A. CHEKHOV - THE PUBLICIST ON RUSSIAN PENAL SYSTEM

Abstract

Such issues as causes and psychological motives of the crime, legal proceedings procedural violations, inhuman conditions of the hard labor and exile played a significant role in the composition of A. Chekhov's newspapers and magazines materials. The distinctive feature of Chekhov's works of the indicated problematics is the direct author's assessment of the phenomena nature relating to the system of penalties in Russia along with artistic pictures of what was happening. One of the important conclusions made by the author was that «punishment very often brings much more evil than the crime itself». In the early stories of Chekhov, the idea of immorality of the death penalty and life imprisonment was repeated time and again. A separate chapter in the cycle «From Siberia» was devoted to the inhumanity and the impracticability of these penalties. The problem was most clearly reflected in the artistic and publicist essay book of «The Sakhalin island», where the word «punishment» and its derivatives were used 110 times and were present in the titles of chapters emphasizing the importance of this topic for the author. Chekhov described how disastrously the punishment of the galley affects both the prisoners and the jailers. In general, the publicistic writings by Chekhov of the 1880-1890s were the encyclopedia of the artist and the humanist, which strongly criticized the whole aggregate of brutal punitive measures aimed at humiliation and the lack of rights for the individual.