A Problem By Anton Chekhov

Working With A Problem By Anton Chekhov

A Problem is a short story by Anton Chekhov written in 1886. It is one of those lesser-known pieces that people usually stumble onto when they are digging through his complete works. The story follows a man named Smoldyrev who is confronted with a moral dilemma about whether to help a fellow clerk or protect his own position. The narrative is brief, roughly five thousand words, and it is typically read in under twenty minutes. I ran into a situation a few years ago where I needed to cross-reference the original Russian text with several English translations for a literature course. The issue was that different editions rendered the title and certain passages differently. One version called it "A Problem," another used "Dilemma," and yet another omitted the title entirely and just referenced it by first line. I ended up downloading the Public Domain Russian text from Project Gutenberg, comparing it against the Constance Garnett translation, and then checking the Garnett version against a later revision by Pevear and Volokhonsky. The workaround was to keep all three open in separate browser tabs and build a simple side-by-side comparison table in a spreadsheet. It took about forty minutes instead of the hour I had originally planned, but it saved me from making an error in my paper. The story itself is often discussed in academic circles because it sits at that intersection between Chekhov's early comic sketches and his later psychological realism. It was published in a magazine called Fragments, which means the original format was episodic rather than a standalone piece. This matters if you are citing it, because you will see different pagination depending on whether you reference the original periodical or a collected edition.

One thing that trips people up is the unreliable narrator technique Chekhov uses here. He never confirms whether Smoldyrev is actually being moral or simply rationalizing selfish behavior. Beginners tend to read it as a straightforward lesson about corruption. The more accurate reading, and the one most scholars agree on, is that the ambiguity is the point. Chekhov is showing how a person constructs an internal justification for doing nothing. There is no dramatic confrontation, no villain, no climax. Just a quiet erosion of principle played out over a conversation in a stairwell. If you want to read the story, Project Gutenberg has the English translation available for free. You can find it by searching their catalog for "A Problem" along with Chekhov's name. Several university databases also carry it, though some require a subscription. The original Russian text is freely available on same platform. A structural note that most introductory guides skip over: the dialogue occupies roughly sixty percent of the narrative space. That was unusual for Chekhov at this stage of his career. He was still working within the constraints of magazine publication, which favored fast-moving dialogue over description. By the time he wrote The Lady with the Dog a decade later, he had shifted significantly toward internal monologue and atmospheric detail. A Problem sits right on the border between those two modes, which is why it gets categorized differently depending on which anthology you pull it from.

The main limitation you should be aware of is that the story is deeply contextual. If you do not have some background on 1880s Russian civil service culture, certain details will land flat. The bureaucratic hierarchy, the patronage system, the specific social pressure around helping or refusing to help a colleague—these are not explained in the text. You have to bring that knowledge with you or do a small amount of supplementary reading. I recommend at least skimming a summary of Chekhov's early satirical period before reading it, or the moral weight of the ending will feel unearned to you. For citation purposes, the standard reference is: Anton Chekhov, "A Problem" (1886), translated by Constance Garnett. The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation appears in Later Tales and is worth reading if you want a more modern rendering. Both are legally available through public domain sources.