Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchVyedomosti or the Novoye Vremya do, who consider an income of ahundred thousand as the wealth of Croesus? As for the correspondentsthemselves, they are townsmen who know the country onlyfrom Glyeb Uspensky. Their position is an utterly false one, theymust fly into a district, sniff about, write, and dash on further. TheRussian correspondent has neither material resources, nor freedom,nor authority. For two hundred roubles a month he gallops on andon, and only prays they may not be angry with him for his involuntaryand inevitable misrepresentations. He feels guilty—though it isnot he that is to blame but Russian darkness. The newspaper correspondentsof the west have excellent maps, encyclopaedias, and statistics;in the west they could write their reports, sitting at home,but among us a correspondent can extract information only fromtalk and rumour. Among us in Russia only three districts have beeninvestigated: the Tcherepov district, the Tambov district, and oneother. That is all in the whole of Russia. The newspapers tell lies,the correspondents are duffers, but what’s to be done? If our presssaid nothing the position would be still more awful, you’ll admitthat.Your letter and your scheme for buying the cattle from the peasantshas stirred me up. I am ready with all my heart and all mystrength to follow your lead and do whatever you think best. I havethought it over for a long time, and this is my opinion: it is no useto reckon upon the rich. It is too late. Every wealthy man has bynow forked out as many thousands as he is destined to. Our oneresource now is the middle-class man who subscribes by the roubleand the half-rouble. Those who in September were talking aboutprivate initiative will by now have found themselves a niche in variousboards and committees and are already at work. So only themiddle-class man is left. Let us open a subscription list. You shallwrite a letter to the editors, and I will get it printed in RusskiyaVyedomosti and Novoye Vremya. To combine the two elements abovementioned, we might both sign the letter. If that is inconvenient toyou from an official point of view, one might write in the thirdperson as a communication that in the fifth section of the NizhniNovgorod district this and that had been organized, that things were,thank God! going successfully and that subscriptions could be sent284