Some thoughts on “Peasants” by Chekhov

!bookworms have you read it? I highly recommend it, it is an hilariously grim glance at 19th century Russian peasant life. It's a novella by Chekhov, just 35 pages long in the translation I read.

It's about a man named Nikolai who worked as a waiter in a hotel in Moscow. He was sent as a kid to get a better life but at the beginning of the story he falls and becomes a cripple. Unable to work, he returns to his village alongside his wife Olga and their daughter Sasha.

He had some happy childhood memories but once there he suffers a culture shock. The “Izba” (Russian peasant log house) where his parents, sisters in law and nephews live is very small and dirty.

Unlike most modern American “liberal urban dwellers visit their conservative country hick relatives” in this story, Nikolai's wife Olga is the pious one. She's very religious and regularly reads the Bible. Her in laws on the other hand are wretched people, they're all illiterate, they don't know any prayers and just go along with what the priest tells them, they curse and blaspheme a lot and display enormous ignorance (at some point their samovar get's confiscated because they didn't payed their taxes, the reason was that grandpa and uncle are both useless drunkards spending it all on vodka so the Starosta tells him to file a complaint in their next meeting, the author ads grandpa couldn't understand shit of those big words but felt satisfied). Granny is an abusive crone beating the crap out of her granddaughters for no reason other than being annoyed at the geese running around (Sasha tells her cousin that hopefully Granny will burn in Heck after Judgment Day). Uncle Kiriak is a violent boozetard who constantly beats his wife. At another point grandpa and his r-slurred buddies accidentally burn up the house of a neighbor. It is also stated that they use the money they collect for the village and spend it all on booze.

!nooticers !neolibs are these the BASED and TRAD Russians I keep hearing about?

Leo Tolstoy, despite being an admirer of Chekhov HATED this novella and wrote a scathing review calling it a “crime against the people” . Chekhov wrote the story after partaking in the Russian 1897 Census, he visited countryside villages, talked and observed people, Tolstoy's review makes sense considering Tolstoy was a landed nobleman LARPing as a peasant.