Environmental & Ethical Stewardship
A doctor by training, Chekhov often displayed a deep love of nature in his hundreds of stories and plays. Considered by scholars to be one of the first ‘green plays,’ Uncle Vanya brought attention to the devastating deforestation occurring in Russia in the 1890s. The play is particularly remarkable due to its visionary discussion of environmental ethics—during Chekhov’s time, the environmental issues we face today were likely unimaginable for many people. Yet, Chekhov seems to almost “predict” the future impacts that things like deforestation may have on our planet. Uncle Vanya also highlights literature’s influential role in enhancing our understanding of human-nature interaction, long before environmental ethics emerged as a new sub-discipline of philosophy in the 1970s. Uncle Vanya suggests that the destruction of the environment and the selfishness of people coincide. Chekhov philosophizes that “man and nature are one, they form a cosmic unity”. Additionally, “in his mature period Chekhov increasingly uses attitudes and behavior toward nature as a measure of the character and moral stature of individuals and groups”. This Chekhovian approach to nature characterizes people like biologist David Attenborough and even Pope Francis, who began his environmental encyclical of 2015 by stating that “our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us”. Chekhov once stated that “in three or four hundred years all the earth will become a flourishing garden. And life will then be exceedingly light and comfortable”. Despite his environmental criticisms, he realized that we must keep hope alive above all else. Chekhov’s environmental arguments are closely intertwined with debates about the potential climatic impact of deforestation that waged across Europe and Russia in the 19th century.
In the early 19th century, there was almost a complete lack of wood in Russian steppes. Wood was a principal source of fuel and construction material for Russian peasants, whose whole material culture was shaped by the forests of northern and central Russia. In the early nineteenth-century, many naturalists, foresters, and writers in Russia assumed that the southern Russian steppes had an arid climate precisely because they were devoid of forests. They argued that an enlargement of forested areas would make the climate more humid and moderate, which would in turn make yields more stable. A few enlightened landlords and German colonists in the region repeatedly tried to plant forests on their steppe estates and farmsteads. In the 1840s, the Russian state administration joined these efforts by establishing several forestry districts in the region and began promoting afforestation.
The history of the observations carried out at these forestry districts from the 1840s till the 1890s clearly illustrated a gradual transformation in the debates on the environmental impact of forests in Russia. Over these decades, the early nineteenth century’s mode of natural historical research gave way to systematic experiments modeled on advances in the life and soil sciences. In the process, forestry as a discipline increasingly adopted sophisticated instrumental measurements and a research design borrowed from the exact sciences. Simultaneously, the very concept of “climate” underwent a profound change from a broad philosophical concept, which in the early nineteenth century encompassed a variety of natural and even moral phenomena, to a much more specific set of variables. Additionally, in the late 1800’s, the “forest question”—large-scale destruction of forests in the country and its detrimental impact upon climate and human welfare—emerged in the pages of newspapers and non specialized journals. Most authors were convinced that forests did improve climate, regardless of any experiential evidence to the contrary. This view certainly became a dogma in the foresters’ corps.
Chekhov’s environmental philosophy, influenced by this period of environmental debate in Russian history, appears often in Uncle Vanya. Chekhov bought an estate at Melikhovo, about 50 miles from Moscow, in the middle of a large area of forest in 1892. Soon after moving there, he enthused about the spiritual and practical advantages of living in the woods: “in a forest you sense the presence of a deity, not to speak of the fact that it is more advantageous--there is no stealthy felling of trees and the care of the woods is easier”. It was probably while Chekhov was living at Melikhovo that he re-wrote a former unsuccessful play, The Wood Demon as Uncle Vanya. In Uncle Vanya, Chekhov retained, with hardly any alteration, the passages from The Wood Demon about the destruction of the forests. Chekhov’s environmental concerns and philosophy of stewardship, particularly the concept of deforestation, are reflected primarily through Dr. Astrov. The character wonders what Russia will leave behind for future generations and hopes that his forest conservation plans are the answer for preserving the Russia he knows. He passionately champions the beauty of nature and truly believes that man’s capacity to create is stronger than to destroy. Astrov has numerous moments of reflection on the environmental concerns throughout the piece, including the following speech: “I can tolerate people chopping down a forest out of necessity, but why destroy all of them? The Russian forest is being decimated. Millions of trees perish, animals and birds have to look for a new place to live, rivers recede, this wonderful, sacred landscape is disappearing, and all on account of people like you who don't want to bend down and pick up their own fuel off the ground. Don't you agree? You have to be a barbarian to take that kind of beauty and burn it up in your stove. Man has been blessed with reason and creativity, but instead of progressing, he only knows how to ruin. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife is being displaced, the climate is changing, and every day the land becomes less fertile and more disgraceful.”.
Today, it seems Uncle Vanya has had little impact on Russian timber. The timber business in Russia is one of their largest economic industries and earns around 20 billion dollars a year. Russia has more than 1/5 of the world’s forests, making it the largest forest country in the world. The forests therefore are important environmentally and economically to not only Russia but on a global scale. Russia has around 12 million km2 of forested regions (larger than the Amazon Rainforest). The deforestation rate annually is 20,000 km2. While Russia has regulations regarding the timber industry, these restrictions are lax compared to other regions in the world including the United States, Canada, Europe and parts of South Asia. While the Russian Government has put laws into effect in the hopes of preservation, the export of illegal timber remains a huge issue. Illegal logging is a common occurrence throughout Russia in an effort to meet the demands of global wood importers. Because the demand for timber is not likely to stop, neither will deforestation. Until consumers are willing to stop exploiting natural resources and demand better regulations on timber, the deforestation will likely continue, and at a more rapid rate. Which means Uncle Vanya is just as relevant today, if not more so than when it premiered in 1899. It still poses the same question Chekhov had Dr. Astrov wonder: what is stronger, man’s desire to create or destroy?
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