Soviet Chekhovian Studies: On the Need of a Complete Bibliography Index and it’s Main Principles

Abstract

The author argues that a scholarly research is impossible without proper indexes. Many indexes of literature and anthologies are represented in Chekhovian studies. But, not all periods in the history of Russian Chekhovian studies are described in such indexes. The most completely described are the period of Chekhov’s life and the pre-revolutionary period, as well as the segment from 1960 to the present day. Period 1918–1959s is not described enough. This period is very important in the history of the Soviet Chekhovian Studies. The four decades is a period of creation of a new Marxist methodology, theoretical searches, and discussions in the press. The lack of a bibliography of this period oft en leads researchers to misconceptions about the weak scholars’ and mass readers’ interest in Chekhov’s heritage, about the lack of studying of many problems that literary critics turned to only in the 1960s. The most complete bibliography will help to avoid distortions of the historical-literary process. The index will allow raising the general level of historicism of contemporary research, to explicate some topical aspects of the works of the Soviet period, to lead scholars to new themes and also to develop such points of view on the advantages and disadvantages of the Soviet Chekhovian studies, that will be free of ideological cliches. To achieve these goals the bibliography must be founded on several principles: objectivity, accuracy and maximum possible completeness of the index. The compiling a bibliography of Soviet Chekhovian articles and books done at a high scholarly level will become a reliable theoretical foundation for conceptualizing everything that has been reached by Russian criticism on Anton Chekhov, and the crucial point of this criticism’s further way.