Irrealism in the stories of A.P. Chekhov of the middle 1880s

The article deals with the problem of the creative method and style of A.P. Chekhov in the mid-1880s. The analysis is based on the development of the methodology of P.N. Sakulin, who developed the concept of two methods / styles of creativity: realism and unrealism. A controversy is being conducted with those literary critics who saw in Chekhov only a realist, alien to new aesthetic currents and trends in art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, and opposed him to D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, Vl. Solovyev and decadence and symbolism in general, were affirmed the irreligious nature of his work. It is concluded that Chekhov stepped over the heads of seekers of a new faith and adherents of its subjective interpretations, returning to national historical and cultural foundations. Elements of irrationalism in his prose become carriers of spiritual realism, which in its entirety manifested itself later, in the works of I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova.