The article undertakes to reveal the aesthetic and philosophical succession from Turgenev to Chekhov, despite the long-standing tendency to contrast the latter with the tradition of his predecessors.

The article suggests a polemic rethinking of the literary, philosophical and culturological concepts that present the thinker and artist Turgenev as a keen advocate of classical philosophy. In particular, the paper examines the worldviews and personality of Evgeny Bazarov, one of Turgenev’s principal characters, also in comparison with Chekhov’s heroes like the professor from A Dreary Story [Skuchnaya istoriya] and Doctor Astrov. This leads to a considerable change in interpretation of Bazarov’s nihilism to discover not only an ideology, but rather a methodology of non-dogmatic thinking and a critical approach to reality. In this sense, Bazarov’s (and, essentially, Turgenev’s) nihilism is considered as the philosophical basis of what later became Chekhov’s ‘creation ex nihilo’ (L. Shestov).

The analysis presented in this paper brings to light Chekhov’s and Turgenev’s principal philosophical affinity and semblance of their cultural and aesthetic perspectives.