place
Persia
also: Персия, Iran
The Qajar state (modern Iran), invoked in the story both as the homeland of the visiting dignitary Rahat-Khelam and, via Mayor Kutsyn's mangled toast about 'Asiatic markets' and 'peaceful conquests,' as an object of casual Russian imperial condescension toward Central and South Asian neighbors.
Reading notes
- The Lion and the Sun §22 the Asiatic markets... peaceful conquests, so to speak
Kutsyn's drunken toast reaches for the language of contemporary Russian imperial ambition in Central Asia and Persia -- "opening markets" and "peaceful conquest" were genuine period euphemisms used in Russian commercial and diplomatic rhetoric to describe economic and political expansion into Persian and Central Asian territory. Chekhov puts this casual imperial-condescension language in the mouth of a provincial buffoon who cannot even hold a conversation with the Persian guest he claims to admire, exposing the rhetoric as empty bombast rather than endorsing it. The translation preserves the phrasing without softening, consistent with Hermitsh Press's editorial policy of presenting period material factually.
- To Al. P. Chekhov, 24 July 1888. Parokhod "Yunona". §22 Don't think I'm off to Persia.
A closing reassurance to the unidentified addressee, presumably prompted by the ambitious eastward itinerary described in the first letter (Batum -- Tiflis -- Baku -- the Transcaspian railway toward Samarkand), which might have suggested Chekhov was continuing on toward the Persian border.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 4 January 1889. Moscow. §6 Really, the Persians are such idiots, and it is so hot in Persia, that I would do everything I could to help the English, not the other way round.
SENSITIVITY (period-typical Great Game condescension) -- a throwaway mock-imperialist aside, not aimed at any real named individual: Chekhov jokes that he would rather see Britain absorb Persia than see Suvorin devote himself to reclaiming it politically, dismissing Persians in general as "idiots" in the same breath. Translated exactly as written ("персы такие идиоты"/"the Persians are such idiots") without softening, consistent with this corpus's general policy of flagging rather than euphemizing period-typical language; the target of the joke is Suvorin's supposed political ambitions and the absurdity of "politics" as a subject, not a considered ethnographic judgment, but the casual condescension toward Persia and the English imperial contest over it is genuine 1880s Great Game-era commonplace and should be read as such rather than excused.