Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

So I just wanted to let you know that what you're listening here today is

a rebroadcast of a previously posted

episode of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast.

No new episode today, but enjoy this rebroadcast

because listening to a rebroadcast of the Leadership

Lessons from the Great Books podcast is still better

than reading and trying to understand yet another business

book. Hello, my name is Jesan

Sorrells and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

episode number 88

with our very short story today. A very brief

character study of peasants and their lives,

both on the Russian steppes and in Russian

cities, is an examination of the reality

of their lives, juxtaposed against the Christian

cultural narrative, particularly the Russian Orthodox Christian

cultural narrative of Christmas, a story

written by the Russian playwright and short story writer

who trained and practiced medicine among the very peasants

about whom he wrote so brilliantly. We are going to be

covering today Anton Chekhov's very short story

At Christmas Time. Leaders

have a vision of the future at the end of the year,

rather than continuing to flagellate in navel gazing

abstraction about sins and

transgressions.

Vasilisa had not seen her for years. Her daughter Yefimaya.

And gone after her wedding to Petersburg, had sent them two letters, and since then

seemed to vanish out of their lives. There had been no sight or nor

sound of her, and whether the old woman were milking her cow at dawn, or

heating her stove, or dozing at night, she was always thinking of one and the

same thing. What was happening to Yefimaya, whether she were

alive out yonder? She ought to have sent a letter, but the

old father could not write, and there was no one to

write. But now Christmas had come and

Vasilissa could not bear it any longer, and went to the tavern to

Yegor, the brother of the innkeeper's wife, who had sat in the tavern doing

nothing ever since he came back from the army. People said that he could write

letters very well if he were properly paid. Vasilissa

talked to the cook at the tavern, then to the mistress of the house, then

to Yegor himself. They agreed upon 15

kopecks, and now it happened on the second day of

the holidays in the tavern kitchen. Yegor was sitting at the table, holding a pen

in his hand. Vasilissa was standing before him,

pondering with an expression of anxiety and woe on her face.

Piotr, her husband, a very thin old man with a brownish bald

patch, had come with her. He stood looking straight before him like a blind man.

On the stove a piece of pork was being braised in a saucepan. It was

spurting and hissing, and it seemed to be actually saying.

It was stifling. What am I to write?

Yegor asked again. What? Asked Vasilissa, looking at him

angrily and suspiciously. Don't worry me. You are not writing for nothing. No fear,

you'll be paid for it. Come, write. To our dear son in

law, Andre Harasinevich, and to our beloved, only

beloved daughter, Yefimaya Petrovna, with our love we send

a low bow and our parental blessing abiding forever

written fire away. And we wish them a happy

Christmas. We are alive and well. And I wish you the same, please the Lord,

the Heavenly King. Vasilissa pondered and exchanged

glances with the old man. And I wish you the same, please

the Lord, heavenly King, she repeated, beginning to cry.

She could say nothing more. And yet before, when she lay awake thinking at night,

it had seemed to her that she could not get all she had to say

into a dozen letters. Since the time when her daughter had gone away with her

husband, much water had flowed into the sea. The old people had lived feeling

bereaved and sighed heavily at night as though they had buried their daughter.

And how many events had occurred in the village since then, how many marriages and

deaths, how long the winters had been, how long the nights?

It's hot, said Jaegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. It must be

70 degrees. What more? He asked.

The old people were silent.

So our book here, our short story, very short story, it's

only like five pages that we're going to be covering here at the

end of our Christmas season

of shows. Or maybe not the end. It's the beginning actually, of the

Christmas season of shows, because on this podcast we're having come up

next, the Christmas Carol, we're going to be covering that

rebroadcast from last year and we'll have a couple of Christmas

messages in our shorts episodes, as well as

a reading on Christmas Day from the Book of Luke,

which I think is very important for reminding us all what

the actual reason for the season is.

And it ain't Santa anyhow,

when we read At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov. And by the way,

we covered Anton Chekhov and we covered three of his

short stories in episode number 14 in

season one, published back on April

13, 2022, so you can go back and listen to that.

And we talked a lot in that episode about the

nature of Chekhov's writing and the nature of how

Chekhov fits as a writer into the

pantheon of Russian authors, including Dostoevsky,

Leo Tolstoy and others. Anton Chekov,

as was mentioned in that episode, and I mentioned it briefly here in the opener,

wrote about the people that he actually helped. He was a medical

doctor, and he spent a lot of time outside

of the major city centers in Russia. And just

like in any other country, there are things that are happening in the country

and there are things that are happening in the cities. And

in Russia, particularly during the time of serfdom,

the illiterate peasant was an individual that Chekhov would

have often run across.

