, savage, ugly force, and
every time I looked at his uncouth movements I involuntarily began thinking of
the legendary life of the remote past, before men knew the use of fire (88).
Misail equates the work he does and the environment in which he must do it with
something quite ancient, thus also equating the peasantry with the same, as the work he

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does is their livelihood and has been for generations. What this particular story lacks in
regards to Chekhov’s normally detailed description of nature, it makes up for in its
unique approach to depicting the peasantry, specifically in the character of Masha, a
young woman who is initially attracted to Misail and his rejection of the town and his
status and admiring of his decision to work like a peasant. She persuades him to identify
with them more, to abandon working as a railway constructor or a roof painter and work
the land with the peasants. However, after she is exposed to the true lifestyle of these
people, she is disgusted by the vulgarity and filth in the village. Masha stands in this story
as a hypocritical member of the bourgeoisie, able to idealize the lives of those below her
status, but once exposed to it finds them ‘sub-human’ and retreats to the city. By the end
of the story, Misail realizes he truly loves the peasants and that, though they (and now he
by association) are degraded by society, they have an almost instinctual habit for “justice
which the bourgeois and the intellectual rebel have lost” (Rayfield 161).
The peasant’s relationship with the concept justice come up again in Chekhov’s
short story “The Evildoer.” Chekhov shows again how life for the serfs and peasants
were changing, and what those changes meant for their relationship to the environment
around them. Denis Grigoryev, a Klimovo peasant, has been caught unscrewing nuts
from the railroad that now goes through his village to use for sinkers when fishing. He
must answer for these crimes and defend himself to his local magistrate, which would not
have been the case if the serfdom wasn’t eradicated. But because Denis must now make
his living strictly from fishing, he had to find a way to get sinkers. He speaks to the
magistrate in a sarcastic tone, saying things like “Of course, you know best! We are
ignorant folk – what do we understand?” (93). When the magistrate finds him guilty of

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his crimes, he seems surprised that he must actually face repercussions for this small
incident. “To prison! …At least if I’d done something … all right …I’d go. But to send
me to prison for nothing… I live a clean life…” (94). Before this incident, Denis
probably never had a reason to deal with the magistrate. While it is never specified if he
was at one time a serf, there would be no governing law for him to deal with. There also
probably wouldn’t be a train going through his village, but the industrialization of the
times brought it there, changing the environment and offering the temptation to Denis to
steal the nuts. As with My Life, the train again shows the ‘ruthless modernity’ of the time
period. There is no mention of there being a train station in this town, just that the train
goes past it. The railway system wasn’t being built for those whose environments were
changed but for those who were able to afford a ride on the new method of transportation.
This instance of industrialization and the peasant’s role in it comes up again here. With
the introduction of the magistrates, the peasants in the story begin selling fishnets to the
new members of their town, making money off of them while providing those unused to
living off the land an opportunity to eat while there. It provides an interesting line for
which the magistrate will have to toe. If he punishes all the peasants who steal the nuts to
use for fishing, he will soon run out of food as there won’t be any more people left to buy
fish from. But it also instigates their need to catch more fish and provide for the gentry.
The simple pastoral life is no longer available in this particular story. The ways of the
city, with all its complications, have been brought there to further disrupt the way of life
for both the peasants and the natural world around them.
Problems between peasants and the governing officials were common after the
elimination of serfdom. Before, they would only have to deal with those who they

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worked for and they were able to use anything from the land in which they tended. Now,
with the land being privately owned, they would have to deal with magistrates and others
if they were to steal from someone else’s property. Francis Wcislo writes that:
Many, of course, were already arguing that peasants were being subordinated to
habitually arbitrary government supervision. But what some castigated as
numbing bureaucratic hegemony, enlightened officials, from a perspective that
repudiated the irrationality of serfdom, could describe as the creation of "a new,
more stable shelter, covered by the shield of officiality and legality." Indeed, it
was no more surprising in this age of transition to witness enlightened bureaucrats
wielding their ethos of legality and orderly societal change against serf owners
than it had been to see noble lords proclaiming the merits of laissez-faire
economics against the disdained petty officialdom (Wcislo 42).
The “habitually arbitrary government supervision” would be a new aspect of a peasant’s
life. When serving as serfs, they had a claim to the land that they worked on, meaning
they could use whatever they could find there. But with the introduction of restraints on
what they had access to, the peasants were faced with a new sort of hierarchy in their
villages. This hierarchy is acknowledged by Denis when he talks about the types of fish
he wanted to catch with the use of the nut as a sinker. The magistrate in “The Evildoer”
does not understand why Denis and the other peasants would need to steal the nuts. “’So,
you state that you unscrewed this nut in order to use it as a sinker?’ ‘What else? Not to
play knucklebones with!’ ‘But you could have used a piece of lead, or a bullet, or some
kind of nail…’ ‘You don’t find lead lying around to be picked up, you have to buy it, and
a nails no good. There’s nothing better than a nut…” (91). The idea that he could use

