The twelve-month siege of Sebastopol in 1854-55, which was key in Russia's defeat in the Crimean War against the allied forces of the British, French, and Piedmontese, resulted in tremendous casualties on both sides. [L.L.]
The 1860s were the decade of major reforms, among them the emancipation of the serfs, who made up approximately 80 percent of the population of Russia. [L.L.]
"Sakhalin mania" (Latin). [L.L.]
Marina Konstantinovna Tsebrikova (1835-1917) was a prominent writer, journalist, and activist for women's education and rights who began her literary activity as a member of the politically engaged generation of the 1860s. [L.L.]
Chekhov uses the archaic name for Russia to evoke the famous observation, made in the eleventh century Primary Chronicle, that there was no order among the indigenous East Slavic tribes of Rus'. [L.L.]
A. I. Voyeykov (1842-1916) was an outstanding, pioneering meteorologist, climatologist, and geographer who introduced the scientific study of weather by means of monitoring stations. An indefatigable traveler, he produced a series of climatological maps and, among many works, the monumental Climates of Various Lands/Climates of the Earth, with Special Reference to Russia (Kli- maty raznyx stran/Klimaty zemnogo shara, v osobennosti Rossii) published in 1884 and in an expanded edition in 1887. [L.L.]
Sergey V. Maksimov (1831-1901), ethnographer, writer, and member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, was the author of literary ethnographic sketches, voluminous studies on the ethnography of the Russian Far East, and the three-volume Siberia and Penal Servitude (Sibir' i katorga) (St. Petersburg, 1871). [L.L.]
Chekhov added the following footnote: "One should note here an observation made by Nevelskoy that the indigenous people usually draw a line between shores in order to indicate that it is possible to sail from shore to shore: that is, to point out the existence of a strait between the shorelines." [L.L.]
Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville (1697-1782), author of the Nouvel atlas de la Chine, de la Tartaire chinoise, et de Thibet (1737). [A.C.]
Chapter Four
This archetypically Russian footwear is known as a valenok (pluraclass="underline" valenki). Made of wool felt and resembling rubber galoshes, valenki are best worn in dry weather. [L.L.]
The Roman numerals in brackets refer to chapters in The Island of Sakhalin. [L.L.]
Shtoss is a game of chance played with cards, with rules similar, though not identical, to faro, which features prominently in Russian fiction of the Romantic period in such famous stories as A. S. Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" and Mikhail Lermontov's "Shtoss." [L.L.]
Chekhov gives an approximate translation of Cassio's lines in act 2, scene 1, of William Shakespeare's Othello. [L.L.]
Chekhov elsewhere explains that this was the name for three pointed reefs lying beyond the mouth of the Duyka River. [L.L.]
The Nativity of the Virgin Mary is celebrated on September 8 according to the Russian Orthodox calendar. [L.L.]
The shopkeeper, subsequently called "L" in the text, was the nobleman K. Kh. Landsberg, a Guards officer accused of a savage murder and sentenced to penal servitude in 1879. [L.L.]
In a letter to Suvorin dated December 2, 1896, Chekhov identifies this postmaster as Eduard Duchinsky, author of poetry and prose. Sakhalinу was intended to parody Borodinу (1837), a patriotic poem about the 1812 battle of Borodinу—the last fought by Napoleon on Russian soil—by the Romantic poet and writer Mikhail Lermontov. [L.L.]
A verst is equivalent to 3,500 feet, or 1.0668 kilometers. [L.L.]
Fertile black soil. [L.L.]
It took us three hours to cover the four miles from Uskovo to Voskresenskoye. If readers can imagine a man on foot loaded down with flour, salted beef, and assorted government supplies, or a sick person from Uskovo having to go to the Rykov hospital, they will understand what the phrase "There is no road" means on Sakhalin. It is impossible to travel by carriage or on horseback. It has happened that attempts to go on horseback have ended with horses breaking their legs. [A.C.]
Sakhalin fever (Latin). [L.L.]
The offering of bread and salt is a traditional gesture of welcome to guests in Russian households. [L.L.]
He also raised very unrealistic hopes. In one village, speaking of the fact that peasant exiles now had the right to return to the mainland, he said, "And later you can also return to your homeland, to Russia." [A.C.]
The best description of this quintessentially Russian conveyance can be found in Count K. K. Pahlen's 1908-1909 memoir
Mission to Turkestan: "Has the reader any idea what the vehicle called tarantass in Russian is really like? Capable of being driven over rocks, boulders or, as a matter of fact, over any imaginable surface, it must have been invented in the days when no roads existed at all. It consists of two long, springy poles, about four inches thick, placed parallel and bridging the two wheel axles to which they are attached. A large wickerwork body, broad enough to hold two people, is placed between the two poles in the center between the axles. A light seat is sometimes fixed inside the body, and the more luxurious tarantasses are provided with a hood. The coachman perches on a small seat over the fore-axle and the whole contraption is harnessed to three horses, the one in the center running between two shafts. When passengers are about to leave a posting inn, a mattress covered with a feather blanket is spread over the bottom of the body. With a little luck one is able to snatch some sleep stretched out at full length provided the going is not too rough. In theory, the springy poles are supposed to take up the bumping, but in actual practice they are usually so stiff and strong for the sake of solidity that one is mercilessly jolted about or bounced to and fro if the pace is hot. Because of this, and the fact that as an inspecting Senator and consequently an important personage I was always driven at top speed, we called the tarantass a 'horse-powered liver-massaging device.'" K. K. Pahlen, "Selections from Mission to Turkestan: Being the Memoirs of Count K. K. Pahlen, 1908—1909," trans. N. Couriss, available at: www.iras.ucalgary.ca/ ~volk/sylvia/Pahlen.htm (last updated August 14, 2001; accessed January 20, 2007). [L.L.]
In his personification of the waves, Chekhov echoes the Russian Romantic poet F. I. Tyutchev, specifically the 1848 poem "The Sea and the Cliff." [L.L.]
Known as nary, these sleeping platforms were low wooden benches arranged down the center of the room and taking up about half of its width. Along the longitudinal axis, the benches sloped slightly toward the center, so that the prisoners slept head to head in the middle, with their feet, a few inches lower, at the outer edges of the benches. [L.L.]
These figures, taken from church baptismal records, represent only the Orthodox population. [A.C.]
In 1722 Emperor Peter I, the Great, rationalized and standardized government service by instituting a "Table of Ranks," comprising fourteen "grades" in the military, the civil, and the court services, respectively, with prescribed duties, obligations, benefits, privileges, rights, and prerogatives, as well as distinctive uniforms, assigned to each. A collegiate registrar served in the bureaucracy's lowest, or fourteenth, rank. [L.L.]