Chekhov Anton Pavlovich - biography of the writer, personal life, photos, portraits, books

The carrot and stick of Chekhov's house

On the porch of Korneev’s house, on Sadovo-Kudrinskaya Street in Moscow, spring, 1890. Standing: A.I. Ivanenko, I.P. Chekhov, P.E. Chekhov, A. Korneev. Sitting: M. Korneeva, M.P. Chekhov, L.S. Mizinova, M.P. Chekhova, A.P. Chekhov, E.Ya. Chekhov. Photo: anton-chehov.info

From left to right, standing: Ivan, Anton, Nikolai, Alexander and M.G. Chekhov (the writer's uncle); sitting: Mikhail, Maria, P.E. Chekhov, E.Ya. Chekhova, L.P. Chekhova (the writer's aunt), Georgy Chekhov (the writer's cousin). Photo by S. S. Isakovich, Taganrog, 1874. Photo: anton-chehov.info

Anton Chekhov. Photo: anton-chehov.info

Anton Chekhov was born into a large family in Taganrog. His father, Pavel Yegorovich, first drove to sell bulls from the Voronezh province to Moscow, and in 1858 he became a merchant of the third guild. In their marriage to Evgenia Morozova, they had six children, Anton himself was the third.

The situation in the Chekhovs' house was strict: children were not allowed to idle. Every day at five o'clock in the morning the brothers sang in the church choir, and after school they helped their father in the grocery store. All children had to learn a craft: Anton, for example, learned the profession of a tailor. The mother taught the children to be responsive, to respect and support the weak, to love nature and others.

The future writer began studying in 1868 at the Taganrog gymnasium. There he took the pseudonym Chekhonte, a nickname given to him by one of his teachers. At the age of 13, Chekhov first visited the theater, where the operetta by the French composer Jacques Offenbach “The Beautiful Helen” was performed. It was then that Chekhov fell in love with the stage and literature.

The theater once gave me a lot of good things... Before, there was no greater pleasure for me than sitting in the theater...
From a letter from Anton Chekhov, 1898

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Escape to Moscow

Anton Chekhov. Photo: anton-chehov.info

In 1876, Chekhov Sr. went bankrupt, and the whole family left for Moscow. Sixteen-year-old Anton, who was completing his studies at the gymnasium, was left alone and tutored to earn his living. During these years, he read a lot, wrote essays for gymnasium magazines, and sent the magazine “Zaika” with short sketches from Taganrog life to his brothers in Moscow. At the same time, Chekhov wrote his first play, “Fatherlessness,” and the vaudeville “No wonder the hen sang.”

In 1879, Chekhov graduated from high school and left Taganrog for Moscow. There he began to take care of his family, providing for his loved ones with a modest income from literary publications. Chekhov’s debut in print took place in December of the same year: the magazine “Dragonfly” published the story “Letter to a Learned Neighbor” and the humoresque “What is most often found in novels, stories, etc.”

In the same year, Chekhov entered the medical faculty of Moscow University named after I.M. Sechenov. The medical student lived with his brother Ivan in Voskresensk near Moscow (today the city of Istra). There, in 1881, he met the head of the Resurrection Zemstvo Hospital, Dr. Pavel Arkhangelsky. Even during his studies, Chekhov received patients, completed his internship here, and after graduating from the university he remained to work as a district doctor. In the summer of 1884, he moved to the position of head of the Zvenigorod hospital.

Ivan Chekhov

Ivan Chekhov was born a year later than Anton, in 1861, and, like all his brothers, graduated from the Taganrog Classical Men's Gymnasium. Experiencing, like the entire Chekhov family, great financial problems, Ivan Pavlovich was unable to graduate from high school and began binding books, which brought him at least some money. Following his family, he left for Moscow, where he was able to pass the exam and receive the title of teacher.

Ivan Chekhov. (anton-chehov.info)

Ivan Pavlovich succeeded in his field: not only did he head several main Moscow schools, but he also became a member of the Moscow City Duma. During his lifetime, he became famous for receiving the title of hereditary honorary citizen: his grandfather, who, being a serf, was forced to ransom his family from the landowner, probably could not have dreamed of this. By the way, according to literary scholars, Ivan Pavlovich was the prototype for one of Chekhov’s stories: the younger brother walked long distances around the city to meet with the publicist Pyotr Boborykin, and eventually became the prototype for the main character from the work “Ivan Matveevich.”

The doctor became a writer

Nikolai Chekhov. Portrait of Anton Chekhov (fragment). 1884. State Literary Museum, Moscow

Valentin Serov. Portrait of Anton Chekhov (fragment). 1902. State Literary Museum, Moscow

Isaac Levitan. Portrait of Anton Chekhov (fragment). 1886. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Anton Chekhov combined his studies at the university with constant literary work. He published mainly under the pseudonym Antosha Chekhonte; later “A Doctor Without Patients”, “Uncle”, “A Man Without a Spleen”, “Baldastov”, “Antonson”, “My Brother’s Brother” appeared - about fifty in total.

Chekhov was published in the Moscow humorous magazines “Alarm Clock”, “Spectator”, “Oskolki”, collaborated with the “Petersburgskaya Gazeta”, the newspaper “Novoe Vremya” and “Russkie Vedomosti”. In 1882, the writer completed work on his first collection of short stories, “Prank,” but it was never published, probably due to financial problems. Chekhov's first collection, Tales of Melpomene, was published in 1884.

By 1885, Chekhov was already a popular author of short stories. But the writer Dmitry Grigorovich intervened in his literary path, who criticized the young man for wasting his talent. Many leading authors and critics of those years agreed with this opinion.

Better starve, as we starved in our time, save your impressions for work that is thought out, processed, written not in one sitting, but written in the happy hours of your inner mood. One such work will be valued a hundred times more than hundreds of wonderful stories scattered across newspapers at different times.
From a letter from Dmitry Grigorovich to Anton Chekhov, 1886

But it was thanks to one of the critics, publisher Alexei Suvorin, that Chekhov was able to reveal his potential. In Suvorin’s magazine “New Time,” with which Chekhov began collaborating, the authors were paid a decent fee and were not limited either in the time of creation of works or in the number of words. It was during this favorable time for the writer that some of his best works were published: “Dirge”, “Enemies”, “Agafya”, “Nightmare” and others - and Chekhov’s story appeared as a new phenomenon in Russian literature. In "New Time" Anton Chekhov first began to sign texts with his own name.

However, with the five stories published in New Time, I caused a stir in St. Petersburg, from which I was as mad as a child.
From a letter from Anton Chekhov to his brother Alexander, 1886

Family A.P. Chekhov

Pavel Egorovich Chekhov is the father of Anton Pavlovich. During his years from 1825 to 1898 he was quite an interesting person. Merchant of the 3rd guild. He owned a grocery store, which was located in Taganrog. Trade did not particularly interest him; he became more and more interested and paid attention to church, singing and other public affairs. He married the daughter of a merchant, Evgenia Morozova, in 1854, who later bore him six children. Children were raised in extreme strictness with the use of corporal punishment. As the children grew up, in addition to studying, they had to replace their father in the shop. Sometimes even sacrificing classes. In 1898, due to an unsuccessful operation in a Moscow hospital, he died. Anton Pavlovich’s mother, Evgenia Yakovlevna (1835-1919), was a wonderful housewife who lived with love for her husband and her children. A passionate theater lover, she could attend it very rarely. At an early age, her parents sent her to the Taganrog private boarding house for noble maidens, where she learned good manners. Chekhov's older brother was Alexander, born in 1855, a journalist and fiction writer by profession. After graduating from Moscow University, he worked for some time in the customs department. Since 1886, he began writing humorous stories, sketches and essays for the newspaper “Novoe Vremya”. From a young age, Anton Pavlovich listened carefully to his brother’s advice. He respected criticism of his first literary endeavors. 1913 was the last year of the life of Alexander Pavlovich Nikolai Chekhov (1858 -1889) - older brother. He considered painting to be his main purpose. After graduating from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he became famous as a talented artist. He painted the paintings “Revelry in Sokolniki”, “Entry of Messalina into Rome”, “Poverty” and others. At the age of 31 he fell ill with tuberculosis. Died in 1889. Anton Pavlovich's younger brother was Ivan. Born in 1861. Since 1980, he worked as a primary school teacher in the city of Voskresensk. During the holidays A.P. Chekhov came to see him. Died in 1922. Another younger brother of Chekhov is Mikhail Pavlovich. Born in 1865 in the city of Taganrog. In 1889, he received a law degree and was forced to serve in the Ministry of Finance, which was very burdensome for him. Mikhail Pavlovich spent his childhood and almost his entire youth with his older brother Anton Chekhov. Therefore, soon after the writer’s death, Mikhail Pavlovich’s first memories appeared about many memorable moments associated with his brother. In 1920, due to severe heart disease, he was forced to move to Yalta, where he settled in the house of A.P. Chekhov. Died in 1936. Chekhov's only sister is Maria Pavlovna (1863 - 1957). In 1921 she opened the Chekhov Museum in Moscow. From 1926 to 1980 it existed as a branch of the State Order of Lenin Library. All his life M.P. Chekhova carried out public works in the name of the memorial legacy of her brother. In 1957 she was buried in the Yalta cemetery.

Looking for inspiration: Sakhalin

Anton Chekhov. Photo: anton-chehov.info

Since 1887, Chekhov began to try himself in more serious genres and themes. The turning point in the writer’s work was the story “Steppe” for the magazine “Northern Messenger”. Chekhov found inspiration for it on a trip to the Azov region, during which he visited his homeland - Taganrog. "Steppe" was well received by the public. Chekhov’s friend, Moscow writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky, wrote: “Lovely! After all, this is a real, real steppe! You just breathe the steppe when you read.” In the same year, Chekhov’s first dramatic work, the play “Ivanov,” was staged at the Moscow Korsh Theater, and a year later his third collection, “At Twilight,” was awarded the Pushkin Prize at the Academy of Sciences.

... Mr. Chekhov's stories, although they do not fully satisfy the requirements of higher artistic criticism, nevertheless represent an outstanding phenomenon in our modern fiction literature.
From the resolution of the academic commission, 1888

In 1890, Anton Chekhov went to Sakhalin Island to explore the life of Russian prisons. The local administration forbade communication with political prisoners, but the writer violated this rule. He managed to conduct a census of the island's population, filling out ten thousand cards for its inhabitants. Five years later, an artistic and journalistic book of travel notes about the exile colony and hard labor, “Sakhalin Island,” was published.

In modern conditions of fierce competition in the audit services market, the issue of developing new areas of auditing becomes especially relevant. One of the most dynamically developing areas of internal audit is the audit of customer relationships.

Audit of relationships with consumers

(Customer Satisfaction Audit, CSA) is a fairly new and complex area in internal audit. The difficulty is that this audit operates with rather vague, non-quantitative categories. The solution to this problem is to focus on evidence, facts and proof of the problem rather than on the relationship level or customer satisfaction. The audit should focus on how the quality control system is organized as a whole.

The starting point for analyzing customer satisfaction is the creation of a certain corporate culture. It is necessary to reach a state where the emphasis on customer satisfaction becomes an integral part of the company's activities, the way of thinking of every employee. It is not enough to measure the attitude of consumers towards a product or service through questionnaires, analysis of complaints and conversations with customers on the sales floor, and this is precisely the traditional methodology for auditing relationships with consumers.

An audit of customer relationships should include a number of elements that are traditionally involved in marketing, namely: analysis of customer needs and assessment of the external environment. Therefore, it would be more correct to call this form of audit a satisfaction creation audit.

Purpose

internal audit of relationships with consumers is to form an opinion regarding:

the adequacy of organizational channels of communication with consumers, through which clients can express their attitude towards the activities (products) of the company;
the relevance and representativeness of inputs into the consumer response process and the reliability of such data;
the effectiveness of the analysis of the information received;
that the output from this process provides management with useful information regarding the customer satisfaction process, its improvement, and the implementation of further improvements.

Sources of information

for the audit are: information about goods returned by customers and the number of warranty repairs; analysis of data in invoices; data from the media; consumer websites; direct communication with clients, etc.

Achieving the set goal is achieved by implementing the 8-step methodology

, proposed by the Cambridge School of Auditing:

Understanding customer requirements
. The design of all products should be based on the clear requirements of the customers themselves, and not specialist analysts, because without receiving feedback, the company will gradually form the wrong opinion about what customers need. In addition to the actual requirements, it is necessary to ask consumers to determine the importance of each wish and set priorities.

Analysis of current opportunities
. At this stage, it is necessary, having in hand a list of customer requirements, to determine how much the organization can satisfy each of them and at what level, since it may not have the resources to fulfill some wishes. It is advisable to divide all consumers in your market segment into several groups according to the level of service provided to them. Abram I. Bluestein, Michael Moriarty, Ronald J. Sanderson propose dividing into four groups - “platinum”, “gold”, “silver” and “bronze” consumers. The main criterion for separation is the level of profitability (determined using ABC analysis.). This approach helps to avoid unnecessary costs and provide each consumer only the level of service that is valuable to him.

Assessing competitors' capabilities
. When analyzing the competitive environment, it is most advisable to evaluate the opinion of potential or existing consumers, rather than the opinion of experts or your own analysts. In this case, it is advisable to use the interviews that were conducted with consumers at the first stage, when they were asked to comment on competitors' products.

Identifying gaps
. At this step, using the data obtained, the auditor, by constructing an analytical table, determines how much the company's products, as well as their individual characteristics, differ from what consumers want based on the interview results. Next, all the important processes occurring in the company are described and the contribution of each of them to customer satisfaction is analyzed. When describing processes, it is advisable to use tools such as Pareto analysis, brainstorming, checklists and control charts.

Identifying ways to achieve strategic superiority
. To determine specific actions to close the gaps identified at the previous stage, the participation of specialists from all key areas whose activities affect consumers is necessary. At this stage, specific measures are developed to eliminate processes that interfere with establishing relationships with the consumer. The most common violations in this area are caused by: lack of understanding of consumer requirements; lack of understanding of the quality of your work; lack of determination to target consumers; incorrect formulation of the company's strategy.

Trade-Off Analysis
. Once the main courses of action are identified, each of them is assessed based on the cost-benefit ratio and the likelihood of success and failure. The auditor should analyze the readiness of the company’s team to implement the proposed strategy.

Selection of main quality indicators
. The enterprise should choose priorities in the area of achieving customer satisfaction, numerical indicators for achieving the goal and time milestones for monitoring. This choice depends on the company's stage of maturity (for example, pioneer, bureaucratic or integration).

Structuring the quality program
. At this step, a program is drawn up that will describe the organization's goals in achieving customer satisfaction, as well as a methodology of action similar to the one presented above. A customer satisfaction audit should become a permanent part of the company’s activities and be carried out every 9 months. When planning an audit, one should take into account the fluidity of the external environment, the analysis of the results of implemented corrective actions, as well as the fact that the audit itself contributes to the thorough performance of job duties and improvement of work.

Sources

What is the principle of consumer priority?

What is the role of marketing in ensuring the success of a company in the market?

"Melikhovo sitting"

Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. Photo: apchekhov.ru

Anton Chekhov in Melikhovo. Photo: apchekhov.ru

Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Photo: apchekhov.ru

After Sakhalin, the writer settled in Moscow on Malaya Dmitrovka. During these years, Chekhov was already one of the most read authors in Russia. It was published in the magazines “Severny Vestnik”, “Russian Thought”, newspapers “Novoe Vremya” and “Russian Vedomosti”. He communicated with writers Vladimir Korolenko, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, actors Alexander Lensky and Alexander Yuzhin, and artist Isaac Levitan.

In 1890, Anton Chekhov set off to travel again, this time around Western Europe. The writer visited Vienna, Bologna, Venice, Naples, where he climbed Vesuvius, Paris and other cities.

I can say one thing: I have never seen a more wonderful city than Venice in my life. This is sheer charm, brilliance, joy of life.
From a letter from Anton Chekhov to his brother Ivan, 1891

In March 1892, Chekhov bought an estate in Melikhovo near Moscow. There he opened a medical center, built three schools and a bell tower, helped build a highway and, of course, treated the sick. During the famine that raged in Melikhovo during these years, the writer collected donations for the hungry, and during cholera he worked as a sanitary doctor for the zemstvo: in his area there were 25 villages, four factories and a monastery.

Medical practice took a lot of effort and time, but it was in Melikhovo that Chekhov wrote his most famous works: the play “The Seagull”, the story “Ward No. 6”, the stories “House with a Mezzanine” and “The Man in a Case” - about 40 significant works in total.

... Seven years of “Melikhov’s sitting” were not in vain for him. They left their own special imprint and special flavor on his works of this period. He himself recognized this influence. It is enough to recall his “Men” and “In the Ravine”, where Melikhovo’s paintings and characters shine through on every page.
From the memoirs of the writer's brother Mikhail Chekhov

Contemporaries often called Chekhov the “Poet of Twilight.” His work was considered by many to be pessimistic and decadent; there was even a term “Chekhovian sentiments.” The writer was surprised by such comments, as he recalled: “What kind of “gloomy person” am I, what kind of “cold blood” am I, as the critics call me? What kind of “pessimist” am I? After all, of my things, my favorite story is “The Student.” And the word is disgusting: “pessimist” ... "