Though Chekhov died just before the full-blown fin-de-siècle mood burst forth in Russia around the time of the first revolution in 1905, Mark Steinberg locates Chekhov within a first-wave fin de siècle following the regicide of Alexander II, and depicts Chekhov’s own searching agnostic temperament as symptomatic of this cultural moment, with its heightened anxieties concerning the ailments of modernity and its renewed interest in the concept of personality (or lichnost’) as an antidote.

Sergei Kibalnik explores how Chekhov conducted polemics with major French writers of the nineteenth century and how he overcame his status as the “Russian Maupassant,” ultimately rejecting the latter’s absurd view of life in favor of a more homegrown redemptive moral strategy grounded in the possibility of inward transformation.

Derek Offord surveys the clashing ideological movements building towards cataclysm in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century: the revolutionary currents (idealisms, socialisms, populisms, terrorisms) that flourished in the years leading up to the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, and the reactionary elements of conservative nationalism that gained ground under Alexander III. Offord considers Chekhov’s non-ideological but politically charged writing within this context.

Serge Gregory surveys Chekhov’s artistic education, his time working the Moscow art beat as a cultural critic, reviewing operas and exhibits, and enjoying the inside scoop on these worlds thanks in part to his older brother Nikolai, an accomplished painter. Gregory demonstrates how Chekhov’s literary impressionism was formed by parallel movements in the arts, especially by his friendship with Isaac Levitan, whose painterly approach to mood was decisive for Chekhov’s own fictional landscapes.

Vladimir Kataev explores the bonds and rifts that shaped the course of Chekhov’s writing, providing overviews of his acquaintance with prominent figures of his time, including Pablo de Sarasate, Nikolai Leskov, Leo Tolstoy, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky; and exploring his closer, more complex friendships with such figures as Vladimir Korolenko, Ivan Leontiev-Shcheglov, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Alexei Suvorin.

Edyta M. Bojanowska reflects on the significance of Chekhov’s arduous mid-career journey to Russia’s penal colony in the North Pacific, both in terms of the genre-bending book of documentary scholarship that the voyage yielded and in the significant reconsideration of empire, colonization, corporal punishment, and incarceration that Chekhov’s work on the island informed.

Christine D. Worobec explores the volatile world of the peasantry in the decades following the emancipation of 1861. Through Chekhov’s eyes, Worobec considers the cycles of violence and abuse embedded within these communities and the challenges faced in an era of modernization, gauging Chekhov’s response to these problems as a writer deeply troubled by the society that Russian serfdom had produced but wary of sweeping political or ideological solutions.

In examining Chekhov’s engagement with the Moscow Art Theater, Sharon Marie Carnicke stages the serendipitous convergence of two worlds, showing us how Chekhov’s fledgling work as a playwright met with the equally fledgling theatrical dreams of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko to yield two mutually reinforcing cultural edifices that would eventually transform theatrical practices the world over.

Gary Saul Morson provides an overview of the ideological ferment of the Russian intelligentsia, the quasi-religious devotion that Russian progressives brought to new dogmas of nihilism, populism, atheism, and scientism, while emphasizing Chekhov’s status as the most steadfast of major Russian writers in his rejection of the ideological fanaticisms of his contemporaries among the intelligentsia.

Vadim Shneyder provides a financial biography of Chekhov as an upwardly mobile freelance literary laborer against the backdrop of Russia’s economic expansion and transition to a money-driven economy. Shneyder traces the rapid development of industrialization in Russia in the 1890s, driven largely by the expansion of the rail network, and examines how this new environment both appears in Chekhov’s works and shaped the conditions of their production.

Alevtina Kuzicheva surveys the intense family life that was the one constant of Chekhov’s existence by examining Chekhov’s correspondence with his parents, brothers, sister, and wife.

Anne Lounsbery illuminates the dauntingly complex system of estates and ranks that stratified Russian life, and the emergence of the “splintered middle” that was Chekhov’s principal focus.

Jane Costlow explores Chekhov’s prescient conservationism against the environmentalist discourse of his time, characterizing Chekhov’s ecological intervention as a meditation on the problem of attention, whether in his fascination with the human inclination to look away from such realities as mass pollution, soil erosion, and deforestation; or in his attempts to inhabit the minds of animals, to imagine the world as not inherently bent towards human ends.

Lindsay Ceballos examines the circles of avant-garde Russian poets who grew up alongside Chekhov’s writing and who saw in Chekhov – among many other qualities – a “realist” antagonist, fellow symbolist, “poet of despair,” paragon of moral fortitude, and ultimately a larger-than-life embodiment of the Russian cultural edifice at the turn of the century.

Andrei D. Stepanov surveys the accumulation of “small deeds” that constitute the core of Chekhov’s altruistic biography, in three stages – Moscow, Melikhovo, and Yalta – from the medical practice and care for relatives and friends that marked Chekhov’s early career, to more ambitious efforts during the second half of his life – the ways in which he extended help to convicts and exiles, peasants, schoolchildren, students, and poverty-stricken consumptives.

Svetlana Evdokimova explores the enigma of the Russian intelligentsia itself as a cultural body that has been defined in highly disparate ways. Evdokimova reviews the ambiguity of the term in Russian society while staking out Chekhov’s own tormented relationship with this group as its harsh critic and devoted champion. How could Chekhov both fault the intelligentsia for its multiple perceived flaws and use the terms intelligentnost’ and intelligentnyi approvingly as a marker of refinement and culture? Evdokimova identifies the reason for this seeming contradiction not so much in any inconsistency on Chekhov’s part, but in the instability and varying usage of the term “intelligentsia.”

In assessing Chekhov’s influence on East Asian literatures, Heekyoung Cho focuses on the first few decades of the twentieth century, when East Asian intellectuals were discovering Russian literature as a resource and guide to their own confrontation with European modernity. In this context, Cho uncovers the strikingly optimistic, life-affirming, and hopeful-though-cautious vision of Chekhov that was filtered into Japan and Korea through the influential exegesis of the anarchocommunist Pyotr Kropotkin.

Melissa L. Miller examines a new civil arena of modern professionals with changing views of sexuality that was formed during the Great Reforms of the 1860s and 1870s. Miller examines Chekhov’s participation in modern debates over sexuality, both as a doctor who in medical school was drawn to questions of sexual difference and as a writer whose frank depictions of sex and sexual affairs were paradigmatic for his time.

Cornel West describes his experience with Chekhov; emphasizes Chekhov’s philosophical and artistic significance as a tragicomic thinker whose understanding of the catastrophic bears affinities with the American Blues tradition while also being foreign (though necessary) to mainstream American culture.

Justin Wilmes offers an introductory orientation on the Soviet and post-Soviet reception of Chekhov’s stories and plays, while also examining remarkable Chekhov-inspired moments in world cinema, including the films of Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.