Conflict, Social Identity, and Violence in the World of Russian Rural Medicine: Two Chekhov Stories

Abstract

Anton Chekhov’s stories “An Unpleasantness” (1888) and “Thieves” (1890) provide nuanced portrayals of the world of rural medicine in late tsarist Russia. The stories, which are rooted in the historical experience of zemstvo medicine, explore the conflicts and everyday travails that physicians and feldshers encountered in their zemstvo service. This article locates the stories in the historical environment of the time in which they are set. Chekhov focuses particular attention upon physicians’ and feldshers’ preoccupation with their status and social identity together with their relationships both with one another and with their zemstvo employers. The stories suggest the ways in which the frustrations and conflicts of rural practice fostered an undercurrent of despair or even violence within the zemstvo medical world itself. Within the stories, Chekhov explicitly links his protagonists’ everyday experience to the transformations that occur in their overall consciousness.