Rapid industrial development and centuries of wasteful land usage had by the end of the nineteenth significantly altered the Russia landscape. Anton Chekhov and his friend, the landscape painter Isaak Levitan witnessed, recorded, and made some protest about these changes to "Russian nature". Neither actively protested the destruction of nature in their native land. Such protest was not permitted by the tsarist government. Chekhov's stories and plays, which often depicted ravaged landscapes and indirectly proposed conservation, and Levitan's evocations on canvas of Russia's remaining natural beauty, however, helped prepare an intellectual and political atmosphere that encouraged conservation before the Revolution of 1917.