To Al. P. Chekhov, 2 January 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 2 January 1889 to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander Pavlovich Chekhov, this is one of the most direct personal rebukes in the correspondence: a New Year’s greeting that pivots almost immediately into a sustained, principled reproach for Alexander’s abusive treatment of the women and children in his household – his common-law partner referred to throughout only as "N. A.," the family’s cook, and his children. Chekhov frames the letter explicitly as clearing up a "misunderstanding" left over from a recent visit, on which he says he left angry after witnessing Alexander’s conduct firsthand.

2 After the New Year’s pleasantries, Chekhov describes what provoked his anger: Alexander’s habitual cursing, drunkenness, indecent exposure, and tantrums in front of N. A. and the cook, which Chekhov argues amount to "crude despotism," incompatible with being a decent, well-bred man. He extends the argument to the children, insisting they must be shielded from obscenity and from being used as emotional props for a parent’s moods, and invokes the family’s own childhood – explicitly blaming their father’s despotism and dishonesty for ruining their mother’s youth and souring their own upbringing, with a note that their father now regrets it. Chekhov escalates to a mock-Biblical register (the Last Judgment, the sanhedrin) contrasting Alexander unfavorably with two otherwise-unidentified figures ("Chokhov" and "I. Ye. Gavrilov"), before insisting that Alexander’s difficult domestic circumstances are no excuse, that the household’s women and children are wholly dependent on him and possess no power to check his behavior, and that he, Chekhov, has spoken his piece in good conscience and wants only sincerity between them going forward. The letter closes asking Alexander to write back that he is not angry and to treat the dispute (the "black cat") as settled, followed by family regards and the plain signature "Your A. Chekhov."

3 This letter is scholarly in interest precisely because of its difficult content: it describes, in order to condemn, domestic verbal abuse, habitual drunkenness, and degrading treatment of women and servants, including one quoted humiliating command shouted at a servant. Chekhov’s own language toward his brother is otherwise unsparing but not abusive in kind – his stance throughout is corrective and morally serious, not comic. Translated faithfully, without softening the quoted abusive speech or the frank references to nudity and drunkenness. One passage (5, "между женщиной, которая спит на чистой простыне...") contains an apparent gap or corruption in the source text – the clause describing the second woman’s lover breaks off without a predicate after "когда ее любовник" (";when her lover") – rendered here literally with an editorial bracket, [text garbled in source], rather than supplying an invented completion.