Almost Winning: Speculation, Temporality, and Casino Capitalism in Chekhov

Abstract

m o d e r n i t y 80 countrymen's obsession with forecasting the future. The resultant series of sixteen short articles, running from November 24 to December 10, 1884, detail the bank's various machinations, explain how it was possible for Rykov and his associates to continue their con for as long as they did, and comment on the theatricality of both the trial and financial speculation. These articles thus reveal Chekhov's burgeoning theatrical imagination and his profound interest in the theatricality of Imperial Russia's nascent capitalism. Various details from Skopin's scandal and Rykov's trial echo throughout Chekhov's oeuvre, revealing his interest in exploring the theater of capital and the pitfalls of prediction. In particular, the radical contingency and the potential-laden temporality of gambling provide a model for Chekhov's attention to the accidental detail and his interest in the dramatic potential of what we might call the near hit-an event that comes as close to happening as possible but fails to materialize in the last moment. This is not to argue that Chekhov's modernism merely illustrates the economic world in which he lived. Rather, Chekhov's form and style are, to borrow Terry Eagleton's turn of phrase, "products of a particular history." 2 Modernism, as John Xiros puts it, "is, and always has been, the culture of capitalism." 3 A lot of recent scholarship has shed light on the interpenetration of modernism and financial speculation, focusing on the fictitious nature of money, the volatility of value, and modernists' experiments with the manipulation of aesthetic and commercial values. 4 And yet, while critics have explored Chekhov's representation of the randomness of daily life, his attention to the seemingly insignificant detail, and his predilection for events that are expected but "cannot come to pass," there has been little attention paid to how these aleatory elements reflect the instability, unpredictability, and moral relativism of the modern economy. 5 As Laurence Senelick notes, "Chekhov's interest in money is so prominent in his life and works that it is surprising that no one has studied it in more detail." 6 Rejected as a bourgeois writer in the wake of the Russian Revolution, Chekhov was later rehabilitated by Soviet Marxists as a denigrator of capitalism. Since this Marxist-Leninist take on Chekhov's oeuvre was reinforced in the Eastern Bloc for so long, it is not surprising that contemporary critics have generally been reluctant to analyze money matters in Chekhov. 7 In the West, scholars have also been largely silent, taking their cue from Virginia Woolf, who contrasted Chekhov's supposed Slavic "soul" to the materialism of "Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy." 8 In fact, Chekhov's aesthetic imagination was shaped by Russia's burgeoning capitalist economy with its focus on prediction, generating a literary and dramatic style that is characterized by random details and potential-laden events that either fail to materialize or take an unexpected turn. In his short stori...