Christine D. Worobec explores the volatile world of the peasantry in the decades following the emancipation of 1861. Through Chekhov’s eyes, Worobec considers the cycles of violence and abuse embedded within these communities and the challenges faced in an era of modernization, gauging Chekhov’s response to these problems as a writer deeply troubled by the society that Russian serfdom had produced but wary of sweeping political or ideological solutions.

Melissa L. Miller examines a new civil arena of modern professionals with changing views of sexuality that was formed during the Great Reforms of the 1860s and 1870s. Miller examines Chekhov’s participation in modern debates over sexuality, both as a doctor who in medical school was drawn to questions of sexual difference and as a writer whose frank depictions of sex and sexual affairs were paradigmatic for his time.

This chapter explains the Great Reforms of Alexander II, and Tolstoy’s complex response to them in his work. It explores the basic structure of serfdom, and the ways in which it was fundamental to Russian social and economic structures in first half of the nineteenth century. The chapter explains the process of emancipation, and how it gave serfs a degree of freedom while still keeping economic and social power in the hands of the landowners. Tolstoy recognized serfdom as unjust, but also owned serfs and made only an ineffectual attempt to partially free them before the official end of serfdom in 1861. In his works, serfdom is described as oppressive but also connected with love and family. His works also reflect his concern that emancipation would destroy the nobility without solving the fundamental problems of poverty and exploitation. The creation of the zemstvo as a system of local government was a similar source of ambivalence for Tolstoy. He served in his local zemstvo for some years, but in his fiction the zemstvo is shown as an inadequate solution. His later works suggest that a more radically empathetic solution is needed to break down the barriers between peasants and landowners.

In the four decades following the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855, long-repressed cultural energies broke loose across imperial Russia. The Great Reforms of Alexander II, which began in 1861 with the Emancipation of Russia’s serfs, introduced transformative changes in law, politics, society, the economy, and the army. Creative endeavor also stirred. Freedom was in the air, and artists and writers imagined it for themselves and for the nation. They developed new content and forms of expression and assumed greater control over their creative lives. By the end of the century, literature and the arts had rejected the unitary model of state-sponsored patronage and transitioned to become free professions, although funding from state and Church remained important. Simultaneously, print culture extended outward to a growing public. Part I treats the meta-theme of freedom and order by examining the how the Fools and rebellious heroes of tradition were modernized and harnessed to the topics of the day. Issues of inclusion and boundaries surfaced as lines between and among the legal estates blurred and civic participation broadened. Publics and audiences for the arts transformed, and expectations about the roles of artists and the arts changed accordingly.