We take for granted that people will be literate in our society

and culture. We take for granted that people will be able to read. Now, there

is illiteracy even in our own culture.

And of course, more troubling for us is a lack of comprehension,

a lack of understanding of what you're reading. Yeah, you can read the

words on the page, but you don't actually know what they mean.

That's far more of a problem in the year of our Lord

2023 than the actual act of, or the actual

fact of illiteracy, which was a huge problem in Russia

because serfs and peasants alike, and many

peasants who were maybe a little bit above

serfs, could not read well. And

what that meant was that communication.

And meaning and existence were all floated together.

Right. So if you couldn't communicate with an individual, a person

dropped off the face of the planet. As the

mother Vasilisa points out in that clip there,

the mother, she had no concept that her daughter was

still alive. Communication or even

a lack of communication was seen

as a way of maintaining a lifeline. And when that communication was

cut off, as we will see later on in the story, when that communication

was interrupted, existence itself

ended. Now, there's another piece to pick up

here in this first part of At Christmas Time

that I think is hugely important, particularly for our end of

the year considerations with us, you know, reading

this story at Christmas time during the Christmas holiday season.

The patriarch of this story. And this is another

sort of juxtaposition that Chekhov played

with. The patriarch in this situation

initially seems to be the husband, and the husband

is blind. The husband can't

see, and the matriarch is illiterate.

There's a comment here or commentary here that's being

made about the nature of reality

and how illiteracy and blindness meet

at the end of the year to write

a letter that will hopefully bring

reconciliation.

Back to the book, back to At Christmas Time

by Anton Chekhov. So we're going to move ahead in the story a little bit,

go to our next page and read a

couple of pieces here.

Here it is, written down to the old woman taking the letter out of her

pocket. We got it from Yefimaya. Goodness knows when. Maybe

they are no longer in this world.

Jaegor thought a little and began writing rapidly. At the present time,

he wrote, since your destiny, through your own doing, allotted you to the military career,

we counsel you to look to the code of disciplinary offenses and fundamental laws of

the War Office, and you will see in that law the civilization of the officials

of the War Office. He wrote and kept reading aloud what was

written, while Vasilisa considered what she ought to write.

How great had been their want the year before, how their corn had not lasted

even till Christmas, how they had to sell their cow.

She ought to ask for money, ought to write that the old father was often

ailing and would soon no doubt give up his soul to God.

But how to express this in words? What must be said first and

what afterwards? Take note, Jaegor went on

writing in volume five of the army regulations. Soldier is a common noun and a

proper one. A soldier of the first rank is called a general, and of the

last a private. The old man stirred his lips and

said softly, it would be all right to have a look at the grandchildren.

What grandchildren? Asked the old woman, and she looked

angrily at him. Perhaps there are none. Well, but perhaps there

are. Who knows? And thereby you can judge. Jaeger

hurried on. What is the enemy without and what is the enemy within? The foremost

of our enemy with our of our enemies within is Bacchus. The

pen squeaked, executing upon the paper flourishes

like fish hooks. Jaegor hastened and read over every line. Several

times he sat on his stool, sprawling his broad feet under the table,

well fed, bursting with health, with a coarse animal face and a

red bull neck. He was vulgarity itself,

coarse, conceited, invincible, proud of having been born and bred in a

pothouse. And Vasilisa quite understood the vulgarity, but could not express

it in words, and could only look angrily and suspiciously

at Jaeger. Her head was beginning to ache and her thoughts

were in confusion from the sound of his voice and his unintelligible words, from the

heat and the stuffiness. And she said nothing and thought nothing, but simply waited for

him to finish scribbling. But the old man looked with full

confidence. He believed in his old woman who brought him there and in

Yegor. And when he had mentioned the hydropathic establishment, it

could be seen that he believed in the establishment and the healing efficacy

of water. Having finished the letter,

Jaeger got up and read the whole of it through from the beginning. The old

man did not understand, but he nodded his head trustfully. That's all

right. It is smooth, he said. God give you health. That's all right.

They laid on the table three five kopeck pieces and went out of the

tavern. The old man looked immovably straight before him, as though

he were blind and perfect trustfulness was written on his

face. But as Vassila came out of the

tavern, she waved angrily at the dog and said angrily,

ugh, the plague.

Sam.

