Chekhov History

Text and floor: the case of The Cherry Orchard

Introduction

The past is a foreign country, and they do things differently on that point. It would clearly be besotted to expect the behaviour of the characters in The Cherry Orchard to correct to what one business leader expect in the UK in the twenty-first century. This is partly a matter of beat - the play is almost a hundred years old - but partly, too, a matter of place: this play is very obviously insert in Russia, and in the structures of Russian society. But, as students of the play, how should one sort out about putting it in the context of its historical time or place? It seems an impossible task to master an unblemished historical context, but it is necessary to at least c every(prenominal) a start.
Such historical context can soak up several forms. It can relate to:
Political history - who was reigning the country, and how? how was Russia dealing with her neighbours and rivals?
Economic history - how were people making their livelihood at this time?
Social history - what was day-to-day conduct like? what did people eat and wear and believe?
Of course, all three of these argon interlinked in complex ways, but they might provide a useful set of categories in cerebration about what follows.
Instructions
Start by making brief notes on the content of two very different views of Russian history:
http://www.pbs.



org/weta/faceofrussia/
- see especially the clickable timeline of the nineteenth century. In this account, what sorts of things are important about nineteenth-century Russia? What sort of view of Russia does this promote, and how? And does the material there about the freeing of the serfs have any bearing on The Cherry Orchard?
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/dcr8viii/viii8i.htm
- do you think there is any ideological bias to this makeup too? And are its discussions of railways and of economic growth of any look up to the world of The Cherry Orchard?
[Theres much more Russian history out there -
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