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annotation Chekhov,
Anton. A Journey To Sakhalin. Anton Chekhov's A Journey To Sakhalin is an amazing document. Amazing not just for its scope and volume and the fact that it was compiled and completed by one individual, but in that the tubercular Chekhov not only undertook the journey, but survived to write about it. Brian Reeve, in the introduction to his excellent and painstakingly-detailed translation, suggests that it was Chekhov's very recognition of his impending early mortality that prompted his "apparently bizarre" undertaking of this treacherous enterprise that certainly did nothing to prolong his life. "Explanations volunteered have included...irritation at carping...against the apparent...absence of political tendency in his writing...the wish to flee an unhappy love affair...and simply the desire to just get away from everything" (1). The prevailing reason, noted here by Reeve and echoed in Lee J. Williames' The Iconoclast, is that, inspired by the writings of Charles Darwin, Chekhov hoped to gather material for a doctoral dissertation which would enable him to teach (Williames claims that Chekhov's resulting study was indeed later submitted and summarily rejected by the Russian medical college authorities as "too sociological"). Whatever the reason, Chekhov's preparations for his journey were excessive in research and woefully inadequate in practical considerations. He studied as many as 65 publications on subjects ranging from the botany and ethnography of the region to books on the Russian penal system. All, apparently, within one month's time. He waited, however, until nearly his departure date until contacting government authorities for permission to enter the Island, and then became annoyed at the slow, grinding wheels of bureaucracy. "Neither [Central Prison Department official] Galkin...nor any of the other geniuses I was stupid enough to apply to for assistance, have rendered me the slightest help," he complained to his publisher friend A.S. Suvorin shortly before his departure. "I've had to act on my own responsibility" (18). In addition, Chekhov neglected to follow up on inquiries he had sent earlier to arrange introductions to people's homes in order to ensure a place to stay along the way, as well as to even gain access to the restricted colony on the island. He went anyway, leaving Moscow on April 19, 1890. Upon departure, his surviving brother Mikhail noted that Chekhov was ill-equipped and ill-prepared for the journey, with one large, unwieldy suitcase and substandard boots and clothing (18-19). What he did have was a contract with Suvorin worth 1500 rubles to send an ongoing travelogue of his encounters and findings back to Moscow for publication. "Why is it so cold in this Siberia of yours?" With this, Chekhov's question of his coach driver, the journal of his expedition begins. "Because that's the way God wants it," replies the driver (35). Chekhov's documenting of his travels is a vividly-written chronicle of the people, the landscape, and even the wildlife along the way (Carolina De Maegd-Soëp's Chekhov and Women makes note of Chekhov's friendship with a ratty, one-legged crane that took up residence at his house in Yalta). At one stop, Chekhov observes a peasant trudging past with two violins strapped to him and speculates, "...he will begin to freeze from the Siberian cold, will wither away, and die gently, silently, so that nobody will notice, and his violins, which once made his native village feel gay and mournful, will go for tuppence to some clerk from their new area...the clerk's children will rip out the strings, snap the bridge, fill the inside with water..." (35-36). Chekhov continues his journey by troika, a kind of cart/carriage, rumbling slowly over the frozen earth. He passes groups of peasants who have lost their land and wander with nowhere to go. He sees a group of shackled convicts being herded towards the island, noting how they have "become numbed to the marrow of their bones, and now...[all] that remains in life for them [are] vodka, sluts, more sluts, more vodka. In this world, they are no longer human beings, but wild beasts, while in the view of my driver, in the next world it will be even worse for them..." (38). On July 5, 1890, Chekhov arrived at Sakhalin Island. He spent his first two months there exploring and describing the settlements, colonies, jails, and hovels of Northern and Southern Sakhalin. He observes the lives of the convicts, the exiles and the peasants, as well as the stationed government and military officials. His conclusion? Sakhalin Island is an incompetently-run, bureaucratic nightmare. Ostensibly a successful, self-sustaining agricultural colony, Chekhov found the island both north and south to be so overburdened with population that there was no room to grow anything. Residents subsisted on deceit, gambling, bribery, and -- for the women, outnumbered on the Island by a margin of 4-to-1 -- prostitution. "Women...earn their living by prostitution," Chekhov noted. "Even a certain woman prisoner from the privileged classes, who, I was told, was a college graduate, does not form an exception" (202). The "female question" on the Island -- women convicts and exiles -- was one Chekhov explored at length in his study. "The majority of them are women...sentenced for offenses of a romantic nature or connected with their families," Chekhov concluded. "Even those who have come here for arson or forging banknotes are in essence suffering the penalties for love, since they were lured into the crime by their lovers" (254). Or, so they probably claimed. A woman on Sakhalin, Chekhov continued, "is not exactly a human being...and not exactly a creature even lower than a domestic animal, but somewhere between the two" (257). Chekhov set sail from Sakhalin on October 13, 1890. His hopes of visiting Japan quashed by a raging cholera epidemic, Chekhov detoured to Hong Kong and Ceylon, where he impulsively purchased two mongooses and a "vicious little animal" known as a palm civet. Chekhov kept them for awhile back home in Moscow, arriving on December 9, but the wild creatures tore up his furniture so badly that he reluctantly consigned them to the zoo shortly after his return (23). Chekhov began immediately upon his return to compile and organize his project. Just as immediately, the strain of the expedition took its toll on his health and his usual benign humor. "Life in Moscow after my toils on Sakhalin seems so dreary and mundane I feel like screaming out loud," he wrote to Suvorin shortly after his return. "I am becoming sick and tired of my Moscow friends and acquaintances" (24). Chekhov spent four years on the Sakhalin project, publishing it finally in 1895. The work was slowed by, among other things, Chekhov's commitment as a doctor treating victims of Russia's devastating famine of 1891, in addition to fighting for "the construction of TB sanitoria and schools for the peasants...[which he] tended during the epidemics of typhoid and other fevers which frequently hit the unsanitary Russian rural villages, treating thousands of them free of charge" (25). The fallout from Chekhov's study? "Chekhov's book aroused great interest in society and certainly encouraged philanthropists to become concerned about the children and sick people of the island," Reese offers hopefully (29). But real, concrete changes that came about because of the study? Minimal, Reese concludes. "Lifelong exile was abolished in 1899, and the lash and the shaving of heads were done away with in 1903," Reese notes, but continues, "These were not linked directly to Chekhov's book, however, but to the general climate of opinion...and to the growing realization that even the old Russian Empire could not continue in its medieval ways for much longer" (30). Copyright © 2001 The Write Word, Inc. All rights reserved. |