So you've got three male characters

in At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov,

and they all represent three different faces of

the patriarchy, right? And

so we're going to explore. I'm going to talk a little bit about all

three of those faces here. So

we've got Jaeger, right,

who writes a letter that is supposed to

be. Well, it's supposed to be dictating a letter, supposed to be

writing down what other people are saying, and yet

goes off script, right? And he goes off script when

he finds out that Andre, who is the old

couple's, in essence, son-in-law, works at a

hydropathic establishment in Petersburg

and left the army as a. Or left the

service, sorry, as a soldier. Once Jaeger connects on

to that, then he sort of writes his own letter to

Andrew. Now he's a tyrannical male because he's

vulgar, right? Even in Anton Chekhov's description of him, he points

to his vulgarity. He points to his

lack of leadership. His lack of social.

Savoir faire, right? His. His ways. He puts his feet

up and the way he handles himself. But he is the one, of course, who

can only write.

In a town full of illiterates, the vulgar man is king.

Then you've got Andre, who we'll meet later on in a little bit

here. And I'm not going to talk too much about him yet. I'm going to

kind of let him unfold in part two of the story. And of course you

have the blind father who we just talked about, and

that's three different conceptions here where

these patriarchs, these men in a highly patriarchal

society have power, and yet they behave in

manners that are not honoring of that power. And

via doing that or the ways in which they do that

impacts and it controls and it creates

fear. And suspicion and anger

and pride and ignorance in others.

This is a theme that weaves through most of

Anton Chekhov's writing. Most of Anton Chekhov's

short stories follow this sort of path.

When he writes about. Well, when he writes about male

peasants, when he writes about individuals who are not kings

of the country, they're not czars, they don't rule

their own country, but they do rule with a

blind, iron fist, their own households. And of course, that

blindness leads them to be tyrannical, and of course that tyranny

leads to rebellion. And then of course, the rebellion

leads to a tightening of the fist, and so on and so

on and so on. And we in the west, particularly us in

America, who come from a little bit of a different understanding of

how patriarchal power should be meted out and how leadership should be meted

out, usually fail to understand how strong men work in

Russia. But when you read Chekhov's writing and when you read

about how the peasants and the serfs, the history of.

The history of male and female relationships as

navigated through short stories and novels, and as

demonstrated through short stories and novels, when you read about all that,

you begin to get an inkling of an understanding of exactly

the tragic nature of this cycle. And you see some of this

in At Christmas Time. The old woman

has agency, but her agency is incredibly

limited. And it's limited by the blind and

tyrannical patriarchs that are all around.

Back to the book, back to At Christmas Time

by Anton Chekhov. So we're going to. We're going to pick up

with part two a little bit here. We're going to

read just a couple of paragraphs from, from part two, just to

kind of get the flavor. And then we're going to turn the corner and start

to close here. By the way, one of the points I

want to make about Andre, the, the. The

brother. I'm sorry, the brother. The son in law

of, Of Fecila. And,

and. And the blind. The blind father there,

Piotr. So Andre

worked at what was called a hydropathic establishment. And

I had to look this up because I really didn't know anything about this. This

is kind of interesting. Apparently there was an

idea in, in Russia in the late

19th century that water could be a

curative or had curative impact, had curative

effect on a human being, on an individual,

on disease. Right. And on

the. The aspects of disease that were deleterious to a

human being. Well, that,

that led to the creation of hydropathic

establishments. Right. And this is Critically important as a tip,

because. Or not as a tip, but as an indication of sort of where

we're going with this. And by the way, in Christian religion,

water is considered to be

purifying, right? But it is also seen

as a tool or as a symbol of

uniting and unifying. You know,

baptism is hugely important from the time of John the Baptist, baptizing

Jesus in order to begin his public ministry.

And baptism, particularly in Protestantism, but even more

so in Orthodox, Catholic, Christian

rites and sects, baptism is hugely important for

sealing a person, sealing a soul, and

in confirming as an outward sign to the community.

This is how it's taken in Protestant religions, as an outward sign to the

community of sacred salvation, right of Jesus's inner work.

And the baptism is an external. An external

demonstration of that internal work. And so water,

water as a cure for what physically ails, but water also is a

cure for what spiritually ails, is one of the themes here that

Chekhov is trying to get to in At Christmas Time.

Okay, back to the book, back to At Christmas

Time and pick up with part two here. Dr. Bo

Mazelweiser's hydropathic establishment worked on

New Year's Day exactly as on ordinary days. The only difference was that the

porter Andre has Ranovich had on a uniform with new

braiding, his boots had an extra polish, and he greeted every visitor with a Happy

New Year to you. It was the morning Andre

Hasranovich was standing at the door, reading the newspaper. Just at 10 o' clock

there arrived a general, one of the habitual visitors, and directly

after him the postman Andrei Haresinovich helped the general

off of his greatcoat and said, a happy New Year to you, your excellency.

