Russian famine of 1891-92

Reading notes

• To V. M. Sobolevsky, 7 October 1891. Moscow. §10 the famine

  The Russian famine of 1891-92: a catastrophic harvest failure across the Volga region and much of central Russia, first visible on the horizon by late summer 1891 (cf. Chekhov's own early notice of "a hungry year coming on" at, section 18) and by autumn already prompting organized relief efforts, of which this letter's fundraising scheme is one instance. Chekhov would go on to organize famine relief directly in his own district over the following year.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 16 October 1891. Moscow. §18 the famine provinces

  The Russian famine of 1891-92, already the subject of the Miscellany fundraising scheme (\S3) and the orache question (\S4) earlier in this same letter. Chekhov's proposal to travel together with Suvorin to the famine provinces in January did not in the end take that exact shape, but it belongs to the same season of famine-relief activity that would occupy much of Chekhov's following year.

• To Ye. P. Yegorov, 11 December 1891. Moscow. §7 Давайте объявим подписку

  The concrete plan Chekhov proposes in this letter: a jointly signed (or, if Yegorov prefers, anonymously sourced) public subscription appeal printed in both "Russkiye Vedomosti" and "Novoye Vremya," soliciting small donations from "the average man" rather than the wealthy, with funds to be sent either to Yegorov directly or to Chekhov -- a second, more personal and localized famine-relief fundraising channel than the literary Sbornik Chekhov had been brokering between Suvorin and Sobolevsky's Russkiye Vedomosti a few weeks earlier.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 13 December 1891. Moscow. §8 100 rubles for the starving

  An unsolicited donation toward relief for the 1891-92 Russian famine, reported here in the same terse, unremarked way Chekhov handles most famine-relief news in these letters -- folded in beside literary talk and his headache without further comment, though it lands the same week he is also organizing horse-buying relief in Nizhny Novgorod province.

• To Ye. P. Yegorov, 14 December 1891. Moscow. §3 Посылаю Вам собранные мною 116 р.

  The first concrete result of the private subscription plan Chekhov proposed three days earlier in: he encloses 116 rubles already collected "quietly, without any fuss" -- i.e. before the joint public letter to the editor has even run -- and promises a donor list to follow, fulfilling in miniature the fundraising scheme ("Let us announce a subscription") he had just laid out.

• To Ye. P. Yegorov, 20 December 1891. Moscow. §8 Всё, что мною до сих пор было собрано, жертвователи просят употребить на кормежку скота.

  A distinct and genuine instruction from this batch of donors: funds are earmarked for feeding livestock, not people -- famine relief in the stricken provinces routinely covered seed grain and draft-animal fodder alongside human food, since the loss of a peasant household's horse or cattle could be as ruinous as hunger itself. This differs from the request Chekhov relays to Yegorov six days earlier in, \S5, where a separate set of donors' money was earmarked for feeding schoolchildren -- not a contradiction or error, but evidence that Chekhov was channeling several donors with distinct, sometimes narrowly specified relief priorities through the same correspondence with Yegorov.

• To M. K. Zankovetskaya, 12 January 1892. Moscow. §5 On the 14th I leave for the famine districts, and on the 23rd I shall be with You, with Suvorin.

  The same departure Chekhov reports two days earlier, in near-identical terms, to Suvorin himself: "I leave for Nizhny Novgorod province on the 14th of January -- that is settled" (\S3), part of his winter tour of the 1891-92 famine-relief districts in Nizhny Novgorod province. There, writing to Suvorin, Chekhov gives 22nd-23rd January as his return and proposes a joint trip on to Voronezh province; here, writing to Zankovetskaya, the same window (23rd) is recast as the date he and Suvorin will together call on her -- the trip's endpoint, from her point of view, folded seamlessly into a social promise rather than a travel itinerary. The letter does not name Nizhny Novgorod province directly, but the shared date and companion (Suvorin) make the identification certain.

• To V. A. Tikhonov, 24 January 1892. Moscow. §4 I carried it off to the famine relief

  The twenty-kopeck coin Chekhov diverted from a cab fare to famine relief is a small joke keyed to the letter's opening: Chekhov had just returned from Nizhny Novgorod province, where he was engaged in the winter 1891-92 famine-relief effort. The joke trades on the scale mismatch between the grand cause and the trivial sum, in the same register as his running jokes with Suvorin and others about famine-relief fundraising during this period.

• To Ye. P. Yegorov, 26 January 1892. Moscow. §3 subscription sheet No. 28

  One of the numbered fund-collection sheets Chekhov and other volunteers circulated to gather donations for famine relief in Nizhny Novgorod province in the winter of 1891-92; he is here reconciling exact sums received, sent, and held over.

• To Ye. P. Yegorov, 29 January 1892. Moscow. §9 Set up the soup kitchens!

  A terse closing exhortation tied to the Russian famine of 1891-92: Chekhov was, in this period, actively organizing local famine relief, including funding for communal soup kitchens (canteens) for affected peasants and schoolchildren, alongside the subscription-fund bookkeeping that occupies the rest of this letter.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 9 February 1892. Bobrov. §4 As for the soup kitchens and so on

  "Столовые" (soup kitchens/communal canteens for famine relief), the same term and the same self-mocking register Chekhov uses in the companion bookkeeping letter ("Set up the soup kitchens!"), here turned against himself and his traveling companions: a candid admission that their famine-relief trip has produced dinners, theater evenings, and charming company, but very little practical progress on the relief work itself.