Desyatina

Reading notes

• Someone Else's Trouble §27 how many desyatinas

  A desyatina (десятина) is a pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); Kovalyov's brisk inventory of the estate's desyatinas and livestock is his first performance of landowner competence.

• Gooseberries §25 desyatinas

  A pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); Nikolai Ivanych pores over classified advertisements offering estates measured in desyatinas long before he can afford one.

• The New Villa §4 twenty desyatinas

  The desyatina is a pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); twenty of them is the size of the Kucherovs' new estate.

• Obscure People §5 three desyatinas

  A desyatina was a pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); three desyatinas of orchard and garden, per Lyashkevsky, is a substantial holding for a small-town property owner to leave fallow.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 27 March 1887. Moscow. §6 400 desyatinas

  A pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); the letter's real-estate report is given entirely in desyatinas and roubles per desyatina.

• To N. A. Khlopov, 13 February 1888. Moscow. §7 two desyatinas

  A desyatina (десятина) is a pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); two desyatinas describes a modest smallholding befitting a poorly paid village sexton.

• To A. N. Maslov, October 1888. Moscow. §4 25 desyatinas

  The desyatina, a pre-revolutionary Russian land measure of roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); left transliterated rather than converted, per this corpus's standing practice for period units. Chekhov's wry point is that 25 desyatinas of land, or ten passable vaudevilles, both count as enough to keep a widow from starving -- vaudeville authorship valued literally in acreage.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 25 February 1889. Moscow. §5 desyatinas

  A desyatina is a pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.1 hectares); left transliterated here rather than converted, per the corpus's established practice for this unit.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 28 August 1891. Bogimovo. §15 40 desyatinas

  The desyatina, the standard pre-revolutionary Russian land measure, equal to roughly 2.7 acres (about 1.09 hectares); 40 desyatinas is therefore on the order of 108 acres. Chekhov is reporting back to Suvorin on an estate search conducted on his behalf -- the smaller properties he inspected ran from 1.5 to 5 thousand rubles, none of them the larger estate Suvorin apparently wanted.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 22 November 1891. Moscow. §4 six desyatinas of land

  The desyatina, the standard pre-revolutionary Russian land measure, equal to roughly 2.7 acres (about 1.09 hectares); six desyatinas is therefore on the order of 16 acres -- a modest smallholding rather than a working agricultural estate, consistent with the letter's emphasis on the house, garden, and river frontage rather than farmland.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 28 February 1892. Moscow. §5 160 desyatinas

  The desyatina (десятина), a pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); already established in this corpus. Chekhov gives the forested portion of Melikhovo's land in this unit, as he does elsewhere for the estate's total acreage (cf. \S4, 213 desyatinas).

• On Official Business §40 a hundred desyatinas

  A pre-revolutionary Russian land measure, roughly 2.7 acres; the sum Yulia willed to the monastery, matched by two hundred more she left to the peasant commune.

• Russian Coal §25 desyatinas

  A pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres; the count boasts of an estate of eight thousand desyatinas.

• Difficult People §1 one hundred and two desyatinas of land

  A desyatina (десятина) is a pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); one hundred and two desyatinas is a modest holding, enough to make Shiryaev a small landowner but nowhere near the great estates of the gentry.

• In the Ravine §131 forty desyatinas

  A pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres each, used here to measure the size of Butyokino.

• At the Almshouse for the Incurable and the Aged §36 five thousand dessyatinas

  A dessyatina was roughly 2.7 acres; five thousand of them plus six hundred serf 'souls' describes a once-substantial but, by grandfather's own admission, middling provincial estate -- his boasted grandeur is modest even by his own numbers.

• A Chip Off the Old Block §13 a hundred desyatinas

  A pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); the amount Grandfather allegedly swindled from his own sister.

• Over Some Apples §1 desyatinas

  A pre-revolutionary Russian unit of land area, roughly 2.7 acres (1.09 hectares); 3,000 desyatinas signals a substantial, if mortgaged, estate.