Chekhov once said that a writer should not provide solutions but describe a situation so truthfully that the reader can no longer evade it. In these stories he deals with a variety of themes- religious fanaticism and sectarinism, megalomania, scientific controversies of the time- as well as provincial life in all its tedium and philistinism. And through his expressive protraits of men and women affclited with inertia, slfishness and spiritual emptiness, he iluminates the social and philosophical questions of his day. Despite the current of pessimism, Chekhov never abandons his belief in the capaciry for human progress through education and knowledge.