"A Malefactor" (russian: Злоумышленник, translit=Zloumyshlennik) is an 1885 short story by

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...

.Shub, E. M. Commentaries to Егерь. The Works by A.P. Chekhov in 12 volumes.

Khudozhestvennaya Literatura Khudozhestvennaya Literatura (russian: Художественная литература) is a publishing house in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The name means "fiction literature" in Russian. It specializes in the publishing of Russian and foreign wor ...

. Moscow, 1960. Vol. 3, p. 508-509

Publication

"A Malefactor" was first published in the 7 August (o.s. 24 July) 1885 (No. 200) issue of ''

Peterburgskaya Gazeta ''Peterburgskaya Gazeta'' ( rus, Петербургская Газета, , pʲɪtʲɪrˈburkskəjə ɡɐˈzʲetə; "St. Petersburg Gazette") was a Russian political and literary newspaper, launched in 1867 by the publisher Ilya Arsenyev (1820–18 ...

'', in its Fleeting Notes section, subtitled "A Little Scene" (Сценка) and signed A. Chekhonte (А. Чехонте). The story was included into the 1886 collection ''Motley Stories'' (Пёстрые рассказы), to be reproduced unchanged in all of its 14 editions, and later into Volume 3 of the original edition of the Collected Works by A.P. Chekhov, published by

Adolf Marks Adolf Fyodorovich Marx (russian: Адо́льф Фёдорович Маркс; 2 February 1838 – ), last name also spelled Marcks and recently Marks, known as A. F. Marx, was an influential 19th-century German publisher in Russia best known fo ...

in 1899–1901.

Background

Vladimir Gilyarovsky Vladimir Alekseyevich Gilyarovsky (russian: link=no, Влади́мир Алексе́евич Гиляро́вский; 26 November 1853 – 1 October 1935), was a Russian writer and newspaper journalist, best known for his reminiscences of life ...

maintained that the prototype for the character of Denis Grigoryev was a peasant named Nikita Pantyukhin, from the village Kraskovo in

Moscow Governorate Moscow Governorate (russian: Московская губерния; pre-reform Russian: ), or the Government of Moscow, was an administrative division (a '' guberniya'') of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire, and the Russian SFSR, which ...

.V. Gilyarovsky. Moscow and Moskovites. 1959, p. 354 / Гиляровский. Москва и москвичи "Anton Pavlovich was trying to put it to him that one was not supposed to unscrew nuts off railroad tracks, which could cause train crash, but Nikita seemed to be unable to understand him... 'Sure I know what's allowed, what's not. Sure, it's not everywhere that I unscrew them: one here, another there,' he was repeating," Gilyarovsky wrote. According to him, Chekhov had written down some words and expressions used by the real life 'malefactor' and then reproduced them in his story.

Lev Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

included "A Malefactor" into his personal list of Chekhov' best stories. In Chekhov's lifetime the story was translated into

Bulgarian Bulgarian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria * Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group * Bulgarian language, a Slavic language * Bulgarian alphabet * A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria * Bul ...

, Hungarian,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...

, Slovak and

Czech language Czech (; Czech ), historically also Bohemian (; ''lingua Bohemica'' in Latin), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Re ...

s.Commentaries to Злоумышленник
The Works by A.P.Chekhov in 30 volumes. Vol. 4]

Synopsis

A local investigating magistrate unsuccessfully tries to explain that it is wrong to take nuts off the railroad track to a peasant, Grigoryev, who simply cannot see why he's to be deprived of his right to use an iron nut as a weight for his fishing line.

References

External links

Злоумышленник
the original Russian text * s:A Malefactor, A Malefactor, the English translation by

Constance Garnett Constance Clara Garnett (; 19 December 1861 – 17 December 1946) was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. She was the first English translator to render numerous volumes of Anton Chekhov's work into English and the ...

Short stories by Anton Chekhov 1885 short stories Works originally published in Russian newspapers {{1880s-story-stub