concept
Civil Marriage
also: гражданский брак, grazhdanskii brak
In Imperial Russia only church marriage carried legal recognition, so a self-described "civil marriage" meant unmarried cohabitation; Chekhov uses the phrase as an ironic punchline built on the same root word as "citizen" and "civic."
Reading notes
- The Height of Civic-Mindedness §1 civil marriage
In Imperial Russia only religious (church) marriage was legally recognized; a "civil marriage" was in practice simple unmarried cohabitation, so the phrase is a wry, faintly risqué punchline capping the story's string of civic-sounding words that all trade on the root "grazhdanskii" (civic/civil).