House-museum of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Moscow, Russia

The A.P. Chekhov House-Museum is a department of the State Literary Museum (V. I. Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature) dedicated to the life and literary activities of writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, located in Moscow in the house on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya Street, where the playwright lived with his family from 1886 to 1890. The opening of the permanent exhibition took place on July 14, 1954 in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Chekhov. The museum’s collection, which began to take shape in 1912, includes personal items of the Chekhov family and their entourage, photographs, furniture, paintings and graphics, as well as lifetime editions and archival documents.

Biography
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов, 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: “Medicine is my lawful wife”, he once said, “and literature is my mistress.”

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a “theatre of mood” and a “submerged life in the text”.

Chekhov had at first written stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

Drama writing
Chekhov began to write dramatic works in the 70s of the XIX century. Studying at the gymnasium, he composed plays, most of which have not survived to the present. In his second year, he wrote a drama, which is now staged under the name “Platonov.” In 1885, he wrote the sketch “On the High Road”, which was not allowed to be censored. His plays: “Swan Song (Kalkhas)”, “Ivanov”, “Bear”, “Proposal” have been printed and staged since 1887.

In 1886, the writer wrote a monologue scene “On the dangers of tobacco.” The scene was published in Petersburg newspaper and in the collection Variegated Stories.

In 1883–1887, Chekhov wrote dramas, humoresques, and parodies in dramatic form: “A Fool, or Captain Retired” (1883), “Unclean Tragedies and Leper Dramatists” (1884); “The Perfect Exam” (1884); “Cavardac in Rome” (1884); “The language will bring to Kiev” (1884); “Lord Philistines” (1884); “At the bedside of the sick” (1884); “On the Moon” (1885); The Drama (1886); “Before the Eclipse” (1887).

Some dramatic sketches are copyrighted versions of his stories. So the sketch “On the High Road” is a remake of the story “Autumn” (1883), “Swan Song (Kalkhas)” – the story “Kalkhas” (1886). For the theater, the writer created the vaudeville “The Bear ” and “The Offer”.

Some plays created by the playwright in the years 1870-1880, for various reasons, remained unknown to readers. These include plays: “Taras Bulba”, vaudeville “Found a Scythe on a Stone” (1878), vaudeville “No wonder the chicken sang” (1878), vaudeville “Shaved Secretary with a Gun”, a parody of Boleslav Markevich ’s play “Child of Life” “, Vaudeville” Hamlet, Prince of Denmark “(1887).

In the 80s of the XIX century, Chekhov created his first significant dramatic work – the play ” Ivanov “. The play in four acts, The Seagull, was written in 1895-1896, and was published in the journal Russian Thought in 1896. The play in four acts “ Three Sisters ” was written in 1900, “The Cherry Orchard ” in 1903, and “ Uncle Vanya ” in 1896.

Features of dramaturgy
The originality of Chekhov’s plays was noticed by his contemporaries in the first productions. At first it was perceived as Chekhov’s inability to cope with the task of a consistent dramatic movement. Reviewers talked about the lack of “scenic”, about the “extension”, about the “lack of action”, about the “randomness of the dialogue”, about the “scattered composition” and the weakness of the plot. Theater criticism increasingly accused Chekhov of introducing unnecessary details of life into his plays and thereby violating all the laws of stage action. However, for Anton Pavlovich himself, the reproduction of the sphere of life was an indispensable condition – otherwise for him the meaning of the whole plan was lost. Chekhov said:

“They demand that there be a hero, the heroine is scenically spectacular. But in life, not every minute they shoot, hang themselves, declare their love. And not every minute smart things say. They eat more, drink, drag, say nonsense. And now it is necessary that this be seen on stage. It is necessary to create a play where people come, go, dine, talk about the weather, play the screw, but not because the author needs it, but because it happens in real life.”

