"Chekhov, prime fare of the Soviet schoolroom"

[Olga Meerson]

I agree with Vika, and Katerina Clark as well. whole-heartedly. Of all the Russian classics poisoned by Soviet education, Chekhov took me the longest to start rediscovering after that education. admittedly, what helped with Pushkin and Gogol was Siniavsky's books on them, but then I just started loving them on their own. Otherwise, the process was very similar to what you, Robert, know about Platonov, and can be known about anyone else: the Procrustean Bed. Or perhaps a cipher grid of sorts? Whatever fits is OK but then that would be the only thing known about the author by Soviet school-students. Another excellent example is the last stanza of Tiutchev's "Люблю грозу в начале мая":

Ты скажешь: ветреная Геба,
Кормя зевесова орла,
Громокипящий кубок с неба,
Смеясь, на землю пролила.

This stanza, is we know, was so important for Russian futurists, yet it was totally unknown to Soviet children who, otherwise, were obliged to memorize the poem and recite it with mechanical "expression". There are tons of other examples of such truncated and castrated classics. When I taught poetry at Hunter College to a class of predominantly ex-Soviet schoolchildren (that was in the late eighties, and they were recenyt comers to the US), those who excelled in the class knew all Mandel'stam by heart but none of his Tiutchev subtexsts! They all were hopelessly repressed as something that belongs and pertains solely to the huge brain-washing machine of the Soviet school.
I don't think Chekhov was ever banned from the soviet canon--just as the Stanislavsky theater never was. Of course, both existed in these, Procrustean guises but as such, they were thoroughly acceptable--and therefore seemed uninteresting to young people who all considered their cultural life to exist despite their schooling, not because of it. I am still having problems with Chekhov: cannot entirely detach myself from that prism, instilled in me at a very tender age! All of his characters' intonations sound "phoney" to me--especially the optimistic monologue of Sonia from "Uncle Vania". Of course, "The Cherry Orchard" could be read as a slapstick comedy (in my eyes, as in those of many of my school-mates, a redeeming feature!), but it is so difficult to actually READ these works after the pre-fabricated opinions instilled in us!
o.m.  

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