Russkaya Starina (Russian Antiquity)

Reading notes

• To N. A. Leikin, 1 April 1885. Moscow. §13 "Russkaya starina," Semevsky

  Russkaya Starina ("Russian Antiquity"), a serious monthly historical journal, was at this date edited by Mikhail Ivanovich Semevsky; it was serializing Nikolai Pirogov's memoirs, which Chekhov and fellow doctors hoped to see gathered into a separate book.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 21 June 1887. Babkino. §16 "Russkaya Starina"

  A serious historical-antiquarian journal; Chekhov's closing joke is that this deliberately silly letter is fit only for eventual publication as a historical curiosity fifty years hence, a self-mocking gesture toward his own future fame that recurs elsewhere in the correspondence.

• To N. N. Obolonsky, 23 April 1889. Moscow. §9 in the "Russkaya Starina" and to collect five hundred roubles

  Russkaya Starina ("Russian Antiquity") is a real Russian monthly historical journal (founded 1870) devoted to memoirs, documents, and antiquarian material. The fifty-year publication delay and the 500-rouble fee are comic exaggeration -- a mock-solemn "permission" granted as a joke, not a genuine instruction or publishing arrangement.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 28 February 1890. Moscow. §3 the Index to "Russkaya Starina"

  \emph{Russkaya Starina} ("Russian Antiquity"), a serious historical monthly founded in 1870, devoted to memoirs, documents, and antiquarian material; Chekhov is returning a subject index to it, part of the same wave of Sakhalin-research borrowing documented in this run of letters to Suvorin (compare the \emph{Morskoy Sbornik} index in).

• In the Railway Carriage §11 Russkaya Starina or the Vestnik Yevropy

  Two of the serious 'thick journals' (tolstye zhurnaly) of the period, carrying scholarly and literary content; the speaker admits he does not read them himself but has a daughter read them aloud, undercutting his claim to cultivation even before the punchline lands.