Comparing Tolstoy And Dostoyevsky

When Russian literature is mentioned, the two giants Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky overshadow the majority of other writers. However, it is not the case for Anton Chekhov. Chekhov emerged into the scene during the 19th century, the same time as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. As a short-stories writer and dramatist, Chekhov made a mark for himself, as he is “the only other one to make much of an impression abroad.” (Brians) Chekhov wrote during the early 1900s, when Russia saw “the rise of the bourgeoisie, the decline of the aristocracy, and the imminence of revolution.” (Lewis) Russia was in a transition toward Stalinism. During such period, literature shifted away from old Romanticism and toward Realism. The old, traditional ideology Russia …show more content…
He “claims to represent the world as it is, without moral judgments.” (Lewis) Reading Chekhov, nobody feels he is trying to make a point nor picking one side over the other. As Nikolai Mikhailovsky, a critic of Chekhov, describe his work: “To Chekhov it is all the same: here is a person, here is his shadow, here is a bell, here is a suicide...”(Sobolev) Chekhov provided a scene, described it like a masterpiece, and the reader gets to pick what they feel toward it. In fact, the truth, according to Chekhov, “only comes about through experience, when it is felt by a human being.” (Sobolev) He believes truth is not a general principle that is accepted by a majority of people, but rather an experience of oneself that continue to be accepted by him or her. In his short story “The Student”, he wrote: “truth and beauty which had guided human life” and it “had continued without interruption.” (Sobolev) When it comes to truth, there is no categorized answer. Rather, they continue to be observed and changed throughout a human life. Whenever anything is a truth or not depends on the experience of the observer. This was a counterpunch to the ideology of Communism that was sparking at the time. Truths and facts were sketched out and every single individuals were forced to accept it. It ignored the fact that one’s experience is different from another. While not directly stated, Chekhov writing style is a jab to the growing system of Stalin. To Stalin, objection should be totally crushed. To Chekhov, however, “objectivity was to be preferred over the unsubtle injection of authorial opinions.” (Sobolev) In fact, Stalin did try to distort Chekhov’s work in favor of him, and it is to eliminate one’s freedom of thought. For Stalin to step out of his bound and distort an author’s work, one can see how influential Chekhov’s work is to personal