Thank you, my good fellow, the same to you. And at the top of the

stairs, the general asked, nodding towards the door. He asked the same question every day

and always forgot the answer. And what is there in that room?

The massage room, your excellency. When the general's steps had

died away, Andrei Hrasevich looked at the post that had come and found

one addressed to himself. He tore it open, read

several lines. Then, looking at the newspaper, he walked without

haste to his own room, which was downstairs, close

by. At the end of the passage, his wife Yefimya was

sitting on the bed, feeding her baby. Another child, the eldest, was standing

by, laying its curly head on her knee. A third was asleep

on the bed. And, and the communication choke point there is Andre. Remember what I

said about there being tyrannical patriarchs, right? Well, this is a very specific form of

tyranny on Andre's part. It is not the tyranny. And you'll see this later on

one of the other shoe drops here in the moment. But it's not a tyranny

of neglect from a material level. Right? He's got a job, he's working in a

hydropathic establishment. The general comes in, he's working on New Year's Day, which by the

way, in Russian Orthodox Christianity, Christmas comes not on December 25th, Christmas comes on January.

I believe it's January 6th, it's January 6th or January 12th, I believe it's January

6th.

So the old woman got her Hus, got her daughter

married to a man who

totally and completely ignored her

three children in a nursery.

And, and the communication

choke point there is Andre.

Remember what I said about there being tyrannical

patriarchs, Right? Well, this is a very specific form of tyranny on

Andre's part. It is not the tyranny. And you'll see this later

on one of the other shoe drops here in the moment.

But it's not a tyranny of neglect from a

material level. Right? He's got a job, he's working in a

hydropathic establishment. The general comes in, he's working on New Year's Day,

which by the way, in, in Russian

Orthodox Christianity, Christmas comes not on

December 25th, Christmas comes on January. I believe it's

January 6th, it's January 6th or January 12th, I believe it's January 6th.

And so in Orthodox Christianity,

just as in traditional Catholicism, going all

the way back to, oh gosh, I mean, I

mean, Christmas didn't really start being celebrated until after

Constantine in the year. Oh gosh, in the year like

360, 380 something AD

and then it started slowly ramping up, but really didn't kick off

into what we know as modern Christmas until

the latter part of the.

17Th and, and the latter part of the 17th and the

early part of the. The 18th century. And then with the

rise of industrialism and consumer culture, all of which trans. Charles Dickens

bemoaned, by the way. You'll hear that in the Christmas Carol.

You know, then we get into a more modern conception of what

Christmas is and Christmas celebrations and things like Santa and the

tree and all of that came, came way late. But

traditional Christendom, traditional

Orthodox understanding of Christmas, a traditional Orthodox

understanding Christmas puts Christmas after the New Year,

which is interesting for us because, you know, we put Thanksgiving and then

Christmas, then the New Year, in that order. And of course, in

Orthodox Christianity and in many other parts of the world,

you know, the last Thursday in November means nothing. What means a lot

is New Year's Day. And what means a lot is

of course, Christmas Day.

Now, where that falls and why that falls after New Year's is

interesting background information. But what's more interesting on the, when you think about Tom

is he is merely doing his work as he's

supposed to be doing it. He's checking all the boxes.

Many leaders, by the way, do this. And I know this is a leadership podcast

and we are focused on literature here at the end of the year.

But the leadership aspects of this are very important. So as a leader,

if you're just focused on checking the boxes and you're not nourishing the emotional

or psychological life of your followers, you're

probably just barely feeding them. And you

probably have a poverty of imagination now on the

part of the daughter.

The daughter got a husband, right? And the old woman got her daughter

married off. But they both didn't get a reprieve from

tyranny.

Jaegor got his literacy, we talked about that in the

military. And Andre got his hydropathic career

after leaving the army. But they both. Neither of them

got a reprieve from tyranny either. The

tyrannical nature of rulership, the

tyrannical nature of the peasant reality is something that needs to be

reconciled. It's something that needs to be solved, and it's something that needs to

be examined. And Chekhov's critique

of Orthodox Christian society, fundamentally because

he came from a medical background, because he was writing

in the mid to latter part of the

19th century in a Russia that was transitioning

into something else, transitioning into a new thing

in the maelstrom of European understanding

in a post Napoleon world.

Well, Chekhov's critique of Orthodox Christian society

fundamentally is nihilistic in its examination in this

story. But. But

unlike Friedrich Nietzsche, Chekhov holds

on to the slim hope that Jesus

might still have a place in the season.

Back to the story. We're gonna wrap up here. Back to

At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov. We're going to turn the corner

here and wrap up. Andre just gave

her the letter. As she was sitting.

