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63-430: The magazine's first editors were Yakov Polonsky , Apollon Grigoryev , and A.Khmelnitsky. In mid-1860 Grigory Blagosvetlov came in, to invite several new authors, including Dmitry Pisarev who became the head of the literary criticism section. Russkoye Slovo soon became quite popular among the young Russian intelligentsia . In 1862, after the publication of Pisarev's essay "Poor Russian Thought" (Бедная русская мысль),

126-435: A "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text." The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, but easy to follow, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience. Chekhov began writing stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that

189-614: A census. The letters Chekhov wrote during the two-and-a-half-month journey to Sakhalin are considered to be among his best. His remarks to his sister about Tomsk were to become notorious. Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull, too. Chekhov witnessed much on Sakhalin that shocked and angered him, including floggings, embezzlement of supplies, and forced prostitution of women. He wrote, "There were times I felt that I saw before me

252-510: A fortnight and produced that November. Though Chekhov found the experience "sickening" and painted a comic portrait of the chaotic production in a letter to his brother Alexander, the play was a hit and was praised, to Chekhov's bemusement, as a work of originality. Although Chekhov did not fully realise it at the time, Chekhov's plays, such as The Seagull (written in 1895), Uncle Vanya (written in 1897), The Three Sisters (written in 1900), and The Cherry Orchard (written in 1903) served as

315-470: A hero of the new order, rising from a modest background so as eventually to possess the gentry's estates. Despite Chekhov's reputation as a playwright, William Boyd asserts that his short stories represent the greater achievement. Raymond Carver , who wrote the short story "Errand" about Chekhov's death, believed that Chekhov was the greatest of all short story writers: Chekhov's stories are as wonderful (and necessary) now as when they first appeared. It

378-407: A long time since I drank champagne.' He drained it and lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child ... Chekhov's body was transported to Moscow in a refrigerated railway-car meant for oysters , a detail that offended Gorky . Some of the thousands of mourners followed

441-455: A more serious, artistic ambition in the twenty-six-year-old. In 1888, with a little string-pulling by Grigorovich, the short story collection At Dusk ( V Sumerkakh ) won Chekhov the coveted Pushkin Prize "for the best literary production distinguished by high artistic worth." In 1887, exhausted from overwork and ill health, Chekhov took a trip to Ukraine, which reawakened him to the beauty of

504-399: A priest and a merchant. "The Steppe" has been called a "dictionary of Chekhov's poetics", and it represented a significant advance for Chekhov, exhibiting much of the quality of his mature fiction and winning him publication in a literary journal rather than a newspaper. In autumn 1887, a theatre manager named Korsh commissioned Chekhov to write a play, the result being Ivanov , written in

567-429: A revolutionary backbone to what is common sense to the medium of acting to this day: an effort to recreate and express the realism of how people truly act and speak with each other. This realistic manifestation of the human condition may engender in audiences reflection upon what it means to be human. This philosophy of approaching the art of acting has stood not only steadfast, but as the cornerstone of acting for much of

630-676: Is a correspondence that preserves gems of theatre history, including shared complaints about Stanislavski 's directing methods and Chekhov's advice to Olga about performing in his plays. In Yalta, Chekhov wrote one of his most famous stories, " The Lady with the Dog " (also translated from the Russian as "Lady with Lapdog"), which depicts what at first seems a casual liaison between a cynical married man and an unhappy married woman who meet while holidaying in Yalta . Neither expects anything lasting from

693-451: Is called Georgian Night . In 1849, Polonsky paid homage to the mountaineer folklore in his collection Sazandar . His verse epistle to Leo Pushkin (the poet's brother), known as A Stroll through Tiflis (1846), was written with more attention to realistic detail. In 1851, Polonsky moved to Saint Petersburg , where he was invited to edit the literary journal Russkoye Slovo . He soon gave up journalistic activities and continued his career at

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756-536: Is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski 's Moscow Art Theatre , which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard . These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers

819-413: Is not only the immense number of stories he wrote—for few, if any, writers have ever done more—it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish. According to literary critic Daniel S. Burt , Chekhov was one of the greatest and most influential writers of all time. One of