“Let everything be as complicated on stage and as simple as it is in life. People dine, only dine, and at this time their happiness is composed and their lives are broken. ”

In Chekhov’s drama, contrary to all traditions, events are relegated to the periphery as a short-term particular, and the usual, even, daily repeating, familiar to everyone, is the main mass of the whole content of the play. Almost all of Chekhov’s plays are based on a detailed description of life, through which the readers can hear the characteristics of feelings, moods, characters and relationships of heroes. The selection of household lines is carried out according to the principle of their importance in the overall emotional content of life.

Often Chekhov uses the so-called “random” replicas of characters. At the same time, the dialogue is constantly torn, broken and confused in some completely extraneous and unnecessary little things. However, such dialogues and remarks in Chekhov’s general stage context do not fulfill their purpose by the direct objective meaning of their content, but by the vital state of health that manifests itself in them.

K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko noticed the most significant principle in the dramatic movement of Chekhov’s plays, the so-called “undercurrent”. It was they who first revealed behind the seemingly everyday episodes and details the presence of a continuous internal intimate lyrical flow and made every effort to convey a new interpretation of Chekhov’s drama to the viewer. Thanks to Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, the infecting power of Chekhov’s plays became apparent.

Aliases of Chekhov
Like any humorist writer, Chekhov used dozens of all kinds of pseudonyms. Until now, they have not been fully disclosed, since Chekhov himself in preparing the collected works for A.F. Marxcould not recall the affiliation of all his early stories. The function of the comedian’s pseudonym was not so much to hide genuine authorship as to amuse the reader, want to intrigue him (hence the variability, deliberate confusion – the reader should try to guess the authorship of the story himself). Often, a pseudonym is a necessary element in the composition of a particular story, part of the literary farce and cannot be correctly disclosed outside its context. In rare cases, the background of one or another pseudonym of Chekhov could be known only to a narrow circle of his acquaintances and required additional decryption.

Doctor writer
Chekhov entered the medical faculty of Moscow University in 1879 and graduated in 1884. He was a very conscientious student who attended lectures by professors Babukhin, Zakharyin, Klein, Fokht, Snegirev, Ostroumov, Kozhevnikov, Erisman, Sklifosovsky. Already in 1881, he began the practice of a doctor under Dr. P. A. Arkhangelsky in the Chikinsky Zemsky Clinic of the Zvenigorod County of Moscow Province. According to his own testimony, he “does not repent that he went to the medical faculty.”

After graduating from the university, Chekhov tried to take a pediatrician’s vacancy in one of the children’s clinics, but for an unknown reason this appointment did not happen.

Having received a doctor’s diploma, Chekhov placed the sign “ Doctor A. P. Chekhov ” on the door of his apartment, he continues to treat incoming patients and visit heavy patients at home. “My medicine is walking a little. I am flying and flying. Every day you have to spend more than a ruble on a cabman. I have a lot of acquaintances, and therefore, a lot of patients. Half have to be treated for nothing, while the other half pays me five and three rubles. ” – January 31, 1885 to M.E. Chekhov.

However, Chekhov refused the offer to take a permanent place in the Zvenigorod hospital, replacing at the same time the head of the zemstvo hospital during his vacation, doing all the routine work of the county doctor: forensic autopsy, testimony on ships as a forensic expert, etc. The time is coming when Chekhov begins to hesitate in the final choice of his calling. Medicine becomes both a hindrance to literature and an inexhaustible source for Chekhov’s stories.

At this time, he was still preparing for exams for the degree of doctor of medicine, for which he was collecting materials on the history of medical affairs, but he did not finish what was planned, and already in 1887 he removed the sign of the doctor. The inevitable failures of the attending physician, on the one hand, and the Pushkin Prize of the Academy of Sciences for the collection “At Twilight” determined his final choice. From now on, medical practice is relegated to the background, although Chekhov does not leave private medical practice until his departure to Yalta in 1897.

