Wealth required owning the peasants to work tracts, мужики. Of course, land was always a plague in Russia: anybody might own huge property, and not be rich. (Even Brazilians who strip rainforest don't pretend they're land protectionists.) Amazing how telling, how contemporary, land issues here and in the Cherry Orchard are. Astrov might appall modern pretend conservationists paid to manage forests but who sell off the oak to create better hunting. Astrov's resounding support for the forest resounded with me, whose family has lived in New England since 1661, and who grew up summers in Maine on 40 acres of field and forest, the nearest inhabited farm a mile away. Back then it was rare to see Checkov anything but dreary, quasi-tragic, similar to Ibsen. (The title, Дядя Ваня can be understood after two weeks of Russian.) The Guthrie had the tone just right-a comedy with a sad ending? Rather like so many Shakespeare tragedies with (somewhat) happy endings- RIII,even MacBeth. First saw this at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, nearly five decades ago (1969)-before I had read it in translation or (parts) in Russian.
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