882-513: Is similar to Chekhov's "Sleepy". The Russian critic D. S. Mirsky , who lived in England, explained Chekhov's popularity in that country by his "unusually complete rejection of what we may call the heroic values". In Russia itself, Chekhov's drama fell out of fashion after the revolution , but it was later incorporated into the Soviet canon. The character of Lopakhin, for example, was reinvented as

945-655: The Black Forest in Germany, from where he wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha, describing the food and surroundings, and assuring her and his mother that he was getting better. In his last letter, he complained about the way German women dressed. Chekhov died on 15 July 1904 at the age of 44 after a long fight with tuberculosis, the same disease that killed his brother. Chekhov's death has become one of "the great set pieces of literary history" —retold, embroidered, and fictionalized many times since, notably in

1008-814: The Chekhov Gymnasium ), where he was held back for a year at fifteen for failing an examination in Ancient Greek. He sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled: When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted", or "The Archangel's Voice", everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts. In 1876, Chekhov's father

1071-636: The Moscow University , where he befriended Apollon Grigoryev and Afanasy Fet . Three young and promising poets wrote pleasing and elegant poems, emulating Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov . He graduated from the university in 1844, publishing his first collection of poems the same year. Polonsky's early poetry is generally regarded as his finest; one of his first published poems was even copied by Nikolai Gogol into his notebook. Unlike some other Russian poets, Polonsky did not belong to an affluent family. In order to provide for his relatives, he joined

1134-460: The libretto of Vakula the Smith after Gogol, intended for Alexander Serov , finally made into a competition piece and set by Tchaikovsky (1874), who reworked it later as Cherevichki . Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov ( / ˈ tʃ ɛ k ɒ f / ; Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов , IPA: [ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕexəf] ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904 )

1197-502: The steppe . On his return, he began the novella-length short story " The Steppe ", which he called "something rather odd and much too original", and which was eventually published in Severny Vestnik ( The Northern Herald ). In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, and his companions,

1260-540: The 1880s, the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin responded, "read only Chekhov's novels!" Raymond Tallis further recounts that Vladimir Lenin believed his reading of the short story Ward No. 6 "made him a revolutionary". Upon finishing the story, Lenin is said to have remarked: "I absolutely had the feeling that I was shut up in Ward 6 myself!" In Chekhov's lifetime, British and Irish critics generally did not find his work pleasing; E. J. Dillon thought "the effect on

1323-406: The 1987 short story "Errand" by Raymond Carver . In 1908, Olga wrote this account of her husband's last moments: Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe ('I'm dying'). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor , and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: 'It's

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1386-425: The 20th century to this day. Mikhail Chekhov considered Ivanov a key moment in his brother's intellectual development and literary career. From this period comes an observation of Chekhov's that has become known as Chekhov's gun , a dramatic principle that requires that every element in a narrative be necessary and irreplaceable, and that everything else be removed. Remove everything that has no relevance to

1449-521: The censorship department. At that period, Polonsky would increasingly venture into social themes, without producing anything of lasting value. He was the last luminary of the 1840s still active in St. Petersburg of the 1890s, maintaining correspondence with such younger writers as Anton Chekhov . He died at the age of 78 and was buried in his native Ryazan . Although Polonsky was highly regarded in his own day, his reputation has been in predictable decline during

1512-450: The child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together. Chekhov later concluded that charity was not the answer, but that the government had a duty to finance humane treatment of the convicts. His findings were published in 1893 and 1894 as Ostrov Sakhalin ( The Island of Sakhalin ), a work of social science, not literature. Chekhov found literary expression for the "Hell of Sakhalin" in his long short story " The Murder ",

1575-636: The country, and I will come and see her.... I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't appear in my sky every day. The letter proved prophetic of Chekhov's marital arrangements with Olga: he lived largely at Yalta, she in Moscow, pursuing her acting career. In 1902, Olga suffered a miscarriage; and Donald Rayfield has offered evidence, based on the couple's letters, that conception occurred when Chekhov and Olga were apart, although other Russian scholars have rejected that claim. The literary legacy of this long-distance marriage

1638-452: The encounter. Unexpectedly though, they gradually fall deeply in love and end up risking scandal and the security of their family lives. The story masterfully captures their feelings for each other, the inner transformation undergone by the disillusioned male protagonist as a result of falling deeply in love, and their inability to resolve the matter by either letting go of their families or of each other. In May 1903, Chekhov visited Moscow;

