Only disconnect - the peasants in Chekhov

The editor's note (r g davis) on the Chekhov story The New Villa rightly notes that the story was a rebuke to the Tolstoyans w their belief in the nobility of the peasants their essential goodness and the obligation of the landed aristocracy to forego their privileges and uplift the peasant society or class. In this story the peasants or serfs are pretty nasty people and the wealthy man who built the eponymous villa is doomed to failure in his efforts not even to uplift the serfs but simply to live w them in neighborly harmony. But if the story were solely a rebuke to Tolstoy and his following why would we read it today? In fact in my view it's a sad and very human story that can play out and has played out in many culture and many circimstances - the ganging up on an outsider and making him or her an object of rebuke and torment - bullying in essence - made even more poignant nun this story  because one would think that the wealthy engineer and landowner would be more likely the bully than the victim. Reminds me of Shirley jacson's we have always lived in the castle and of the very violent and peckinpaugh movie straw dogs - w very dissimilar works in some ways but both about communal bullying of the outsider. We want to feel sorry nor the engineer and his frail and pretty wife ndriven from their home their illusions shattered but we also can't help but see them as blind and pathetic - her desperate attempts to appeal to their sympathies her clumsy offers of charity and his irascibility - such an easy victim of group mentality.mand of course the symbolism tho a bit heavy handed fro Chekhov is powerful - he came to the village to oversee construction of a bridge and the villagers perhaps aware of what so-called progress might bring them don't want bridges connecting them anywhere. They would rather be left alone in their ignorance and poverty and simplicity (one of the fine scenes is the village men gathering in the forest to divvy up the land and the common chores). - in that sense Tolstoy was right - the serfs may have a more advanced  set of values tha their "betters."