Yehamaya, as she was sitting on the bed.

He could hear Yefimaya with a shaking voice, reading the first lines.

She read them and could read no more. These lines were enough for

her. She burst into tears and hugging her eldest child, kissing

him, she began saying, and it was hard to say whether she was

laughing or crying. It's from Granny, from

grandfather, she said, from the country. The heavenly mother. Saints and

martyrs. The snow lies heaped up under the roofs now. The trees are as white

as white. The boys slide in on little sledges. And dear old bald

grandfather is on the stove. And there is a little yellow dog. My own darlings.

Andrei Rasinovich, hearing this, recalled that his

wife had on three or four occasions given him letters and asked

him to send them to the country. But some important business had always

prevented him. He had not sent them, and the

letters somehow got lost. And little

hares run about in the fields. Yefimaya went on chanting, kissing her boy and

shedding tears. Grandfather is kind and gentle. Granny is good too. Kind

hearted. They are warm hearted in the country, they are God fearing. And there is

a little church in the village. The peasants sing in the choir. Queen of Heaven,

Holy Mother and Defender, take us away from here. Andre

Harosanovich returned to his room to smoke a little, till there

was another ring at the door and Yefimaya ceased speaking, subsided and

wiped her eyes, though her lips were still quivering.

She was very much frightened of him. Oh, how frightened of him. She

trembled and was reduced to terror by the sound of his steps, by the look

in his eyes, and dared not utter a word in his presence.

Andrei Harasanovich lighted a cigarette,

but at that very moment there was a ring from upstairs. He put

out his cigarette and, assuming a very grave face, hastened to his front

door. The general was coming downstairs, fresh and

rosy from his bath. And what is there in that

room? He asked, pointing to a door. Andrey

Harasenovich put his hands down swiftly to the seams of his trousers and

pronounced loudly, char Kadouche. Your

Excellency.

Gotta admit, when I got to the end of that, I had no, no idea

what charcoal douche meant, so I had to go look that up.

So the last lines of At Christmas Time by Anton

Chekov. Really

are focused around and really are.

Sort of indicative of the. And, and,

and, and, and, and, and hearkening back to

this idea of hydro pathy,

right, this idea of a water cure.

Shark o douche. And I have a link to the

definition of what it is when in inside

of Anton Chekhov's short story At Christmas Time

basically is. It's a, it's a, it's a

French. It'S a

French term, right, that

it was a type of high-pressure shower that was

invented by a French neurologist named Jean Martin

Charcot. And it was initially used as a medical device.

It was called a Charcot shower. And it was,

it was, it was, it was used

in spas in the late 19th and in the early 20th

century in order to.

Have order to create a massage, you know, over the patient's body.

And it was so powerful with,

and was operated at such a high pressure that it almost, it could

sometimes cause hematoma on the patient or in the individual

who was doing that and who was using it. So high-pressure

on a shower head, you know, coming out of that. And so basically

what, you know, Andre is saying

at the end of this story is that,

you know. You know, the,

the thing that's behind the door is a restorative bath, right?

But it could also indicate, and there's many different ideas of this

floating around on the Internet. I'm not the first person to say this, but

it could also indicate that Chekhov is looking for that

hope, right? That hope of healing and restoration between

the daughter and the parents, between

what is in the country and what is in the city,

between the sophisticated folks that are now

living in St. Petersburg and the hillbilly hicks

that are out on the steps in

Russia.

When we think about this short story at Christmas time,

and when we think about the restoration

of relationship, leaders engage in healing and

restorative work. Leaders avoid tyranny. And

of course they need to be literate to write and see and comprehend.

But even more so than this, at the end of this

year, at the end of any year, we

would encourage you to think about

what is the cost of introspection? What is the cost

of looking backward? Who are you bringing forward

in order to restore them and restore relationship,

in order to engage in acts of reconciliation?

Forgiveness is not necessarily for the person who has

done you wrong as a leader, or has done your team wrong, or has

done your organization wrong. Forgiveness is

really for you. It's so that you could be restored.

Look, the. The daughter, right?

When she gets the letter, what is one of the first things that

she does? Well, the first thing that she

does is that she starts crying.

Tears. Hydro

pathi charcadouche.

The healing water of baptism, restoration

at the beginning of a new year, and all before Orthodox

Christmas. Chekhov didn't write this story by

accident, and he didn't write it in a vacuum.

As leaders, at the end of this year, think about restoration,

think about reconciliation, and work very hard

to open up those lines of communication so that

existence can be reconfirmed

between you and the people that you love.

And, well. That'S it for

me.

Sam.

Foreign.

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