At this time, there was also a marked disparity between the lives of the upper classes-the aristocracy and provincial nobility-and the peasant and servant classes. Life in the provinces was regarded as rather sleepy and culturally backward (which accounts for the sisters’ constant desire to move back to rapidly modernizing Moscow). Under Nicholas, the massive Russian empire was divided into 50 provinces, which were subdivided into districts, all of which were governed by a complicated, 14-rank system of civil servants (in the play, for instance, Andrey Prozorov serves rather ineffectually on the local District Council). Nicholas II had become Tsar in 1894 and sustained the autocratic policies of the Romanov dynasty, suppressing those who agitated for more democratic forms of governance. During the time of the play, Russia was at peace, militarily speaking (as seen in the Brigade’s long, uneventful stay in the Prozorovs’ town). The turn of the 20th century was a transitional period in Russian history.

By this time in his life, Chekov was suffering greatly from tuberculosis and traveled in search of a healthier climate, building a villa in Yalta and ultimately dying in Badenweiler, Germany, with his wife, Olga, at his side. By the late 1890s, however, his plays were being produced by the Moscow Arts Theatre and became both commercially and critically successful. Most of Chekov’s plays were written during the last 15 years of his life, although early productions were disastrous. When I tire of one, I go and sleep with the other.' He also conducted thousands of interviews of convicts and settlers on Sakhalin Island, in Russia’s Far East, in 1890 these were published as The Island of Sahkalin, a powerful work calling for more humane treatment of convicts. He was quoted as saying, 'Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. Though he trained as a doctor, his primary occupation became short-story writing, for which he won the Pushkin Prize in 1887, while only in his 20s.

After the family became impoverished, Anton both supported them and financed his own education by writing for periodicals. Chekov’s father was abusive and accumulated ruinous debts. Anton Chekov was one of six children born to a grocer and his wife.

Three sisters anton chekhov