person
Anatoly Ivanovich Mamontov
Mamontov
also: Мамонтов, A. I. Mamontov
Moscow publisher and printer who offered Kiseleva 50 roubles for a 3000-copy printing of her book, the terms she complained about and that occasion this letter; Chekhov walks her through why the offer, though ungenerous, is roughly the market rate a Moscow bookseller-publisher of the period would give.
Reading notes
- To M. V. Kiseleva, 21 March 1887. Moscow. §4 Russian booksellers are fists
\emph{Kulaki} ("fists"), literally "fists," used here in its older, pre-Soviet sense of a grasping, tight-fisted profiteer or middleman who squeezes producers on price -- applied to Moscow booksellers and publishers such as Mamontov, not to the later Soviet-era class of prosperous peasants (an anachronistic association for this 1887 usage).
- To M. V. Kiseleva, 21 March 1887. Moscow. §4 your stray bullet has lodged forever in Mamontov's pocket
A comic, slightly menacing figure of speech -- \emph{shalnaya pulya} ("stray/wild bullet," idiomatically a stroke of reckless luck or a wasted shot) -- for Kiseleva's unrealistic hope of a better price: once fired (i.e. once she accepts Mamontov's terms), the money is gone for good, "until the Last Judgment."