Чеховские Ставрогины: Николай Ставрогин как литературный прототип героев раннего Чехова
Chekhov’s Stavrogins: Nikolay Stavrogin as a Literary Prototype of the Early Chekhov’s Characters

Summary/Abstract: Many researchers of Chekhov’s work have already discovered in his early works (“On the High Road,” “Fatherlessness”) the “echo” of some of Dostoevsky’s characters — for example, Parfyon Rogozhin from the novel “The Idiot.” Meanwhile, Chekhov has many more such “echoes.” The article shows that Platonov and Kamyshev, the heroes of Chekhov’s play “Fatherlessness” and the novel “Drama on the Hunt,” are associated with the image of Nikolai Stav- rogin (“Demons”). Platonov’s transgressions look much more modest in com- parison with Stavrogin’s, and in the case of Kamyshev, the features of the hero of “Demons” are combined with the signs of the “underground paradoxalist,” Raskolnikov, Ivan Karamazov, and even Paratov (“The Girl Without a Dowry” by A. N. Ostrovsky). However, this is typical of early Chekhov, especially since he found “a lot of pretensions” in Dostoevsky’s works and was looking for his own artistic style. In Chekhov’s mature work, his characters’ egocentric indif- ference to everything: Andrey Prozorov and Chebutykin (“Three Sisters”), Tsybukin (In the Ravine) — refer not so much specifically to Stavrogin as to the invariant of his characters who are indifferent to others and therefore pro- fess moral relativism — such as Stavrogin, Ivan Karamazov and the hero of “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” in the first half of this short story.

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