History of the house-Museum
In 1892, Chekhov bought the small country estate of Melikhovo, about forty miles south of Moscow, where he lived with his family until 1899. “It’s nice to be a lord,” he joked to his friend Ivan Leontyev (who wrote humorous pieces under the pseudonym Shcheglov), but he took his responsibilities as a landlord seriously and soon made himself useful to the local peasants. As well as organising relief for victims of the famine and cholera outbreaks of 1892, he went on to build three schools, a fire station, and a clinic, and to donate his medical services to peasants for miles around, despite frequent recurrences of his tuberculosis.

Mikhail Chekhov, a member of the household at Melikhovo, described the extent of his brother’s medical commitments:

From the first day that Chekhov moved to Melikhovo, the sick began flocking to him from twenty miles around. They came on foot or were brought in carts, and often he was fetched to patients at a distance. Sometimes from early in the morning peasant women and children were standing before his door waiting.

Chekhov’s expenditure on drugs was considerable, but the greatest cost was making journeys of several hours to visit the sick, which reduced his time for writing. However, Chekhov’s work as a doctor enriched his writing by bringing him into intimate contact with all sections of Russian society: for example, he witnessed at first hand the peasants’ unhealthy and cramped living conditions, which he recalled in his short story “Peasants”. Chekhov visited the upper classes as well, recording in his notebook: “Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness, the same toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women.”

In 1894, Chekhov began writing his play The Seagull in a lodge he had built in the orchard at Melikhovo. In the two years since he had moved to the estate, he had refurbished the house, taken up agriculture and horticulture, tended the orchard and the pond, and planted many trees, which, according to Mikhail, he “looked after… as though they were his children. Like Colonel Vershinin in his Three Sisters, as he looked at them he dreamed of what they would be like in three or four hundred years.”

The first night of The Seagull, at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on 17 October 1896, was a fiasco, as the play was booed by the audience, stinging Chekhov into renouncing the theatre. But the play so impressed the theatre director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko that he convinced his colleague Konstantin Stanislavski to direct a new production for the innovative Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. Stanislavski’s attention to psychological realism and ensemble playing coaxed the buried subtleties from the text, and restored Chekhov’s interest in playwriting. The Art Theatre commissioned more plays from Chekhov and the following year staged Uncle Vanya, which Chekhov had completed in 1896. In the last decades of his life he became an atheist.

Chekhov’s life on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya
Anton Chekhov first visited Moscow in 1877 while still a gymnasium student. By that time, his family had already moved to the throne — the writer’s father went bankrupt and had to change his place of residence to save himself from creditors. From 1877 to 1892, the Chekhovs changed about twelve apartments – the writer’s father often did not have enough money to pay for housing and the owners drove the family out onto the street. The first “Moscow address” of Chekhov was the basement of the house on Grachevka Street, where the family lived until 1879. Subsequently, the father rented an apartment in a disadvantaged area between Sobolev Lane and the large Sukharevsky market – the family lived in this building until 1885 . In the same year, the Chekhovs moved to Zamoskvorechye on Bolshaya Yakimanka Street, where they first lived in Lebedeva’s house, and then occupied the first floor of the kitchen estate of Peter the Great Podporin. He organized the celebrations held on the second floor of the same building. In one of his letters, Chekhov described life in a house on Yakimanka as follows:

“Need sleep. Above my head is dancing. The orchestra is playing. Wedding. The first floor living kuhmister who gives space for the weddings and wakes. At lunch, a wake, a wedding at night… death and conception… Someone, knocking like a horse, ran right over my head now… There must be a best man. The orchestra thunders… ”

In 1886, the family moved to house number 6 on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya Street. According to the writer himself, this was one of the most successful apartments for all the time of his stay in Moscow. The owner of the house was Dr. Yakov Korneev, who rented an apartment in the inner wing for 650 rubles a year . Together with the writer, the mother Evgenia, sister Maria and younger brother Michael lived in this annex. The father of the writer Pavel lived in another apartment with his son Ivan, but visited his family every day. Relatives also visited Chekhovs: brother Nikolai, Aunt Fedosya and her son Alexey. Pets lived in the courtyard: the cat Fedor and the dog Corbo.

