The Exuberant Diversity of Ukrainian Literature

When Russia invaded Ukraine one year ago, the region of Sumy, just northeast of Kyiv, came under intense bombardment, endangering the house where Anton Chekhov spent two halcyon summers working on his play The Wood Demon, as well as several short stories. The house had been turned into a museum in 1960 and contained many irreplaceable artifacts, including Chekhov’s medical instruments and a portrait of Chekhov painted by his brother Nikolay.

Chekhov was born in Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, just across the border from Ukraine. His paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, and—according to Chekhov—he spoke Ukrainian as a child. His first major literary breakthrough, the long short story “The Steppe,” was based on his boyhood journeys across the vast Ukrainian steppe to visit his grandparents. It is suffused with the bucolic, unspoiled charm of this fabled land. The story delighted readers and critics in Moscow and St. Petersburg, who seemed to be always dazzled by tales of this land that the Russian Empire was eternally bent on subjugating.

In later years, Chekhov often jokingly referred to himself as a khokhol, a derogatory Russian term for a Ukrainian. His letters from Sumy describe lazy days fishing on Psyol River and exploring the countryside. His enchantment with Ukraine is abundantly clear in his letter to Nikolai Leikin describing his travels through Ukraine in 1888:

I received your second letter, dearest Nikolai Alexandrovich, yesterday, upon returning from Poltava province…. I have been in Lebedyn, Hadyach, Sorochintsy and many places extolled by Gogol. What places they are! I am completely enchanted. I had the good luck to have wonderfully warm weather the whole time, travelled in a comfortable sprung carriage and arrived in Poltava province just when they had started haymaking.

Chekhov was so taken by the region that he eventually began searching for a small estate, planning on permanently relocating there. As he explained to Leikin:

Everything I saw and heard was so new, good and wholesome that throughout the journey I could not dispel the bewitching idea of abandoning literature, which I’m fed up