person
Maksimenko
also: Максименко, мужеотравительница Максименко
Defendant acquitted in a Rostov-on-Don criminal trial for allegedly poisoning her husband ("мужеотравительница"). Chekhov, having spoken with her defense counsel Kholeva before the trial, urges Suvorin's circle to be cautious in any press commentary on the acquittal, stating his own conviction that she is entirely innocent -- a view he says the Rostov public, who applauded the verdict, shared.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 23 February 1890. Moscow. §9 the acquittal in the trial of Maksimenko, the husband-poisoner
The letter's most substantive passage. Maksimenko had been tried in Rostov-on-Don for poisoning her husband and was acquitted; Chekhov, writing to Suvorin (whose "Novoye Vremya" covered such cases and whose circle might comment on the verdict), urges caution rather than the paper piling on with skepticism about the acquittal. His grounds are not abstract: he reports having spoken personally, before the trial, with the defense counsel Kholeva, and says this conversation left him satisfied that Maksimenko was "entirely innocent" (совсем не виновата) -- not merely legally cleared on a technicality or by a lenient jury, but actually not guilty. He adds that the Rostov public who attended and applauded the verdict shared his view, framing the acquittal as a correct reading of the facts by people close to the case rather than a miscarriage of justice a newspaper might be tempted to editorialize against. Coming from Chekhov -- by 1890 already trained as a physician and about to undertake his own fact-gathering expedition to Sakhalin -- the passage is characteristic: a plea for facts and firsthand testimony over armchair argumentation, echoing the very complaint he makes two sections earlier about Tsebrikova's article ("такие статьи знаний не дают... нужны факты").