“Freedom Reflex” in A. P. Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island.

The purpose of the article is to analyze and describe the motivations for convict escapes in A.P. Chekhov’s book Sakhalin Island (1895) in comparison with I.P. Pavlov’s “freedom reflex”, highlighting the scientific foresight in Chekhov’s observations. The material is Chekhov’s text and I.P. Pavlov’s scientific works. The study employs descriptive, cultural-historical, and comparative-analytical methods. The findings demonstrate that Chekhov presents escapes as a multifactorial phenomenon, linking them with both external conditions (cruelty of the penal regime, forced labor) and internal motives (vengeance, longing for freedom, personal tragedies). It has been proven that the works of A.P. Chekhov and I.P. Pavlov, despite their differing methodologies (artistic analysis vs. scientific experiment), complement each other in the study of freedom as a biosocial phenomenon. The research confirms the scientific validity of Chekhov’s insights, revealing universal mechanisms of resistance to bondage and restriction that remain pertinent to interdisciplinary studies and Medical Humanistics.