person
Isaychik
also: Исайчик, жид Исайчик
A decrepit old Jewish peddler glimpsed in one of Gusev's fever-visions of home, offering to trade a piece of soap for Andron's slain hare. The source names him with the ethnic slur "zhid"; the epithet is period-typical, unremarkable in a semi-literate soldier's own idiom, and preserved in translation per Hermitsh Press policy rather than softened, consistent with the story's unflinching, undecorated realism.
Reading notes
- Gusev §45 Isaychik the Jew
A figure in Gusev's fever-vision of home, named in the source with the ethnic slur "жид" (zhid) rather than a neutral term for a Jewish person. The epithet was current and unremarkable in period lower-class Russian speech, including a semi-literate peasant soldier's own idiom; it is preserved in translation as "Isaychik the Jew" rather than softened, consistent with Hermitsh Press policy of rendering period prejudice as Chekhov wrote it rather than sanitizing his characters' voices. See for the term's fuller history in this corpus.