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Updated: May 23, 2025
Those who work near it and upon it have solved fearful, responsible problems, and are still solving them. I am not sentimental, or I would say that we ought to go to places like Sahalin to worship as the Turks go to Mecca, and that sailors and gaolers ought to think of the prison in Sahalin as military men think of Sevastopol.
The fruits of this journey were a series of articles in Russkaya Myssl on the island of Sahalin, and two short stories, "Gusev" and "In Exile." His articles on Sahalin were looked on with a favourable eye in Petersburg, and, who knows, it is possible that the reforms which followed in regard to penal servitude and exile would not have taken place but for their influence.
In Vladivostok, in Japan, in Shanghai, Tchifu, Suez, and even in the moon, I fancy everywhere there is cholera, everywhere quarantine and terror.... They expect the cholera in Sahalin and keep all vessels in quarantine. In short, it is a bad lookout. Europeans are dying at Vladivostok, among others the wife of a general has died. I have spent just two months in the north of Sahalin.
I went to Svobodin's name-day party with her yesterday. She sang gipsy songs, and created such a sensation that all the great men kissed her hand. Rumours have reached me that Lidia Stahievna is going to be married par depit. Is it true? Tell her that I shall carry her off from her husband par depit. I am a violent man. Has not anything been collected for the benefit of the Sahalin schools?
At night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together. I remember I was at a funeral in Sahalin.
"No, I don't, I am illegitimate. I was born when mother was at Kara." On the Amur steamer going to Sahalin, there was a convict with fetters on his legs who had murdered his wife. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters.
For two months I worked intensely, putting my back into it; in the third month I began to feel ill from the bitterness I have spoken of, from boredom, and the thought that the cholera would come from Vladivostok to Sahalin, and that so I was in danger of having to winter in the convict settlement.
In Russia it was not possible to be a "free artist and nothing more." Chekhov left Sahalin in October and returned to Europe by way of India and the Suez Canal. He wanted to visit Japan, but the steamer was not allowed to put in at the port on account of cholera.
There are lots of bears and escaped convicts in Sahalin, so that in case messieurs the wild beasts dine off me or some tramp cuts my throat, I beg you not to remember evil against me.
I am not going for the sake of impressions or observations, but simply for the sake of living for six months differently from how I have lived hitherto. Don't rely on me, old man; if I am successful and clever enough to do something, so much the better; if not, don't blame me. I am going after Easter. I will send you in due time my Sahalin address and minute instructions....
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