Have you read Chekhov’s “Island of Sakhalin”?

In a recent post we looked at the beautiful and beautifully honest personal diary of Leo Tolstoy. Today, we are looking at the diary of another giant of Russian literature; Chekhov, and specifically his writings about his journey to Sakhalin, an island of the east coast of Russia, just above Japan. Chekhov went to Sakhalin to visit the penal colony there; to conduct a census, to learn about the conditions in which prisoners lived, and to administer medical treatment (he was, of course, a doctor as well as a writer). Why, you may ask, did Chekhov- by this point (1890) an established writer- go to Sakhalin to conduct an obscure and self-funded research project of this sort? Irina Ratushinskaya, in her introduction to Chekhov’s The Island of Sakhalin (Folio Society, 1989), writes,
“Abandoning everything, he travelled to the most feared place of exile and forced labour in Russia… a writer’s most important task is, after all, to make the human soul perceive the divine line between good and evil… It seemed clear to Chekhov that his place was not in a cosy writer’s study, but where conditions were harsh and where he was needed most… not by chance was Chekhov’s predecessor in studying Sakhalin a priest.”
What is remarkable to me, as I read this journal of Chekhov’s, is the contrast between his short stories and his experiences in and commentary on Sakhalin. For me, Chekhov’s writing has always been the most beautiful of the Russians- not the best, necessarily, but the most simple, the most concise. And it is in this concision that he reveals, I think, a profound understanding of the human soul; it’s toils, it’s sadness, and, for Chekhov, it’s origin; the divine. This section from The Lady with the Small Dog is emblematic;
“In Oreanda they sat on a bench near the church and looked down at the sea without saying a word. Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist; white clouds lay motionless on the mountain tops. Not one leaf stirred on the trees, cicadas chirped, and the monotonous, hollow roar of the sea that reached them from below spoke of peace, of that eternal slumber that awaits us. And so it roared down below when neither Yalta nor Oreanda existed. It was roaring now and would continue its hollow, indifferent booming when we are no more. And in this permanency, in this utter indifference to the life and death of every one of us there perhaps lies hidden a pledge of our eternal salvation, of never ceasing progress of life upon earth, of the never-ceasing march towards perfection. As he sat there beside that young woman who seemed so beautiful at daybreak, soothed and enchanted at the sight of those magical surroundings- sea, mountains, clouds, wide skies- Gurov reflected that, if one thought hard about it, everything on earth was truly beautiful except those things which we ourselves think of and do when we forget the higher aims of existence and our human dignity.”
Anton Chekhov (Trans. Richard Wilks. Penguin, 2002)
In contrast, Chekhov’s observations at Sakhalin often centre on brutally harsh living conditions, depravation, and crime. As with Tolstoy’s diary, I want to reproduce some sections from the journal which are emblematic.
Anton Chekhov with his family before his departure to Sakhalin (1890)
Chekhov’s arrival
After describing to us the environs (the image is of beautiful and wide natural scenes interrupted by dirty, dangerous, poor townships), Chekhov’s initial response is one of surprise;
“The prisoners and the exiles, with some exceptions, walk the streets freely, without chains and without guards… I was not accustomed to seeing so many convicts, and at first their proximity was disturbing and perplexing. You walk by a construction site and you see convicts with axes, saws, and hammers. “Well,” you think, “they could easily take a swing at me!”
Anton Chekhov in 1893
The census
Chekhov determines to conduct a census in Sakhalin. He asks respondents seven questions, but he draws especial attention to the question, “which year did you arrive on Sakhalin?” since, to Chekhov, the unawareness of his sample is indicative of the impoverished living conditions in Sakhalin. He writes;
“Very few of the Sakhalin dwellers answered this question immediately, without strain. The year he arrived on Sakhalin was the year of dire misfortune. Furthermore, they don’t even know the year, or have forgotten it.”
