Years ago I read an introduction to a collection of Chekhov's letters that provided an illuminating context to the intellectual & aesthetic climate of Russia in the 19th century. It explained that authors like Chernyshevsky asserted that all novels, really all art, ought to be of a politically salient character; that it ought to highlight the suffering the marginal & subaltern. So many of the authors we now revere -- Dostoevsky, Chekhov, even Tolstoy, aroused the ire of the Russian intelligentsia for failing to meet this standard, for writing for purposes other than political and revolutionary utility. The introduction asserted that this was an overwhelmingly unanimous sentiment among the Russian left.