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whatever he found ‘lying around’ stems from the peasant’s former belief that anything
the land they lived on was to be used by them. The same would be true for this railway,
they assumed, because it was put on their land through the industrialization of the
villages. Because the magistrate doesn’t understand Denis’ reasoning, he doesn’t fully
understand how to punish him. Denis thinks that it is all a joke because this is his way of
life. He assumes it is common knowledge that one would have to steal nuts to fish.
Fishing to support himself is probably all Denis really understands, or perhaps, like
Nicholas’ parents in “Peasants” understands the situation but still refuses to find
alternative means of providing for himself, and now he is being prosecuted for doing
something that used to be commonplace. Because of the changes going on around them,
he is unsure how to react.
Because of the elimination of serfdom in Russia in 1861, the country’s economy
changed forever. This created what was essentially a free-market economy (Bruford 75).
This, in turn, undermined the power of the nobility and sometimes even impoverished
them. Because of this, Chekhov’s most famous play, The Cherry Orchard, tackles topical
issues of the 1890s and 1900s in Russia, “specifically the disinheritance of the
landowning nobility, the disillusionment concerning the emancipatory reforms and the
debate concerning the future of Russia moving in to the next century” (Rayfield 240).
The story of the formerly wealthy family of landowners unable to pay their debts was a
familiar story in Russian society in Chekhov’s time. In the play, when Madam Ranevsky
returns to her estate after some time spent in self-exile in Paris, the building is in ruins but
the massive orchard of cherry trees is in bloom, reminding her of her past spent there.
The estate is up for sale and she does not have the money to pay off her debts, yet

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continues to spend frivolously. At the suggestion of the son of a former serf, Lopahkin,
she could sell the orchard and cut down the trees to build summer cottages for people
living in the cities. She refuses his plan and even his offer of a loan at the time of the
auction because it is beneath her to accept money from one of her former serfs. It is
implied that the class consciousness of the times fuels both of these character’s
motivations. As Lopahkin says early in Act I,
She brought me over to the wash-stand here in this very room, the nursery as it
was. ‘Don't cry, little peasant,' she said. ‘You'll soon be as right as rain’…Little
peasant. It's true my father was a peasant, but here am I in my white waistcoat and
brown boots, barging in like a bull in a china shop. The only thing is, I am rich,
but I can’t stop worrying about people saying, ‘Once a little country boy, always...
(234).
Clearly Lopahkin is still concerned about his modest upbringings and the orchard and
estate is nothing to him but a reminder of his past. As for Ranevsky, who left her home
after the deaths of her husband and son, she views the estate as her connection to her
idealized past. As she says after arriving home, “Can I really be sitting here? I want to
jump for joy, wave my arms around. I’m overwhelmed! Lord knows how I love this
county, I love it so much, I couldn’t even look out the windows of the train, I kept
crying” (241). Ranevsky, while overcome with the sadness that comes with returning to
her home, still very much loves the country and her massive estate, though perhaps for a
variety of reasons. She could view the house and cherry orchard as a reminder of her
higher class standing or it could be a reminder to her that she once found genuine
happiness there in her youth, before the death of her son. In the end, however, all other

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efforts on Ranevsky’s part to buy the estate fall through and Lopahkin purchases the land
to proceed with his plan of destroying the orchard to build summer cottages. Not that he
sets out to destroy them without reason (it’s mostly a monetary issue) but we can see how
he resents his origins as a serf. In contrasting these two characters we see how the
thoughts of the importance of the natural world were changing between the older
generation and the younger. While Ranevsky thought back on her happier times spent on
the estate while it was in its glory, Lopahkin has no such fond memories because he and
his family were basically slaves that had to work in the orchard.
Of the many issues faced with The Cherry Orchard, we again see Chekhov’s
ideas about progress and the problems that come along with it as well as industrialization.
Just as in My Life and “The Evildoer,” there is the presence of the train in what would
have previously been country estates. The ‘ruthless modernity’ symbolized by the train is
present throughout the play but is most present when thinking about the role the train
plays in the different characters lives. As Stephen L. Baehr writes in “The Machine in
Chekhov’s Garden: Progress and Pastoral in the Cherry Orchard:”
The railroad has different meanings for the different classes. For the merchant
Lopakhin, the railroad provides an efficient aid for gaining wealth. The train
supports his perpetual motion: already in Act I, we see him on his way to Kharkov
on business on a train leaving before 5 a.m.….he sees the railroad as a solution to
Ranevsky’s and Gaev’s financial problems, telling them that they can avoid
foreclosure on their estate by renting land for dachas, which will be accessible by
railway to vacationers from the city…For the old nobility, the railroad is
associated with pleasure, especially with food: Gaev praises the railroad in Act II