1701-488: The extreme limits of man's degradation." He was particularly moved by the plight of the children living in the penal colony with their parents. For example: On the Amur steamer going to Sakhalin, there was a convict who had murdered his wife and wore fetters on his legs. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters. At night

1764-496: The facade of Russkoye Slovo . The prose section behind it was less impressive: the main contributors to it were Nikolai Bazhin and Nikolai Blagoveshchensky as well as (occasionally) Marko Vovchok , Alexander Levitov , Alexander Sheller , Nikolai Pomyalovsky , Fyodor Reshetnikov , Konstantin Staniukovich and Gleb Uspensky . After the 1866 Karakozov's assassination attempt Russkoye Slovo (as well as Sovremennik )

1827-468: The family into progressively better accommodations. Early in 1886 he was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in St. Petersburg , Novoye Vremya ( New Times ), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin , who paid a rate per line double Leykin's and allowed Chekhov three times the space. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend, perhaps Chekhov's closest. Before long, Chekhov

1890-663: The family's possessions and finish his education. He remained in Taganrog for three more years, boarding with a man by the name of Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard , had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches , and selling short sketches to the newspapers, among other jobs. He sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up. During this time, he read widely and analytically, including

1953-420: The first day that Chekhov moved to Melikhovo, the sick began flocking to him from twenty miles around. They came on foot or were brought in carts, and often he was fetched to patients at a distance. Sometimes from early in the morning peasant women and children were standing before his door waiting. Chekhov's expenditure on drugs was considerable, but the greatest cost was making journeys of several hours to visit

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2016-582: The funeral procession of a General Keller by mistake, to the accompaniment of a military band. Chekhov was buried next to his father at the Novodevichy Cemetery . A few months before he died, Chekhov told the writer Ivan Bunin that he thought people might go on reading his writings for seven years. "Why seven?", asked Bunin. "Well, seven and a half", Chekhov replied. "That's not bad. I've got six years to live." Chekhov's posthumous reputation greatly exceeded his expectations. The ovations for

2079-431: The last brutal century and a half. His most popular pieces are lyrical songs, notably Sleigh Bell (1854), "in which the sound of a sleigh bell evokes a dream state and images of lost love". Unsurprisingly, many of his poems were set to music by Russian composers including Alexander Dargomyzhsky , Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , Igor Stravinsky , Sergei Rachmaninoff , Sergei Taneyev , and Anton Rubinstein . He also provided

2142-592: The last section of which is set on Sakhalin, where the murderer Yakov loads coal in the night while longing for home. Chekhov's writing on Sakhalin, especially the traditions and habits of the Gilyak people , is the subject of a sustained meditation and analysis in Haruki Murakami 's novel 1Q84 . It is also the subject of a poem by the Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney , "Chekhov on Sakhalin" (collected in

2205-614: The leading publishers of the time. Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction. In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treated the poor free of charge. In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the attacks worsened, but he would not admit his tuberculosis to his family or his friends. He confessed to Leykin, "I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues." He continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move

2268-409: The letter had struck him "like a thunderbolt" and confessed, "I have written my stories the way reporters write up their notes about fires—mechanically, half-consciously, caring nothing about either the reader or myself." The admission may have done Chekhov a disservice, since early manuscripts reveal that he often wrote with extreme care, continually revising. Grigorovich's advice nevertheless inspired

2331-532: The magazine received half a year suspension. While Sovremennik (with Nikolai Dobrolyubov and Nikolai Chernyshevsky as its ideological leaders) represented the deeper, analytical part of the same spectrum, for Russkoye Slovo the straightforward, often nihilistic protest was the order of the day. Some attacks on liberal literature and arts published in the journal were criticized even by its Sovremennik allies. Polemic essays by Pisarev, Varfolomey Zaytsev , Nikolai Shelgunov , Afanasy Shchapov represented

2394-558: The office of Prince Vorontsov , first at Odessa and then (1846–51) at Tiflis . The spectacular nature of the Black Sea coast strengthened his predilection for Romanticism . Polonsky turned his attention to the Caucasian subjects and descriptions of lush nature, treated in the manner reminiscent of Lermontov (although he also wrote parodies of his poems). Nocturnal scenes especially appealed to him; in fact, one of his best known poems

