Editing Anton Chekhov (section)

===Sakhalin===
[[File:Chekhov ht.jpg|thumb|Anton Chekhov in 1893]]
In 1890, Chekhov undertook an arduous journey by train, horse-drawn carriage, and river steamer across [[Siberia]] to the [[Russian Far East]] and the ''[[katorga]]'', or penal colony, on [[Sakhalin Island]], north of Japan.  He spent three months there interviewing thousands of convicts and settlers for a census. The letters Chekhov wrote during the two-and-a-half-month journey to Sakhalin are considered to be among his best.{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|p=129}} His remarks to his sister about [[Tomsk]] were to become notorious.{{sfn|Simmons|1970|p=223}}{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=224}}

{{blockquote|Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull, too.{{sfn |Chekhov |Garnett |2004 |loc=[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6408/pg6408-images.html#link2H_4_0079 (TO HIS SISTER.) TOMSK, May 20 (1890)]}}}}

Chekhov witnessed much on Sakhalin that shocked and angered him, including floggings, embezzlement of supplies, and [[sexual slavery|forced prostitution]] of women. He wrote,  "There were times I felt that I saw before me the extreme limits of man's degradation."{{sfn|Wood|2000|p=85}}{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=230}} He was particularly moved by the plight of the children living in the penal colony with their parents. For example:

{{blockquote|On the [[Amur River|Amur]] steamer going to Sakhalin, there was a convict who had murdered his wife and wore fetters on his legs. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters. At night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together.{{sfn |Chekhov |Garnett |2004 |loc=[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6408/pg6408-images.html#link2H_4_0106 TO A. F. KONI. PETERSBURG, January 16, 1891.]}}}}

Chekhov later concluded that charity was not the answer, but that the government had a duty to finance humane treatment of the convicts. His findings were published in 1893 and 1894 as ''Ostrov Sakhalin'' (''[[Sakhalin Island (Chekhov)|The Island of Sakhalin]]''), a work of social science, not literature.{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|p=125}}<ref name = "Simmons 229">{{harvnb|Simmons|1970|p=229}}: Such is the general critical view of the work, but Simmons calls it a "valuable and intensely human document."</ref> Chekhov found literary expression for the "Hell of Sakhalin" in his long short story "[[s:The Murder|The Murder]]",<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chekhov |first=Anton Pavlovich |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13419 |title=The Bishop and Other Stories |date=2004-09-09 |language=English |translator-last=Garnett |translator-first=Constance}}</ref> the last section of which is set on Sakhalin, where the murderer Yakov loads coal in the night while longing for home. Chekhov's writing on Sakhalin, especially the traditions and habits of the [[Gilyak people]], is the subject of a sustained meditation and analysis in [[Haruki Murakami]]'s novel ''[[1Q84]]''.<ref>Murakami, Haruki. ''1Q84''.  Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2011.</ref> It is also the subject of a poem by the Nobel Prize winner [[Seamus Heaney]], "Chekhov on Sakhalin" (collected in the volume ''Station Island'').<ref>Heaney, Seamus. ''Station Island'' Farrar Straus Giroux: New York, 1985.</ref> [[Rebecca Gould]] has compared Chekhov's book on Sakhalin to [[Katherine Mansfield]]'s ''Urewera Notebook'' (1907).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gould|first=Rebecca Ruth|s2cid=165401623|date=2018|title=The aesthetic terrain of settler colonialism: Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov's natives|journal=Journal of Postcolonial Writing|volume=55|pages=48–65|doi=10.1080/17449855.2018.1511242|url=https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/40478/1/Gould_The_aesthetic_terrain_of_settler_Journal_of_Postcolonial_Writing_2018.pdf }}</ref> In 2013, the Wellcome Trust-funded play 'A Russian Doctor', performed by Andrew Dawson and researched by Professor Jonathan Cole, explored Chekhov's experiences on Sakhalin Island.