Two centuries of the Russian classics

2686-7494

IWL RAS

https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2026-8-1-226-257

Research Article

Articles

The Phenomenon of Terrorism in “The Story of an Unknown Man” and the Echo of Chekhovian Poetics in the Prose of L. N. Andreev and T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik

Korenkova

Tatiana V.

red@rusklassika.ru

25 03 2026

8 1 226 257

A. P. Chekhov L. Andreev T. Shchepkina-Kupernik “The Story of an Unknown Man ” “The Dark ” “Her First Ball ” psychology of terrorism

2026

The unprecedented historical and cultural phenomenon of mass political radical terror emerged in the last third of the 19th century and manifested itself under the slogan “Propaganda of the deed” in all the leading countries of the world. The paradoxical nature of the terrorism ideologies and the logic of suicide terrorists’ antinomic behavior have aroused great interest among philosophers, physicians, psychologists, lawyers, criminologists, publicists, and writers. In the 1880s, attention to this topic in Russia was heightened by reports of an “epidemic insanity” among prisoners and prison guards in the Schlüsselburg Fortress, as well as a series of scandal revelations about Narodovoltsy (“Nihilists”) who had become secret police agents and vice versa — scandals involving revolutionary underground fighters that were infiltrated into the Secret Police Department. The article examines the features of innovative poetics of Chekhov’s “The Story of an Unknown Man,” where the physician writer offered his explanation of anomalies and paradoxes of terrorist behavior in terrorists’ psychology. The article notes the echo of Chekhov’s artistic techniques in the novella “The Dark” by L. N. Andreev and “Her First Ball” by T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik. The comparison of these three works demonstrated the “creative moving away” and veiled polemic of the Silver Age writers towards Chekhov’s “diagnostic realism.” The comparative analysis demonstrated the “creative moving away” and veiled polemic of the Silver Age writers’ works towards the “diagnostic realism” of Chekhov’s story.

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