Cutting Chekhov
Ronald Hingley How the Soviet authorities have censored the writings of a major Russian author over the decades can be traced in detail, by those with a taste for detective work, if they compare the cuts imposed in successive editions of Chekhov's letters in Russian. It so happens that an ambitious and impressive new, Moscow-published edition of these has just begun to become available. This is a Complete Works, eventually to total thirty volumes, of which so far only four (two of the Works and two of the Letters) are available, and have become so fairly recently. They contain certain hitherto suppressed material which I have taken into account in writing a biography, A New Life of Anton Chekhov, which is to be published later this year. But I want in this article to consider the censorship policy adopted in this new Works, 1874-82, so far as its treatment of Chekhov's letters up to September 1888 is concerned, and to compare that policy with the practice followed by earlier Russian editors.
In one important respect alone the scholarly standards of the new edition leave much to be desired: the continued maintenance, though in modified form, of the policy whereby certain material— accessible only to the editors and oracularly designated by them "unsuitable for publication"—has been censored out of Chekhov's letters. Thus opens yet another chapter in the long and complex saga of the mutilation of Chekhov's correspondence by its Russian editors. In the first comprehensive collection of his letters to be published—in 1912-16, edited by his sister—we find evidence of numerous cuts, these being indicated by repeated dots. Many of the deleted passages appear from their context to refer to Chekhov's amorous experiences, while elsewhere we infer that he used the Russian equivalents of "four-letter words" or expressed himself otherwise indecorously. On the whole these cuts have not been restored in subsequent editions. In the Works of 1944-51, they are even intensified: in one letter a reference of Chekhov's, included in his sister's edition, to his alleged "impotence" was struck out: no doubt as unbefitting the image of a Great Man.
By collating all available editions we can also restore certain references which might be judged derogatory to the Russians and to other peoples of what is now the USSR and of what is there termed the "socialist camp". I have found, among such excisions, disparaging comments on Moldavians, Buryats, Yakuts, the Slays in general, and one in which Chekhov denounces the Russians' alleged addiction to vodka. A passage alluding to the Chinese as ideal domestic pets was also removed. So were passages in which peoples of the presentday "capitalist camp" are presented as possessing skills superior to those of peoples of the present-day "socialist camp": for instance, one in which Chekhov describes the Italian actress Eleonora Duse as head and shoulders above any Russian rival; and another in which he speaks of the British colonial administration of Hong Kong as immeasurably superior to that of Russia's far eastern empire.
Among the excisions made in Works, 1944-51 the most frequent are of passages in which Chekhov alludes to Jews by the derogatory term zhid and its derivatives. I shall not insult Chekhov by defending him against the charge of anti-Semitism. But certain brief factual points are worth making. Firstly, zhid and its derivatives were somewhat less offensive in nineteenthcentury Russia than they are in presentday Russia. Secondly, Chekhov normally confined these utterances to private remarks addressed to Gentiles; I should be astonished to find evidence that he ever abated his customary courtesy when addressing any of his many Jewish friends directly. In any case new editors are now admitting to the record material which the uninstructed might interpret as derogatory to Jews; nineteen such passages, excised from the previous edition, have been restored.
Under the new dispensation Chekhov is also permitted to allude to such indecorous phenomena as masturbation, gonorrhoea, pederasty, buggery and his own "backside". But the Russian equivalents of "four-letter words" are still excised. Even here, though, one curious minor liberty has been permitted. What can in its context have been nothing other than the word zhopa ["arsehole"] previously figured as follows:
[. .] Now, however, in keeping with the spirit of the times, this key word is printed, somewhat less delicately, as follows:
• • • > But for other words of this type, such as those of the yebat ["fuck"] and khuy ["prick"] families, which Chekhov also seems to have used—albeit less freely than some American Presidents—the editorial fig-leaf remains securely in place, and they appear fully enclosed in their little chastity belts, as follows: As for the chauvinistic editing which involved the excision from Works, 1944-51 of material disparaging to the present-day "socialist camp", and also of material praising the present-day "capitalist camp", there are signs of relaxation here: at least to the extent that the editors have restored one previously censored disrespectful reference to certain peoples of the Caucasus: "The natives are swine—not one poet, not
one singer have those gentry produced."
Against this and other welcome restorations, as listed above, must be set the emergence of a sinister and barely credible policy: that of imposing certain extra cuts— cuts not imposed even in the ultra-prudish Works, 1944-51. For instance, in a letter to N. A. Leykin of 4 June 1887 the earlier edition has "I'm bored and sad and have no one to [. . .1"; for which the new edition supinely offers the doubly castrated "I'm bored and sad < . . . > "! Here the 1974-82 edition shows itself yet more squeamish than its Stalinist predecessor: an evil omen for the ten outstanding volumes of correspondence to be published by 1982.
The effect of all this is to cast an otherwise unmerited shadow on a fine piece of collective editing. On the whole, though, Chekhov is at least being less savagely bowdlerised in the 1970s than was the case in the Stalin era. However, the continued censoring of a great man's words, so long after the death of himself and his close relatives, is inexcusable. It leaves a disgraceful blot on the new thirty-volume Chekhov. My own unsubstantiated guess is that this castrating policy has been imposed by extraneous, non-literary authority on the devoted scholars responsible for the new edition. They may well have resisted the censoring bureaucrats as best they could.
Another, more disquieting, consideration also arises. Is it not conceivable that, in addition to cuts openly acknowledged in typographical form by the symbol < . . > , other—typographically unavowed—excisions may also have been made? Whole letters, or passages of letters, bearing on aspects of Chekhov's life deemed unsuitable for dissemination, could have been, and indeed may have been, simply suppressed without acknowledgement. Given the strict control maintained by Muscovite authority over its archive material, there are no means whereby unkremlinized scholars can prove or disprove this speculation. All one can say is that, if in fact such underhand suppression has taken place, it runs very much contrary to the admirable scholarly spirit in which Works and Letters, 1974-82 seems, on the evidence so far available, to have been prepared. I hope that it is not too late to appeal for a change of heart, and for the printing of Chekhov's correspondence in its entirety in subsequent volumes, together with addenda covering the material so far suppressed: material which (we cannot tell) may be trifling or portentous in its biographical implications, but on which Chekhov's many admirers ought by now, for heaven's sake, to be allowed to make up their own minds.
Based on the Preface to Ronald Hingley's A New Life of Anton Chekhov to be published in late Spring 1976 by the Oxford University Press and in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
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