“A dog without a back, which our Korneev calls hell, lives. The cat Fedor Timofeyitch occasionally comes home to devour, yet the rest of the time he walks along the roofs and looks dreamily at the sky. Obviously, he came to the conclusion that life is empty.
From the letters of Anton Chekhov to M. Kiseleva ”

During this period, Chekhov fell ill with tuberculosis and the disease began to progress. As the younger brother of the writer Mikhail Chekhov recalled:

“Brother Anton was especially coughing when we lived on Kudrinskaya-Sadovaya… It was my responsibility to light a lamp in Anton’s bedroom for the night, because he often woke up and did not like the dark. We were separated from each other by a thin partition, and we talked for a long time through it on different topics when we woke up in the middle of the night and did not sleep. It was then that I heard enough of his cough. ”

The playwright’s literary career began in the house on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya Street: at that time he wrote many short stories and short stories, such as: “A Boring Story ”, “ Steppe ”, “Lights” and others, plays “ Ivanov ”, “Leshiy”, “ The Bear ”,“ The Proposal ”,“ The Wedding ”,“ The involuntarily tragic ”,“ Tatyana Repina ” .

Here Chekhov continued his medical practice, and led the reception almost daily: “… I take it daily from 12 to 3 hours, for writers my doors are open wide open day and night”.

On April 21, 1890, the writer left Moscow and went on a trip to Sakhalin and the East. On May 1, the family who rented a cheaper apartment in Dukmasov’s house on Malaya Dmitrovka also left the house on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya. Returning to Moscow, the playwright settled already in a new place: “My Moscow address is not Korneevsky, but already new: Malaya Dmitrovka, v. Firgang”.

Building
The mansion was built in 1874 by order of Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Rostovtsev, who hired architect Vasily Afanasyev to work on the project. In 1875, the estate was acquired by Dr. Yakov Korneev, who settled in the central building and rented out the side buildings for private hire .

Two residential outbuildings adjoin the mansion: the left one was rebuilt by Afanasyev in 1873 from the premises of the neighboring estate of William Schubert, and the right one, completely identical to the first, was built in 1891. In the courtyard of the house there were also wooden outbuildings: a barn, storage rooms and a summer kitchen. Until the 1890s, the building was decorated with a decorative cornice, a low balustrade, embossed platbands, as well as two bay windows – later balustrades and platbands were lost. There was a front garden in front of the house: it was framed by a wooden fence, behind which bushes and trees grew. Already in the 20th centurypart of the building on the ground floor was divided by rustics, and the facade windows were significantly modified.

The outbuilding in which Chekhov settled in 1886 was a two-story stone house built in a tent style and decorated with bay windows . The unusual layout of the house with risalits, as well as the red color of the walls, allowed Chekhov to call the mansion a “chest of drawers”:

“I live in Kudrin, against the 4th gymnasium, in the house of Korneev, which looks like a chest of drawers. The color of the house is liberal, i.e. red. ”

Guests at Chekhov’s house
Being a hospitable person, Chekhov always gathered around him a large number of friends who loved to visit the writer in his house on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya. “Come on Sunday evening to the“ chest of drawers ”- have fun” – this is how the playwright invited me to go to his house. The writers and actors Vladimir Korolenko, Aleksey Plescheev, Alexander Lensky, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Ivan Leontiev-Scheglov, Alexander Lazarev-Gruzinsky, Dmitry Grigorovich, as well as the architect Fedor Shekhtel visited his apartment. Gymnasium teachers also visited the elder sister Maria. With one of them, Lydia MizinovaA curious case was connected:

“When Lika first came for some reason to me, such a funny episode occurred. We lived then in the house of Korneev on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya. Entering with Lika, I left her in the hallway, and I myself went upstairs to my room upstairs. At this time, the younger brother Misha began to descend the stairs to the office of Anton Pavlovich, located on the ground floor, and saw Lika. Lidia Stakhievna has always been very shy. She pressed herself against the hanger and half-closed her face with the collar of her fur coat. But Mikhail Pavlovich managed to make out her. Entering his brother’s office, he said to him:

– Listen, Anton, Mary came so pretty! It is in the hallway.