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for allowing people to make a quick round-trip to the city for lunch; Ranevsky is
depicted as always ordering the most expensive items at station restaurants (104).
The railroad and the telegraph are the most modern advancements to make their way to
the estate and both are symbols of the progress that is going on around the cherry
orchard, but never occurring in it. For Ranevsky, there is no way forward. She is
obsessed with her past and that is related to the land of the orchard her family once
owned. She says in Act I “Oh, my childhood, my innocent childhood! This is the nursery
where I slept and I used to look out at the orchard from here! Look, Mother’s walking in
the orchard. In a white dress” (247). Ranevsky’s obsession with the past has manifested
itself in to her thinking she sees her mother out among the cherry orchard, but upon
further inspection she realizes that it is actually a white blooming branch that looks like a
woman’s dress. This also shows how disconnected with the reality of her situation she
has become. She is entirely obsessed with her past and seeks out refuge there, symbolized
with the cherry orchard. For her, this piece of land is a reminder of her once-great estate
and wealth. But, just as the railway and the progress it represents and the meanings it has
for the different characters, so does the cherry orchard differ in meaning to others. For the
progressive young man Trofimov, who is anxiously awaiting the upcoming turn of the
century and the hopes for change that comes along with it, the orchard is a reminder of
the dark side of the past and the strange institution of serfdom:
All Russia is our orchard. The earth is so wide, so beautiful, so full of wonderful
places. [Pause]. Just think, Anya. Your grandfather, your great-grandfather and all
your ancestors owned serfs, they owned human souls. Don’t you see that from
every cherry-tree in the orchard, from every leaf and every trunk, men and women

Britvich 22
are gazing at you? If we’re to start living in the present isn’t it abundantly clear
that we’ve first got to redeem our past and make a clear break with it?...And we
can only redeem it by suffering and getting down to real work for a change (266).
Trofimov sees the cherry orchard as a symbol of the past, but not as Ranevsky does. He
sees the image of the trees and their blossoms as ominous reminders of the oppression the
serfs had to endure. Whereas Ranevsky finds refuge and solace in her cherry orchard and
the memories it holds for her, Trofimov sees it as something that must be left behind in
the past so that the future may be more positive. Seeing the natural world as something of
a reminder of the past is common in most works studied by ecocriticism as it relates to
the idea of conservatism. If, in the past, the earth was more bountiful, then we must strive
to get back to such a state. The great irony in The Cherry Orchard is that the orchard is
not entirely natural – it had to be planted and cultivated by the serfs on the estate until it
grew to the heights at which it did. Throughout the play, though the cherry orchard is the
main focus of what goes on, none of the action takes place in it. The fact that nobody
actually steps foot in the orchard is another ironic aspect – the natural world is only
another commodity to those who are wealthy enough to afford it. At the end of the play,
the workers are cutting the trees, the first ones to actually go in to the orchard that we the
audience know of. There is, from the sound of the hatchets cutting the trees to clear way
for the vacation houses, a sense of shame or remorse that can be interpreted as the
intended feeling to leave the audience with. While the faithfully dutiful serf who stayed
on to work for Ranevsky dies on the stage as the orchard is being destroyed, a sense of
sympathy is intended as the age of agrarian Russia passes away. The arrival of the

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commercial age is brought forth at the end of the play and with it the promise of a better
and more just world.
Chekhov himself would have seen cherry trees in his youth until Alexander II’s
liberal economic policies encouraging development of the Russian countryside were
implemented and they were cleared. He later planted cherry trees on an estate that he
purchased in 1892, but soon lost due to his own debts. The new owners “did cut down his
orchard” (Eekman). These personal experiences that he had with nature, along with his
personal beliefs that humanity should feel “shame” for destroying and abusing it, show
that in his writings he was able to express his feelings of the changing landscapes, both
environmentally and politically. In what he knew would be his final play, Chekhov’s
intentions are difficult to decipher. But his focus on the attitudes the different characters
have about the natural environment shows the differences between the old and new
generations. Chekhov nudges us towards accessing two of the characters and their
worldview, which is Lopahkin who is a capitalist and Trofimov, the young student who
worked at Ranevsky’s estate as a tutor, who is a socialist if not a revolutionary. Trofimov
tells Lopahkin “You’re a rich man, you’ll be a millionaire pretty soon. I think you’re
necessary, in the same way that nature needs all vicious predators, which devour anything
that stumbles into their path” (261). Trofimov’s association with Lopahkin’s greed and
disregard for nature is similar to Chekhov’s beliefs about the bloodthirstiness of humans
when it comes to abusing the natural order. Again we see a character associating subhuman concepts to a human, in Lopahkin’s case, the son of a serf. In effect, Chekhov was
saying that one of these character’s ideals was the future. But the setting of the cherry
orchard is not only symbolic of what would become of Russia’s future, it also shows the

