The Russian underclass included principally, and at the lowest level, the peasantry, which accounted for four-fifths of the population, consisting mostly of illiterate, poor, and down- trodden individuals who retained the status of peasant in law without necessarily being employed on the land. As for the intermediate area between peasant and elite, one despairs of finding the right nomenclature, since 'middle class' suggests something foreign to Russian conditions. To the higher part of this intermediate stratum belonged the merchants and the clergy—as represented in The Steppe by Father Christopher and Kuzmichov. To the humbler class of intermediates belonged what might be called the junior NCOs of society— petty officials, artisans, parish clerks, hospital orderlies, and the like. Old-fashioned in their dress and customs, in which they often resembled the peasants rather than the gentry, and often speaking an 'earthy' form of substandard Russian, such persons also tend to adopt on Chekhov's pages a form of comic, pseudo-sophisticated speech which presents considerable prob- lems to those translators who are aware of its special nuances. It is persons of this social category that the judge in An Awkward Business calls 'in-betweeners' — those who belong to neither of 'the two poles of society . . . professional people and peasants'.
Elscwhere in the samc story thcy are dcscribed as 'neither peasant nor mastcr, ncither fish nor fowl'.
An Awku>ard Story prcscnts what The Steppe lacks: a clash of social classcs. The obstrcperous hospital orderly Smimovsky, an 'in-betwccner' if thcrc ever was onc, is locked in conAict with his superior oRicer, the doctor, who falls over himself trying to be fair to this appalling lout, but who is comically doomed by Russian conditions to win the contest, however hard he tries, in effect, to lose it. It is one of Chckhov's most acute comments on the Russian class system. On rcreading it I fcel that I did it less than justice in my second biography of Chekhov, whcre its inefectiveness is stressed—as I now think, wrongly. As for what rings like a dismissive scntence ('seldom did evcn Chekhov write so inconclusive a study of incon- clusiveness'), that still scems to be true, but is surely a compli- ment to the story rather than the reverse.4 For a very different confrontation, lacking the element of open conAict, between a gentleman and an 'in-betweener', rcaders may tum to the haunting In the Cart and to the relationship or non- relationship between Squire Khanov and thc unfortunate schoolmistress Mariya.
If a Smirnovsky, if a Mariya can ratc as Russian 'in- betwecncrs', what of the real social drcgs? We shall mcct them in plcnty—not his horsc rustlcrs (who formcd a special clite of their own), but his Siberian exilcs, his poor cobblcrs, his struggling coffin-makers, and their ilk. In At Christmas wc sink to the 1-'athetic world of thc villagc woman Vasilisa so cruelly dcfraudcd of hcr fifteen copecks by the scoundrelly Yegor. And in Patch our protagonist is a mcrc quadruped.
In three particularly eloquent stories Chckhov explorcs thc gulf which separates thc clite from this social stratum evcn lower than that of Hospital Ordcrly Smirnovsky. The cpony- mous hcro ofGusev is an innocent, if somcwhat brutal, pcasant soldier, and is shown in contrast with thc cmbittcred intcllcc- tual Paul Ivanovich—by no mcans a privilegcd member of
• n. Hinglcy. A New l.ife nf Anton Ckekhtiv (London, 11175); ri-pr. in pnpcrb.irk .is A Life of Anlnn Cliekhvv (Oxford, iyXy). p. 115.
society, but emphatically on the other side of the educational, linguistic, and class barrier to the dying soldier-hcro. This plain tale of a ship's sick bay in the tropics ends with a burial of both men at sea, and consists of death-bcd convcrsations that arc charactcrized by the lack of cffective communication between human beings which so fascinated Chekhov as a theme. Despite Paul Ivanovich's insistence on travelling third-class, and on airing his views in some splendid harangues, thc rift between first- and third-class Russian remains unbridged at the timc when both bodics are consigned to the occan.
Two further stimulating variants on this theme are presented by New Villa and On Official Business. In the first, an engineer successfully bridges a river ncar a village. But his well-meaning wife can build no bridge at all between herself and the local villagers, for all her attempts to fraternize with Rodion, Stepanida, and their kind. A bemused and sorry crew—some kind-heartedt men and women, some malicious hooligans— Chekhov's muzhiks, as always in his work, are presented in a manner militantly contrary to the stereotype of Russian popu- list and Slavophile literature about the noble peasant. He had many times flouted thcse canons before, and most notoriously in his story Peasants (which will be found in the World's Classics volume The Russian Master and Other Stories), but he evidcntly felt that the point was worth making again and again. Howls of anguish from Russia's embattled pseudo-progressive and trcndy peasant-fanciers might annoy him, but he always stuck to telling the truth as he saw it.
A similar rift is that portrayed in On Official Business. A magistrate and a coroncr have been summoned to conduct an inquest in a village. Here they make memorable contact with the local constable, or sotsky, a downtrodden elderly messenger whose life consists largely of trudging through snow drifts to deliver official forms. The sotsky of this story was modclled on the real-life sotsky of Melikhovo, where Chekhov had his estate.
The two least typical items represented here are, probably, The Bet and The Head Gardener's Story. With their discmbodied settings and their powerful moralizing pretensions they might seem as far from Chekhov as it is possible to go. But they do have their parallels, reminding us of his experimental attempts of the late i88os to purvey Tolstoyan messages in fiction, as also does Rothschild's Fiddle. These are not vintage Chekhov, per- haps, but they are more than mere curiosities. To this same small group may be assigned a better-known item— The Student, that tantalizing, brief, plotless study which Chekhov once puzzlingly described as his own favourite among all his works, and which he also claimed as a manifesto in favour of optimism. It is, like Beauties, one of the items which most appeal to those who like to discourse on Chekhov's 'lyricism'; 'for sheer lyricism this takes the biscuit', as I seem to remember one reviewer writing. But The Student also has its charm for those who, like myself, prize Chekhov more for his inimitable astringency.
As this brief survey indicates, the stories in this volume are not quite what many readers of Chekhov may have come to expect. As studies of the Russian underclass they are typical, perhaps, of an important minor enclave within his work rather than of his work as a whole. But they have nothing to lose from comparison with more familiar material. On the con- trary, they enhance it, while also providing eloquent testimony to the power and flexibility of an art which everywhere transcends its sociological, its geographical, its psychological, and any other of its analysable or classifiable aspects.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. H. Bruford, Chekhov and his Russia: A Sociological Study (London, 1948).
Thc Oxford Chekhov. Tr. and ed. Ronald Hingley. Nine vols. (London, 1964—80).