concept

Souls (census/serfdom unit) -- "dushi"

souls idiom

also: душ, душа, revision souls, both sexes

Renders "душ" ("souls"), the fixed unit of the Russian Imperial poll-tax census and, before 1861, of serfdom itself -- population, labor, and taxable estate value were all counted in "souls" rather than households or acres, with official counts distinguishing "souls of both sexes" from the default male-only tally. First flagged at, S6, where Chekhov borrows this dry bureaucratic vocabulary for a wedding toast, jokingly wishing the couple "eighteen souls of children of both sexes" -- the comic incongruity of census language applied to a family wish is the entire point, so "souls" is preserved rather than flattened to "children."

Reading notes

To N. N. Obolonsky, 29 April 1890. Yekaterinburg. §6 eighteen souls of children of both sexes
Renders "18 душ детей обоего пола" ("18 souls of children of both sexes"). "Duши" ("souls") is the fixed unit of the Russian Imperial census and, before 1861, of serfdom itself -- estates and their labor force were counted, taxed, and bought and sold not in acres or households but in "souls" (male "revision souls" specifically, under the poll-tax system; the phrase "of both sexes" is itself part of the bureaucratic census formula, since official counts otherwise defaulted to male souls only). Chekhov borrows this dry administrative vocabulary of population accounting and grafts it onto a wedding toast, wishing the couple a wildly exaggerated eighteen children as if filing a census return -- the comic incongruity is entirely the point, and the corpus preserves "souls" rather than substituting the sense-equivalent "children" alone, so the bureaucratic echo Chekhov is playing on survives in English.