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Basic response to Chekhov's narratives will involve study of how they invite us to 'take sides' and how they steer our readerly responses to characters and situations. Because Chekhov is a major and fairly recent writer, these matters are likely to position us within debates and controversies relevant to our own culture, and we must be alive to these as well as concerning ourselves with the matter of how Chekhov's original readers will have understood them. Is it really true that Chekhov's eschewing of the novel was in the name of greater freedom, and if so how do we sense this in these stories? Through the shaping of the stories we may grasp broader ideological concerns, which we are likely to understand as humanitarian and liberal as well as, just perhaps, revolutionary. At the outer margin of our reading lies the tragic matter of Russian history, and this will be brought in as it becomes relevant. Our broadest concern will be to study how a writer's work may interact with history, and the kind of possibilities this might enable.