A profound respect for Muslim culture is a characteristic of Russian classic literature. Pushkin, in his "Imitations of the Quran", addresses the figure of the Prophet ﷺ, Lermontov is imbued with the spirit of Caucasian Islam, and Yesenin, in "Persian Motifs", paints an idealized image of the East. Meanwhile, the reflection of the Islamic world in the works of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov remains poorly studied, although the work of Yuri Shatunov, a researcher at the Chuvash Pedagogical University, sheds light on this issue.
Chekhov, a master of the short story and the author of the "new drama", combined brevity, psychological insight, and gentle humor in his prose, revealing the "vulgarity of the vulgar man" and the tragedy of the everyday. In plays such as "The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya", and "The Cherry Orchard", he rejected traditional plots, focusing instead on the moods and inner worlds of his characters. Chekhov didn't offer ready-made answers, but he taught us to see beauty and meaning in life itself, becoming one of the most influential writers in the world.
Chekhov frequently features Muslim characters, but they almost never become fully-fledged characters. Typically, the writer uses ethnonyms such as "Tatar", "Asian", "Pecheneg", and the like to denote rudeness and ignorance. In this way, he reflects the stereotypes of his era — the second half of the 19th century — using the names of ethnic groups in his characters' speech as a means of negatively characterizing them.
Chekhov is characterized by a deliberate blending of ethnic, religious, and class identities. His characters confuse Tatars, Turks, and Persians, reflecting both the official imperial classification by religion and the Islamic idea of equality. The writer integrates ethnicity into social hierarchy — a heroine might retort to a conductor, "You're only a Tatar, and I'm the wife of a state councilor," while a merchant's rank is associated with "Asian" origins. Meanwhile, Chekhov's minor Muslim characters are no longer directly negative.
A prominent supporting character is the philosophizing Kerbalay from the story "Duel". "God is the same for everyone, but people are different... Only the rich discern which god is yours and which is mine, but for the poor it's all the same," he asserts in a conversation with an Orthodox deacon. This idea echoes the concepts of Russian philosophers — Pyotr Chaadayev, Vladimir Solovyov, and others — who saw the East as a useful inoculation against the ills of the West.
A Muslim first becomes a protagonist in the story "In Exile", where Chekhov artistically embodies the opposition between Western individualism and Eastern communalism. The cynicism of the exiled Semyon, who preaches that "nothing is needed," is contrasted with the thirst for life of the nameless Tatar. "God created man to be alive, to have joy, and longing, and sorrow, but if you want nothing, then you are not alive, but stone, clay!" he counters Semyon.
Researcher Shatunov, however, emphasizes that it is pointless to seek Chekhov's own worldview in the reflection of Islamic themes — they are literary devices. The writer, who believed in the individual, was skeptical of any dogmatic concepts and sought to overcome the extremes of both a spontaneous worldview and pseudo-harmonious dogmatism. This idea is developed by Oksana Galimova, a researcher at Bashkir Medical University, in her work on the author's authorial conception.
For Chekhov, creativity is the essence of the human personality, and the ability to create and transform life makes a character interesting. The writer believed that creative potential is inherent in everyone. In the Islamic tradition, creativity is the exclusive prerogative of Allah, and any activity that claims to be "creative" can be viewed as a sinful competition with the Creator. This ideological conflict perhaps explains why profound images of Muslims are virtually absent from the writer's work.
Chekhov's experiences with real Muslims are reflected in his book "Sakhalin Island" and in his letters, where objective assessments and respect prevail. In letters to his family, he described the Volga and Siberian Tatars as "a respectable and modest people" and "good people", noting that even priests spoke well of them.
On the pages of his Sakhalin diary, Chekhov mentions several Tatars: expedition participant Furazhirov, a resident of Upper Armudan Tukhvatulla and the Tatar women who voluntarily followed their convict husbands. He warmly describes how the Tatar father beamed when the writer addressed his young son affectionately. Chekhov also meets Mullah Vas-Khasan-Mamet, who was building a mosque at his own expense and inquired whether he would be allowed to go to Mecca after completing his exile.
Chekhov's epistolary legacy reveals a surprising consonance between his views and those of the Russian philosopher Konstantin Leontiev. The writer seems to have intuitively shared the conviction that the soul of the Muslim world is much closer and more familiar to Russia than the alien essence of the West.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
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