person
Count Alexei Andreyevich Arakcheev
Arakcheev
also: Аракчеев, Alexei Arakcheev
A powerful and widely feared reactionary statesman and military administrator under Alexander I, remembered for harsh discipline and the brutal "military settlements"; invoked here by Chekhov as shorthand for pompous, high-ranking martinets he fears might start contributing to Oskolki.
Reading notes
- The Duel §383 Arakcheyev
Count Alexei Arakcheev, the harsh reactionary administrator under Alexander I; Laevsky imagines von Koren, if given power, making people 'rise and go to bed by the drum' like Arakcheyev's regimented subjects.
- To V. V. Bilibin, 18 January 1886. Moscow. §9 eagles of Catherine, Arakcheev
Chekhov's joking fear is that pompous grandees or military martinets in the mold of Catherine the Great's favorites and the notoriously harsh statesman Arakcheev might start contributing to the irreverent, low-brow Oskolki -- a comic image of stuffy officialdom invading a satirical magazine.
- The Head Gardener's Story §7 Arakcheyev
Count Alexei Arakcheev, the reactionary statesman and military administrator under Alexander I best remembered for the brutal 'military settlements' (see the entity note for details); paired here with Biron as the second of two stock 19th-century Russian shorthand-names for harsh, punitive state power exercised by men who were not, by their own lights, irreligious.