Ruble

Reading notes

• The Good German §16 seven hundred and fifty rubles a year

  A skilled foreman's salary of this size was comfortably middle-class for 1880s Moscow -- enough to explain both Ivan Karlych's pride in having "made" his wife's respectability and his later bitter jab that the (imagined) rival should go earn the same sum himself (section 27).

• The Good German §36 four rubles a month

  A plausible period rent for a single room sublet within a foreman's flat -- modest compared to the couple's own household budget, underscoring that the "rival" is simply a paying lodger of unremarkable means.

• A Confession §10 hundred rubles

  The basic unit of Russian currency; the narrator's escalating outlays of rubles to family and associates trace his slide from minor gifts to embezzlement.

• In the Cart §52 twenty-one rubles a month

  Marya Vasilyevna's actual monthly salary, which the peasants nonetheless believe to be excessive ("five would have been enough") and partly skimmed by her -- an index both of how little rural teachers were in fact paid and of how invisible that poverty was to the people she served.

• The Tutor §2 six rubles a month

  A modest fee for two hours of daily private tutoring -- the story's opening economic fact, which by the end Udodov still has not paid.

• A Collection for Children §5 ten-ruble note

  The rouble (ruble) was the basic unit of Imperial Russian currency; a ten-ruble note (chervonets) was a substantial banknote, personified here as a boastful social climber.

• A Collection for Children §8 credit ruble

  The 'credit rouble' (kreditnyi rubl) was the standard paper currency issued by the State Bank, distinguished from silver or gold coin of the same face value; Chekhov personifies it as the plain, honest member of the trio of coins and notes.

• List of Exhibitors Awarded Cast-Iron Medals in the Russian Section at the Amsterdam Exhibition §3 The Russian silver ruble

  The basic unit of Russian currency; the joke plays on the ruble's chronic devaluation and debasement in the period.

• Difficult People §13 eleven rubles forty-two

  The ruble was the basic unit of Imperial Russian currency; the story's dialogue is built almost entirely around small, exact sums of rubles -- eleven, twelve, fifteen, ten, six -- each negotiation a fresh occasion for Shiryaev's volatile temper.

• Visiting Friends §106 ruble

  The basic unit of Russian currency; Losev's complaint that "the ruble reigns now" sets the era's new cult of money against the old-fashioned idealism he claims for himself.

• In Moscow, on Trubnaya Square §3 a ruble, or three kopecks

  The ruble, the basic unit of Russian currency; the wild swing between a ruble and three kopecks shows the seller simply making up a price on the spot.

• The Clairvoyant of Tsvetnoy Boulevard §1 ruble

  The basic unit of Russian currency; pricing this mock want-ad by the word at one ruble each is itself part of the joke, mimicking real classified-ad tariffs.