The Vast Humanity of Anton Chekhov | Hacker News Reader

The Vast Humanity of Anton Chekhov

newrepublic.com

67 pointslermontov34 comments

http://web.archive.org/web/20230126073138/https://newrepubli...

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(you can look up the gun separately)

Your aside better become relevant down-thread.

"The Bet", last above, unfortunately leads to a domain name camper.

I've changed the URL to one that still seems to work. Thanks!

Also:

Two Stories: Anton Chekhov and Jo Ann Beard

https://marygaitskill.substack.com/p/two-stories

The "vast humanity" of the Russian literature is a part of their imperial myth. The Russians like claiming that they have the greatest culture, literature, or a "unique Russian soul". This myth justifies their military expansion and erasing the culture and language of the conquered nations.

That "vast humanity" of their culture has never got in the way of the Russians from committing atrocities. Interestingly, the Russians still claim that they never invaded other states - they only liberate them. They never acknowledged the sins of the past.

Chekhov was less of a nationalist than Dostoyevsky or many others. However, giving spotlight to any figure from the Russian culture means giving support to their soft power. It also shifts the attention away from their war crimes. A modern Russian does not read Chekhov. He watches propaganda and cheers for the strikes on the civilian targets in Ukraine.

Very well put! Thank you.

I will never stop marveling at the way Chekhov can turn an inner life inside out in one to three pages. One of the jewels of Russian literature.

One of the most surprising things about Chekhov is how his writing is some ways beyond ideology, politics or convictions —- he tries to present people as they are, and he implies that people behave according to incentives and drives instead of their purported beliefs.

Why does Chekhov make it to HN frontpage so often?

And you never see Sulu!

I'm always a little surprised to see The New Republic chugging along

Considering what russia is doing and how propaganda works, it’s not so interesting why there are so many Chekhov and Dostoevsky on a forum for "hackers". It's interesting that there is so little about ballet here :)

ХН: первый в космосе; последний в балете ))

"HN is the first in space but last at the ballet"

[Edit: come to think of it, the ballet claque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claque is an early example of astroturfing; these days it's been automated by the laugh track]

Insane.

Is it possible that Chekhov and Dostoevsky were just really good writers? That maybe we liked them long before Putin started Putin-ing?

But no, everyone else apart from you is an easily led sheep and Putin or whoever else is the shepherd.

How many really good writers not from colonialist regimes are there? How often do they make to the front page of HN?

writers not from colonialist regimes don't make it to HN because most of us never heard of them at school, which focuses on western writers. are you aware that most wealthy countries are or have been colonialist regimes? this includes much of Europe, North America, Japan and China.

Exactly.

P.S. Also Russia, which is not really Europe.

Russia is (or at least was, during Grand Duchy of Moscow times) a part of Eastern Europe.

Now, its eastern\southern\northen parts\colonies - are not (except for the north and south -west of course)

Writers of old usually came from aristocracy. So, few.

The argument is not that everyone who likes old russian writers is a shill. It's that people bringing them up at current time can't read the room at least, give in to their own imperialist tendencies probably and it only goes worse from there.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529215.

This is misguided neutrality, I think. At some point even HN would need to pick a side.

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