2457-474: The orchard and the pond, and planted many trees, which, according to Mikhail, he "looked after ... as though they were his children. Like Colonel Vershinin in his Three Sisters , as he looked at them he dreamed of what they would be like in three or four hundred years." The first night of The Seagull , at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on 17 October 1896, was a fiasco, as

2520-586: The play The Cherry Orchard in the year of his death served to demonstrate the Russian public's acclaim for the writer, which placed him second in literary celebrity only to Tolstoy , who outlived him by six years. Tolstoy was an early admirer of Chekhov's short stories and had a series that he deemed "first quality" and "second quality" bound into a book. In the first category were: Children , The Chorus Girl , A Play , Home , Misery , The Runaway , In Court , Vanka , Ladies , A Malefactor , The Boys , Darkness , Sleepy , The Helpmate , and The Darling ; in

2583-401: The play was booed by the audience, stinging Chekhov into renouncing the theatre. But the play so impressed the theatre director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko that he convinced his colleague Konstantin Stanislavski to direct a new production for the innovative Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. Stanislavski's attention to psychological realism and ensemble playing coaxed the buried subtleties from

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2646-456: The prominent lawyer Vasily Maklakov visited him almost every day. Maklakov signed Chekhov's will. By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill with tuberculosis . Mikhail Chekhov recalled that "everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off, but the nearer [he] was to the end, the less he seemed to realise it". On 3 June, he set off with Olga for the German spa town of Badenweiler in

2709-530: The reader of Chekhov's tales was repulsion at the gallery of human waste represented by his fickle, spineless, drifting people" and R. E. C. Long said "Chekhov's characters were repugnant, and that Chekhov revelled in stripping the last rags of dignity from the human soul". After his death, Chekhov was reappraised. Constance Garnett 's translations won him an English-language readership and the admiration of writers such as James Joyce , Virginia Woolf , and Katherine Mansfield , whose story "The Child Who Was Tired"

2772-678: The role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Anton Chekhov was born into a Russian family on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great (17 January Old Style ) 29 January 1860 in Taganrog , a port on the Sea of Azov – on Politseyskaya (Police) street, later renamed Chekhova street – in southern Russia . He was the third of six surviving children; he had two older brothers, Alexander and Nikolai , and three younger siblings, Ivan, Maria , and Mikhail . His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov,

2835-512: The same toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women." In 1893/1894 he worked as a Zemstvo doctor in Zvenigorod , which has numerous sanatoriums and rest homes. A local hospital is named after him. In 1894, Chekhov began writing his play The Seagull in a lodge he had built in the orchard at Melikhovo. In the two years since he had moved to the estate, he had refurbished the house, taken up agriculture and horticulture, tended

2898-435: The second: A Transgression , Sorrow , The Witch , Verochka , In a Strange Land , The Cook's Wedding , A Tedious Business , An Upheaval , Oh! The Public! , The Mask , A Woman's Luck , Nerves , The Wedding , A Defenceless Creature , and Peasant Wives. Chekhov's work also found praise from several of Russia's most influential radical political thinkers. If anyone doubted the gloom and miserable poverty of Russia in

2961-456: The sick, which reduced his time for writing. However, Chekhov's work as a doctor enriched his writing by bringing him into intimate contact with all sections of Russian society: for example, he witnessed at first hand the peasants' unhealthy and cramped living conditions, which he recalled in his short story "Peasants". Chekhov visited the upper classes as well, recording in his notebook: "Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness,

3024-459: The son of a former serf and his wife, was from the village Olkhovatka ( Voronezh Governorate ) and ran a grocery store. He was a director of the parish choir, a devout Orthodox Christian , and a physically abusive father. Pavel Chekhov has been seen by some historians as the model for his son's many portraits of hypocrisy. Chekhov's paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, the Ukrainian language

3087-513: The story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there. The death of Chekhov's brother Nikolai from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced A Dreary Story , finished that September, about a man who confronts the end of a life that he realises has been without purpose. Mikhail Chekhov recorded his brother's depression and restlessness after Nikolai's death. Mikhail

