Yakov Alekseevich Korneyev was Chekhov's landlord in Moscow.
Afterword
Anton Chekhov to Grigory Rossolimo, October 11, 1899, in Anton Chekhov, Epistolario, ed. Gigliola Venturi and Clara Croi'sson, vol. 1 (Turin: Einaudi, 1960).
Raymond Carver, "Errand," in Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), pp. 512-13.
"I am dying" (German). [L.L.]
Olga's account is taken from Dear Writer . . . Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Olga Knipper and Anton Chekhov, sel., trans., and ed. Jean Benedetti (London: Methuen Drama, 1998), p. 284.
Anton Chekhov to K. S. Filippov, February 2, 1890, in Anton Chekhov, A Journey to Sakhalin (Cambridge: Ian Faulkner Publishing, 1993), p. 366. [L.L.]
Anton Chekhov to Ivan Leontyev (Shcheglov), March 22, 1890.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, March 9, 1890.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, February 17, 1890, in Chekhov, A Journey to Sakhalin, p. 368. [P.B.]
Anton Chekhov, "Nikolai Mikhailovich Przhevalsky," published anonymously in New Times, October 26, 1888, and attributed to Chekhov based on a letter from him to E. Lintvaryova, October 27, 1888, in Anton Chekhov, Opere varie (Milan: Mursia, 1963), pp. 467-69. Readers both within and outside Russia closely followed the Russian explorer's exploits. Peter Kropotkin wrote about him for the New Times drawing on reports published in the Bulletin of the Russian Geographical Society; see Kropotkin, Memorie di un rivoluzionario (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1969), p. 281. [P.B.]
Anton Chekhov to Natalya Lintvaryova, March 5, 1890, in Anton Chekhov, A Journey to Sakhalin, p. 370. For representative views on Sakhalin among Russian officials and functionaries, see Howard B. Douglas, Life with Trans-Siberian Savages (London: Longmans, 1893), pp. 1-19. [P.B.]
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, Moscow, March 9, 1890.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, Moscow, February 23, 1890.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Pleshcheyev, February 15, 1890.
Chekhov's request came at a sensitive time. In an effort to stem negative reports on the czarist penal system by Russian polit- ical exiles in the West, Galkin-Vraskoy was just then organizing the Fourth International Congress on Penal Servitude in St. Petersburg. He was also overseeing the publication of an official review of the czarist penal system that sought to counter negative reports.
At Sakhalin, political prisoners made up about 40 percent of the roughly ten thousand exiles, but their treatment was the principal cause for the czarist government's coming under attack, particularly at that time. "The year 1889 would remain ineradica- bly imprinted in the memories of those who were at that time prisoners in Siberia," the revolutionary Leo Deutsch wrote in his memoirs. That year, after a long hunger strike among female prisoners at Kara, one female prisoner died after being flogged, and other women committed suicide by poisoning themselves. In Yakutsk, guards bayoneted and shot male and female students who had protested forced marches over long distances on foot without halts; three prisoners were hung, and nineteen were sentenced to hard labor for life. Leo G. Deutsch, Sedici anni in Siberia: Memorie di un rivoluzionario russo (Milan: Sonzogno, 1905), pp. 247-63, quotation from p. 250.
This summary of Chekhov's journey is based on a selection of letters published in Italian in Anton Chekhov, Epistolario, ed. Gigliola Venturi and Clara Croi'sson, vol. 1 (Turin: Einaudi, 1960), from which the citations are taken, and on the fuller selection found in Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With Biographical Sketch, ed. Constance Garnett (New York: Macmillan, 1920), now available at: http://www.gutenberg .net/etext/6408. Additionally, use was made of introductory materials from various editions of The Island of Sakhalin, in particular by Robert Payne in Anton Chekhov, The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin, trans. Luba and Michael Terpak (New York: Washington Square, 1967); Irina Ratushinskaya (London: Folio Society, 1989); Brian Reeve, A Journey to Sakhalin (Cambridge: Ian
Faulkner Publishing, 1993); Sophie Lazarus (Grenoble: Editions Cent Pages, 1995); Roger Grenier (Paris: Gallimard, 2001); and Juras T. Ryfa, "The History of the Journey," in The Problem of Genre (Lewiston, Maine: Edwin Mellen, 1999), pp. 26-54. For descriptions of travels in Siberia and on the tarantass, see Luchino Dal Verme, Giappone e Siberia,: Note di viaggio (Milan, 1882), pp. 402-3,411-12.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, Steamship Baikal, Strait of Tartary, September 11, 1890.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, August 16, 1892.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, Melikhovo, July 28, 1893.
Brian Reeve, "Introduction," pp. 27-28; Ryfa, The Problem of Genre, pp. 91-96, 152-53.
Anton Chekhov, Zapisnye knizhki (Moscow: Gosudarstven- noe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoj literatury, 1950), p. 206.
Anton Chekhov to Dmitry Grigorovich, Moscow, February 5, 1888.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, Moscow, April 24, 1899.
Anton Chekhov to Maria Kiselyova, Moscow, January 14, 1887.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed. and intro. Fredson Bowers (New York: Harcourt, 1981), p. 246.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, Melikhovo, August 1, 1892.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Suvorin, Nice, February 6, 1898.
Anton Chekhov to Ivan Orlov, Yalta, February 22, 1899.
Anton Chekhov to Alexander Chekhov, Moscow, September 7, 1887.
Anton Chekhov to Alexei Pleshcheyev, Moscow, October 4, 1888.