However, hishumanitarian ambitions were soon accompanied by great literarysuccess. He began practicing medicinein 1884, which was 'the start of a sporadic second career which wasto bring him much hard work but little income.' Chekhov's motivationto be doctor was to study the human being, his body and spirit, aswell as combat the human suffering that resulted in the mass arrestsand deportations during the reign of Czar Alexander III.

While he was tutoring, healso 'read voraciously' and 'the young Anton gradually replaced thepatriarchal peasant and merchant-class values in which he had beenbrought up with their very opposite, the intellectual and ethicalvalues of the liberal nineteenth-century intelligentsia' Chekhov'spersonal growth did not manifest itself in rebellion against hisparents, for he then returned to his family in Moscow andsubsequently enrolled at the Moscow University Medical School.Ĭhekhov the Medical Student and Early WriterĬhekhov also trained as a physician. During this time, Chekhov greatly developed his'spiritual and intellectual formation'. For sometime,Chekhov remained in his hometown and supported himself throughprivate tutoring. When he was 15 years old, his family was forced to flee Taganrogdue to bankruptcy and move to the city slums of Moscow. Likewise, in Chekhov's household,there was much discontentment of the submissive mother and sixchildren who was subject to harsh and oppressive patriarchal rule.Chekhov's father forced Anton and his two older brothers to toil inthe shop while he went off devoting himself to personal interests.One such interest was religion - he was somewhat of a fanatic.Chekhov's father's authoritarian rule during his childhood promptedhim to later reflect: 'Despotism and lies have spoiled our youth tosuch a degree that it is loathsome and terrible to recall it.' The hunger and oppression that accompaniedpoverty incited peasant revolts. Although Czar Alexander II was'determined to bring at least a ray of light into the darkness' andthe use of serfs as property to be sold, gambled or used ascollateral was abolished, the reality of serfs was still poverty, asthey did not own the land. The system of serfdom having beenabolished only a year after Chekhov was born, the country was vastlymired in medieval conditions. Chekhov's family life during these early years reflected thepolitical situation in Russia.

The young Chekhov attended aschool for Greek boys as well as a grammar school between the years1867-79. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born to poverty on January 29,1860 inTaganrog, a Russian mercantile city on the coast of the Black Sea.His mother was the daughter of a cloth merchant, his father was agrocer and his grandfather was a serf.

A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov