Three Years Explained

Three Years (Russian: Три года|translit=Tri goda) is an 1895 novella by Anton Chekhov originally published in the January and February 1895 issues of Russkaya Mysl.^[1] At 130 pages it is Chekhov's second-longest narrative.^{[2] [3]} The story takes a negative position on the progress of society, featuring individuals of the merchant and factory owner class and their workers, without offering political solutions.^[4]

Background

In a September 1894 letter Chekhov informed Maria Chekhova that he was writing "a novel from the Moscow life for Russkaya Mysl. In his December letter to the singer Elena Shavrova^[5] he expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the work was going. "The original idea was one thing, but something different evolves out of it, something more languid... I am sick of writing of all these habitual things, I'd like to write of demons, of frightening, volcanic women, of wizards, but alas! – what they demand of me is right-minded novellas about Ivan Gavrilovichs and their wives."^[1]

Publication

The novella came out with significant gaps caused by censorship. "The January issue of Russkaya Mysl has been arrested, then acquitted. From my story the censors threw out everything that had anything to do with religion. Russkaya Mysl is the journal that has to send its articled for the preliminary censorship procedure. Such things kill off all the urge to write, leaves with the feeling of a bone stuck in your throat," Chekhov complained in a January 1895 letter to his friend Alexey Suvorin.^[1]

Critical response

Generally the response to the novella was warm, even if some reviewers found the plotline 'hazy' and its characters 'sketchy'. Alexander Skabichevsky reviewed the novella positively and expressed his delight with the Alexey Laptev character whom he described as 'the Hamlet of Zamoskvorechye'.^[6]

Along with three other stories and novellas, "The Ward No. 6", "The Story of an Unknown Man" and "A Woman's Kingdom", Three Years served as a turning point in Chekhov's career. The critics started to recognize him as a new major force in Russian literature and 'a worthy heir to the old masters', according to Sergey Andreevsky.^[7]

Notes and References

1. Muratova, K. D. Commentaries to Три года. The Works by A.P. Chekhov in 12 volumes. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura. Moscow, 1960. Vol. 7, pp. 542-547
2. Michael C. Finke Seeing Chekhov: Life and Art 2005 0801443156 p.128 "Three Years - The theme of degeneration plays out in a merchant milieu very close to the Chekhov family's own in the 1895 "Three Years" ("Tri goda"), Chekhov's second-longest narrative."
3. Walter Horace Bruford Chekhov and His Russia: A Sociological Study 2003-0415178096 p180 "Chekhov's Three years (1895) is a small-scale Buddenbrooks, written six years before Thomas Mann's masterpiece, and eleven years before the first part of the Forsyte Saga. In his epigrammatic way, the author gives us in 130 pages, and the story of just three years, the same feeling for the inevitable differentiation of successive generations which Mann and Galsworthy elaborate at much greater length."
4. Rose Whyman Anton Chekhov 2010 1136913637 "Modernization was not a panacea: he rejected the myth of progress, the idea that any one economic system, form of government, artistic approach, religious or philosophical system, could lead towards a utopian future, discussing the issue by means of the polarized attitudes of characters in Three Years. ... Three Years and In the Ravine (1900) feature factory owners and workers. "
5. Elena Mikhaylovna Shavrova sent more than twenty of her stories to Chekhov who liked them, reviewed for her and edited. She failed to develop into a serious writer as he hoped she would, but their ten years' correspondence (which started in 1889, when she was 15) resulted in more than 200 letters. http://az.lib.ru/s/shawrowa_e_m/text_0030.shtml
6. The News and Stockbrokers Gazette, 1895, No.107, 2 May
7. Novoye Vremya, 1895, No. 6784