Living conditions
The living conditions, remarks Chekhov, are remarkably unclean and uncomfortable, especially for the prisoners on Sakhalin. Of the prison he notes,
“There is no bedding. They (the prisoners) sleep on the bare floor. In the corner stands a chamber pot. Each prisoner must take care of his natural needs in the presence of twenty witnesses. One begs to be released and vows he will never again attempt an escape. Another begs to have his irons removed. A third complains that he does not have enough bread.”
It is not only prisoners who live in Sakhalin, but also people who have moved to Sakhalin to accompany their husband or wife for the duration of the sentence. Chekhov writes extensively of the depravity that visits the free population too; numerous times he refers to food shortages, unclean water, lack of sanitation and, most distressingly, the ‘routine’ prostitution of free women for food. Chekhov captures this in the description of a local house,
“the conditions are such that it is not a home, not a room, but more accurately a cell for solitary confinement… There is a persistent feeling that something is missing; no grandmother, no grandfather, no old paintings, no inherited furniture; consequently the household contains nothing from the past, nothing tradition. There is no beautiful icon in the corner… Here normal customs no longer exist.”
Sakhalin; inhabitants near the church in 1903.
The inhabitants
Sakhalin was the most extreme and the most severe form of exile available in Russia. What were the crimes, then, of the prisoners?
“I found a forty-year old man dressed in a pea-jacket, his trousers unbuttoned, his chin clean shaven, wearing a dirty unstarched shirt and something that looked like a tie.
‘Are you a former officer?’ I asked.
‘Not at all, your worship, I am a priest,’ he said.
I do not know why he was sent to Sakhalin. I did not even ask him. When a man stands before you who until recently was called Father Ioan and Batiushka, and whose hands had been kissed by the people, when such a man stands before you in a pitifully worn jacket, you do not think of his crime.”
There are descriptions of the violent crimes from which Dostoevsky drew such inspiration;
“The court reporters have probably not forgotten (Kislyakov), a military clerk, who battered his wife to death with a hammer on Nikolayevskaya Street in Petersburg and reported his crime to the authorities. He said his wife had been a beauty and he had loved her madly, but once when he quarrelled with her, he vowed before the icon that he would kill her. Since that time up to the actual murder an evil voice seemed to whisper constantly, ‘Kill, kill!’”
And, again in a vain similar to Crime and Punishment, heart-wrenching descriptions of poverty;
“In one hut there lives a peasant as hairy as a spider, with hanging eyebrows; he is a convict, and very filthy. With him there is another exactly like him, just as hairy and filthy. Both have large families. In the hut, as the saying goes, it is appallingly barren and poverty-stricken; they do not even own a nail. There was all this weeping and clucking, and then there are deaths like Skorin’s (who died from starvation), and you find yourself thinking about all the various indirect expressions of hunger and want.”
The beauty
It would not be Chekhov absent a cautious, gentle and profoundly beautiful description of the natural environs in which he finds himself. Throughout his time in Sakhalin, nature serves as both something indomitable in it’s hostility to man, but also as a refuge from the conditions of the townships. “If a travelling artist happens to visit Sakhalin,” he writes, “I would recommend a visit to the Arkovsky valley… Here are dense, opulent stretches of greenery with gigantic burdocks glistening with raindrops from recent rains; nearby in a small area no more than three sazhens wide there is a patch of green rye, then a patch of barley, then again burdocks, followed by some oats, and a row of potatoes and two small sunflowers with drooping heads; then a patch of barley, then again burdocks, followed by some oats, and a row of potatoes and two small sunflowers with drooping with drooping heads; and then a patch of thick green hemp; and here and there umbrella plants like candelabra towering proudly over all of them and all this variety is interspersed with touches of rose, bright-read and crimson poppy flowers.”
My intention here was to share with you something of the nature of Chekhov’s strange social research project and to encourage you to read it. I am struck, as I continue with it, by the courage and solitude of the author; compelled by conscience, he stands at the edge of the Russian Empire, his only confidant his pen and notebook… and us, one hundred and thirty five years later.
Laef, currently studying Russian at Liden & Denz Riga
*All translations are from Luba and Michale Terpak (1967) as reprinted in The Island of Sakhalin. London, Folio Society (1989).