Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) reached the widening public of his day. He captured the turn to a popular perspective, driving the transformation of Russian culture well into the twentieth century. His inclusive style lent dignity to nearly every character, though he could be ruthlessly ironic. He empathized with his readers and probed new views of identity, otherness, and the nation. In late works he emphasized beauty and the arts as superlative human values. He could engage with popular fiction well because he both read and wrote it. He honed skills that led to innovations in the short story and drama through his reading (and occasional writing) of serialized novels for the boulevard press of the 1880s. He read and corresponded about the best-known serialized bandit story of his day, N. I. Pastukhov’s The Bandit Churkin, which was serialized in The Moscow Sheet from 1882-1885. Chekhov turned the traditional Russian idea of the bandit’s spree or the binge into a deeper inquiry into the positive attributes of freedom. By the time of his death, he had arrived at his own understanding that freedom to create resides in a space coexistent with the world but beyond the encroachment of Church, state, and the market.

In the four decades following the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855, long-repressed cultural energies broke loose across imperial Russia. The Great Reforms of Alexander II, which began in 1861 with the Emancipation of Russia’s serfs, introduced transformative changes in law, politics, society, the economy, and the army. Creative endeavor also stirred. Freedom was in the air, and artists and writers imagined it for themselves and for the nation. They developed new content and forms of expression and assumed greater control over their creative lives. By the end of the century, literature and the arts had rejected the unitary model of state-sponsored patronage and transitioned to become free professions, although funding from state and Church remained important. Simultaneously, print culture extended outward to a growing public. Part I treats the meta-theme of freedom and order by examining the how the Fools and rebellious heroes of tradition were modernized and harnessed to the topics of the day. Issues of inclusion and boundaries surfaced as lines between and among the legal estates blurred and civic participation broadened. Publics and audiences for the arts transformed, and expectations about the roles of artists and the arts changed accordingly.