3150-446: The text, and restored Chekhov's interest in playwriting. The Art Theatre commissioned more plays from Chekhov and the following year staged Uncle Vanya , which Chekhov had completed in 1896. In the last decades of his life he became an atheist . In March 1897, Chekhov suffered a major haemorrhage of the lungs while on a visit to Moscow. With great difficulty he was persuaded to enter a clinic, where doctors diagnosed tuberculosis on

3213-405: The upper part of his lungs and ordered a change in his manner of life. After his father's death in 1898, Chekhov bought a plot of land on the outskirts of Yalta and built a villa (The White Dacha) , into which he moved with his mother and sister the following year. Though he planted trees and flowers, kept dogs and tame cranes, and received guests such as Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky , Chekhov

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3276-573: The volume Station Island ). Rebecca Gould has compared Chekhov's book on Sakhalin to Katherine Mansfield 's Urewera Notebook (1907). In 2013, the Wellcome Trust-funded play 'A Russian Doctor', performed by Andrew Dawson and researched by Professor Jonathan Cole, explored Chekhov's experiences on Sakhalin Island. Mikhail Chekhov, a member of the household at Melikhovo, described the extent of his brother's medical commitments: From

3339-464: The whole family. To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man Without Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). His prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki ( Fragments ), owned by Nikolai Leykin , one of

3402-516: The works of Cervantes , Turgenev , Goncharov , and Schopenhauer , and wrote a full-length comic drama, Fatherless , which his brother Alexander dismissed as "an inexcusable though innocent fabrication." Chekhov also experienced a series of love affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, having gained admission to the medical school at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University . Chekhov then assumed responsibility for

3465-538: Was despotism and lying that ruined your mother's youth. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that it's sickening and frightening to think about it. Remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool." Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium (since renamed

3528-443: Was a Russian playwright and short-story writer. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg , Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature

3591-483: Was a former protégée and sometime lover of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko whom he had first met at rehearsals for The Seagull . Up to that point, Chekhov, known as "Russia's most elusive literary bachelor", had preferred passing liaisons and visits to brothels over commitment. He had once written to Suvorin: By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in

3654-546: Was always relieved to leave his "hot Siberia " for Moscow or travels abroad. He vowed to move to Taganrog as soon as a water supply was installed there. In Yalta he completed two more plays for the Art Theatre, composing with greater difficulty than in the days when he "wrote serenely, the way I eat pancakes now". He took a year each over Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard . On 25 May 1901, Chekhov married Olga Knipper quietly, owing to his horror of weddings. She

3717-428: Was attracting literary as well as popular attention. The sixty-four-year-old Dmitry Grigorovich , a celebrated Russian writer of the day, wrote to Chekhov after reading his short story "The Huntsman" that "You have real talent, a talent that places you in the front rank among writers in the new generation." He went on to advise Chekhov to slow down, write less, and concentrate on literary quality. Chekhov replied that

3780-432: Was closed by a monarch 's decree. Yakov Polonsky Yakov Petrovich Polonsky ( Russian : Яков Петрович Полонский ; 18 December [ O.S. 6 December] 1819 – 30 October [ O.S. 18 October] 1898) was a leading Pushkinist poet who wrote poems faithful to the traditions of Russian Romantic poetry during the heyday of realistic prose. Of noble birth, Polonsky attended

3843-404: Was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, having been cheated by a contractor named Mironov. To avoid debtor's prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolai , were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow. Chekhov's mother was physically and emotionally broken by the experience. Chekhov was left behind to sell

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3906-471: Was likely present in his household. Chekhov's mother, Yevgeniya (Morozova), was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels all over Russia with her cloth-merchant father. "Our talents we got from our father," Chekhov remembered, "but our soul from our mother." In adulthood, Chekhov criticised his brother Alexander 's treatment of his wife and children by reminding him of Pavel's tyranny: "Let me ask you to recall that it

3969-530: Was researching prisons at that time as part of his law studies. Anton Chekhov, in a search for purpose in his own life, himself soon became obsessed with the issue of prison reform. In 1890, Chekhov undertook an arduous journey by train, horse-drawn carriage, and river steamer to the Russian Far East and the katorga , or penal colony, on Sakhalin Island , north of Japan. He spent three months there interviewing thousands of convicts and settlers for

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