Did Merezhkovskii under-appreciate the art of Anton Chekhov? Was he, indeed, dismissive of it? The few articles and monographs that treat the personal and literary interrelations of these two contemporaries do convey this impression – whether openly or implicitly. Rosenthal in her major book writes: ‘Merezhkovsky did not consider Chekhov great’. Bedford mentions Chekhov's name only three times in 200 pages.2 Chudakov's substantial l996 article ‘Merezhkovskii and Chekhov’ strongly suggests a certain unfairness in this critic's evaluation of Chekhov the man and artist.

Chudakov's article is probably the best contribution to the subject. It attempts to explain their differences from the fact that they represent two opposed types of fin-de-siècle Russian intellectual (as his subtitle ‘Two Types of Artistic-Philosophical Consciousness’ indicates). According to Chudakov, Chekhov represents an ‘older’ (he was only six years Merezhkovskii's senior) intelligentsia type – atheistic or agnostic, non-religious, not guided by ideology, devoted to progress, humanism, realistic, scientific, tolerant and nondoctrinaire. Merezhkovskii as his almost diametric opposite represents the new Decadent Symbolist type – committed to a Christian religious ideology, a believer, an idealist, doctrinaire and intolerant: ‘Merezhkovskii was organically incapable of tolerance’. Chudakov attacks Merezhkovskii, as many have done before him, for his cold, rational schematism, his way of viewing reality in terms of binary polarities – paganism versus Christianity, flesh versus spirit, Russia versus Europe, etc.