Britvich 24
ways the different characters interact with their environment. As John L. Styan writes in
Chekhov in Performance: A Commentary on the Major Plays:
The cherry orchard is a particular place and yet it is more. It represents an
inextricable tangle of sentiments, which together comprise a way of life and an
attitude to life. By the persistent feelings shown towards it, at one extreme by old
Firs, the house-serf for whom the family is his whole existence, and at another by
Trofimov, the intellectual for whom it is the image of repression and slavery, and
at another by Lopahkin, the businessman and spokesman for hard economic facts,
the one who thinks of it primarily as a means to wiser investment, and by
Madame Ranevsky, who sees in it her childhood happiness and her former
innocence, who sees it is the embodiment of her best values – by these and other
contradictions, an audience finds that the orchard grows from a painted backcloth
to an ambiguous, living, poetic symbol of human life, any human life in a state of
change (241).
As each of the main characters had vastly different relationships with the orchard and the
role it played in their lives, these same ideas were being experienced by the Russian
people during Chekhov’s time. Though he may not have been actively trying to make
statements about the role of the environment in his works, he was trying to use his
realistic writing style to capture the thoughts and moods of the Russian people at the
time. The previous generation’s identity, so closely tied in to their land and its resources,
was displaced. The upcoming generation, the people who would soon revolt against the
Tsarist autocracy in 1917, had no such interests. Perhaps, in this play, Chekhov was

Britvich 25
identifying these changes in the identity of Russia and the shifting importance of the land
in the eyes of its people.
In conclusion, the selected Chekhov short stories show how the elimination of
serfdom changed the way that people viewed the natural world. In “Misery,” Potapov and
his horse alike find themselves in an unfamiliar and cold environment. The only
relationship they have is with each other. In “Peasants,” Nicholas must leave the city and
face the family he left behind, in a place that is still learning to cope with the changes in
its social structure. His father and mother believe they would have been better off
remaining serfs, because there was a consistency to their lives. Now, there is literal
dependency on the land around them to provide what they need, as opposed to the people
they served when they were serfs. In “The Evildoer,” Denis must face the changing laws
only because he is dependent on fishing to support himself and his family. In The Cherry
Orchard, Ranevsky sees her orchard and estate as a reminder of her past and the
happiness she once had, but the son of her serf, Lopahkin, holds no such fondness and, in
turn, destroys it in an effort to make himself wealthy. Chekhov wrote realism to show the
ways in which the people of his time dealt with the changes occurring around them. In
the stories featured, his characters must depend on the world around them like never
before to survive. What is fascinating is the different ways each character depends on the
environment. Potapov relies on his horse, Nicholas relied on the city, Denis relies on the
fish, and Ranevsky relies on her orchard to remind her of her escaping happiness. But all
of these characters had their identities changed after the elimination of serfdom. The
outcomes for each of these characters are different but they share a similarity in the fact

Britvich 26
that each were forced to find different ways to try to survive and find their identity in this
vastly changing environment.

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Works Cited
Baehr, Stephen L. “The Machine in Chekhov’s Garden: Progress and Pastoral in the
Cherry Orchard.” The Slavic and East European Journal. Vol. 43, No. 1 (Spring
1999). Pp. 99-121.
Bartlett, Rosamund. Chekhov: Scenes From a Life. Simon and Schuster UK Ltd, 2004.
Print.
Bruford, W.H. Chekhov and His Russia: A Sociological Study. Archon Books, 1971.
Print.
Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard, 1904. Chekhov: The Four Major Plays In New
Translations by Curt Columbus. Chicago, IL, 2005. Print
---. “Peasants.” Eleven Stories. London: Oxford UP, 1975. Print.
---. "The Evildoer." California University of Pennsylvania. California,
PA. Spring 2016. English 206 Lecture.
---. “Misery.” 1886. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama
Sixth Edition. Ed. XJ Kennedy and Dana Gioria. New York: Harper Collins. 41519. Print.
---. My Life: The Story of a Provincial. 1896. New York: Melville House, 2004.
Print.
Eekman, Thomas. Critical Essays on Anton Chekhov. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall,
Print.

1989.

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Hartnett, Lynne Ann. The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution.
Indiana UP, 2014. Print.
Howarth, William. “Some Principles of Ecocriticism.” The Ecocriticism Reader. Athens:
The University of Georgia Press, 1996. Pp. 69-91. Print.
Rayfield, Donald. Understanding Chekhov: A Critical Study of Chekhov's Prose and
Drama. Madison: U of Wisconsin, 1999. Print.
Styan, John L. Chekhov in Performance: A Commentary on the Major Plays. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971. Print.
Wcislo, Francis William. Reforming Rural Russia: State, Local Society, and National
Politics, 1855-1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990. Print.