Tchekoff was still living when new symptoms of fermentation appeared in Russia, and he could have alluded to this in his later works. But he did not have a fighting nature, and, in his solitude, he looked at conditions with melancholy scepticism. There was need of a man, a writer—like Gorky several years later—born right in the midst of this movement, who would be the very product of it, and for whom its ideas would be a reason for existence.
Veressayev was this man and writer, and it is as much by his political opinions as by his literary talents that he gained such a wide-spread reputation. If his works are not always irreproachable from a literary standpoint, they are always accurate in describing exactly what the author himself has seen and lived through.
Veressayev, in three great stories, gives us the three phases of the movement between 1880 and 1900. These three stories, "Astray," "The Contagion" and "At the Turn," are of such extreme importance, that in the following pages there will be a detailed analysis of each of them.
The two protagonists of the story, "Astray," are Dr. Chekanhov and his cousin Natasha. The former is at the end of his moral life, the latter is on the threshold, and both of them are "astray," because the one has not found the road on which to travel through life, and the other is just beginning to look for it. The entire existence of Chekanhov is dominated by the idea that it is his duty to serve the people, which was the basis of the activity of the "narodnikis." According to him, the "intellectuals," who represent a small and privileged fraction of the population, are the debtors of the people and ought to pay their debt by giving the people knowledge and comfort. This theory is burned into his very soul; it is the leading thought that directs all of his actions. At this epoch, few men showed such absolute devotion. From 1880 to 1890, after the cruel suppression of the movement of the "narodnikis," there was a stop in this revolutionary activity. Unaware of this pacification, Chekanhov makes great exertions; as a doctor, he combats disease and saves several people. But how exhaust the source of this evil, this misery, which is increased by a despotic social order? Chekanhov spends his energy in vain; where else shall he apply his strength?
The famine of 1891! Dr. Chekanhov speaks only of his despair: "A terrible malady beats down on one after another of the inhabitants; it is an epidemic of typhoid caused by the privations which left us numb and weak." In 1892 an epidemic of cholera broke out. In spite of the prayers of his parents, the young man rushes off to the most infected district. One day, he penetrates into an infected hovel. The children are sprawling everywhere, the mother is foolish and stupid, and the father, weakened by prison labor, has come down with cholera. The wife forbids the doctor, whom she accuses of poisoning the sick, to approach her husband. Scorning the danger, in order to encourage the sick man, the doctor drinks out of the very cup which the invalid has used. Nothing counts with him as long as he can inspire confidence and save people from death.
"What good is there in love between good and strong people," adds Chekanhov, after having noted down this cure in his "Journal," "since it results only in miserable abortions? And why are the people held down to work which is so rough and unpleasant? What motive supports them in their painful labor? Is it the desire to preserve their infected hovels?"
At the end of these reflections could not Chekanhov, absolutely in despair, have abandoned his task? No, he knew how to keep up his devotion. Sacrificing his life for others, Chekanhov begins to love life again. He says to himself: "Life is good ... but will it be for a long time?" We do not catch the answer.
Furious voices are heard, and a savage and cruel mob calls him a poisoner and hurls itself upon him, beating and striking him.
Exhausted by the blows and jeered at by those whom he had considered his brothers in need and for whom he had put himself in constant peril, he lies stretched out on his bed, suffering severely; but he nourishes no grudge against his tormentors; on the contrary, his apostle-like character is moved with pity at the thought of these uncultured and ignorant beings so unconscious of the evil that they are doing. And several days before his death he writes the following tragic words in his "Journal," almost terrifying in their simplicity: