Vanka

About Vanka

Chekhov alternates the child's letter with remembered scenes, allowing hope to organize an experience adults have made harsh. Vanka's own words reveal needs he cannot fully explain or resolve. The story's restraint makes small material details, including the act of writing itself, bear an emotional weight beyond his understanding.

Reading focus

Hear a child's urgent Christmas letter, where remembered village comforts and present mistreatment reveal the fragility of his hope for rescue.

This reading edition contains 1,618 words in 1 original section. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.

Author: Anton Chekhov. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.

Opening excerpt

VANKA ZHUKOV, a boy of nine, who had been for three months apprenticed to Alyahin the shoemaker, was sitting up on Christmas Eve. Waiting till his master and mistress and their workmen had gone to the midnight service, he took out of his master’s cupboard a bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty nib, and, spreading out a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, began writing. Before forming the first letter he several times looked round fearfully at the door and the windows, stole a glance at the dark ikon, on both sides of which stretched shelves full of lasts, and heaved a broken sigh. The paper lay on the bench while he knelt before it.

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