Story 6 of 12 · Russia · 1886
Vanka
Who it suits: Readers of ten and over, and adults. The story is sad, and its ending is worth talking about.
On Christmas Eve, a nine-year-old boy sent away to work in Moscow writes a letter to his grandfather, the only family he has, asking to be taken home. Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia, the grandson of a man born into serfdom who bought his family’s freedom. Chekhov trained as a doctor in Moscow and paid for his studies, and supported his family, by writing short comic stories for magazines.
“Vanka” was first published on 25 December 1886, in the Christmas Day issue of a Saint Petersburg newspaper, the Peterburgskaya Gazeta. Its readers knew the situation well. Boys from villages were commonly apprenticed to tradesmen in the cities, where they worked long hours for food and a place to sleep while they learned a trade.
The story is short, and almost all of it is Vanka’s letter and his memories of home: his grandfather, the night watchman with two dogs, the frosty village, and the day they cut a Christmas tree together. Constance Garnett translated it into English in 1922.
In the book, Vanka is printed in full with five notes beside the words they explain, its map, its city view and its illustration.
