The Three Sisters

Is there any writer as aware of the weight of age and time and history as Chekhov? There are many playwrights who can look back on history and write a play putting it in context ... but Chekhov is writing plays in his time and of his time which place his present moment firmly in historical context. It's achingly sad, there's a sepia-tone to all these small, tragic characters, and I always think of the doomed Romanovs. Here's a passage from The Three Sisters, in the Eugene K. Bristow translation that I swear by:

TUZENBAKH. This longing for work, oh, dear God in Heaven, how clear that is to me! I've never worked, not once in my life. I was born in Petersburg, a city cold and idle, in a family that understood neither work nor worry. On coming home form military school, I remember there was even a valet to pull off my boots. At the time I was a bit silly - I'd say and do the first thing that came to mind - and my mother would always look adoringly at me. And she was always surprised when other people looked at me in a different way. I was protected against work. Only I doubt that the protection was completely successful. I really do! The time has come, something huge and immense is coming nearer and nearer to all of us - a strong, exhilarating storm is beginning to gather, it's on its way, it's almost here, a storm that will soon cleanse our whole society - sweep away all the laziness, the indifference, the prejudice against work, the rotten boredom. I shall work, and in another twenty-five or thirty years every person will be working. Everyone.

This is written in 1900, the Bolsheviks are still just a twinkle in Lenin's eye. The revolution is looming and the Romanovs will fall in 18 years. What must Chekhov have been like? How aware of the rumblings in the crust of the earth?