place
Kuban
also: Kuban steppes
A fertile steppe region in southern Russia/the North Caucasus, imagined by Stepan (via his Uncle Pyotr's letters) as a land of open country, longer summers, and a freer life beyond his father's and the lady's reach.
Reading notes
- To I. L. Leontyev, 22 January 1888. Moscow. §9 Kuban
The fertile steppe region in southern Russia that Chekhov planned to visit that spring, before spending the summer with his family.
- Thieves §74 the Kuban
Merik's tender, half-joking threat -- to find Lyubka's mother's hidden money, kill her, cut Lyubka's throat, burn the inn to cover the murders, and use the money to start a new life as a herdsman in the Kuban -- is delivered as pillow talk immediately after an intimate embrace, and neither Lyubka nor the narrator registers alarm; Lyubka's only reply (loc 76) is to ask wistfully whether the Kuban is a good place. The scene sets up the story's final movement, where the threat appears to be carried out (section 134) and is met, by Yergunov, with envy rather than horror. Hermitsh Press policy preserves this exactly as written -- neither softened nor moralized -- because the passage's power depends on Chekhov's refusal to comment: the horror is left entirely to the reader to supply.