– Um… yes? – answered Anton Pavlovich, then got up and went upstairs through the hallway.

Mikhail Pavlovich rose again behind him. After spending a minute at the top, Anton Pavlovich began to come back. Misha soon came down too, and so they repeated this walk several times, trying to examine Lika. Subsequently, Lika told me that for the first time she had the impression that there were a lot of men in our family who all went up and down!
From the memoirs of Maria Chekhova

Chekhov’s elder brother Nikolai was an artist. In 1879, it was he who introduced the writer to the artist Isaac Levitan, who became one of Chekhov’s closest friends. As a sign of friendship, Levitan presented the playwright with a gift of the painting “Istra River” (1885) and “Oak and Birch” (1884). In 1893, a family friend Ilya Repin decided to introduce Leo Tolstoy to Chekhov, having arrived at the house on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya. However, Repin did not know that the Chekhov family had not lived there for three years and the acquaintance of the two writers did not take place .

Museum opening
The first museum in memory of Anton Chekhov was opened in 1912 at the initiative of the writer’s relatives in the Pashkov house. The library management of the Rumyantsev Museum allocated a room for a literary exhibition, called the “Chekhov’s Room”. In 1921, at the initiative of E.E. Leitnekker, the Moscow State Museum named after A.P. Chekhov was organized. In 1934, the Chekhov collection became part of the funds of the State Literary Museum. The museum opened in 1954 in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the writer . The ceremony was attended by Soviet figures of science and culture, as well as relatives of the writer: the widow Olga Knipper-Chekhovaand nephew Sergei Chekhov.

Exhibition
The museum collection is based on documents and materials from the personal archive of the writer and his family. The exhibition is built according to the memorial principle: in most rooms, the historic interiors were restored according to the drawings of Mikhail and Maria Chekhov, and the remaining rooms contain a literary exposition.

Hallway
Opposite the main entrance there is a small entrance hall, from where a staircase leads to the second floor. On the left is a wooden hanger, and at the window there is a deep window sill, which was used to store things. The wooden staircase was decorated as in most manor houses of the 19th century: the red carpet fixed by rods covered the steps, while the railings were covered with red velvet nailed with copper nails .

Study and bedroom of Anton Chekhov
From the hallway you can get into the writer’s private rooms, located on the ground floor and isolated from the rest of the house. Chekhov’s office is a large room with two windows facing the courtyard. The walls of the room are covered with dark green wallpaper. The yard of the house was densely planted with trees, so that little sunlight penetrated through the foliage into the room. The tiled stove used for heating during the winter was in the left corner, next to it was the writer’s desk. Chekhov intentionally placed the workplace in the back of the room: in front of the low windows the feet of people constantly flashed, which distracted the playwright from work. At the same time, the writer liked to work in a noisy environment – the presence of people helped him concentrate:

“Sit down. I will finish soon. We will understand, he said. In the study, open shelves of books stretched all the way to the ceiling; take one of the books and go headlong into reading, and Chekhov at the desk goes headlong into a letter.
Alexander Lazarev-Georgian ”

In the office there are dramatist’s personal belongings: candlesticks in the form of dragons, fishing accessories, and an inkwell with a horse figure, presented to the writer by grateful patients. Above the table are portraits of actors Konstantin Varlamov, Vladimir Davydov and Pavel Svobodin, who played the main roles in the productions of Chekhov’s plays. In the middle of the study there is a table with a plush tablecloth and a kerosene lamp, and the walls are decorated with photographs of the writer’s close friends and several landscape paintings. Chekhov received patients every day in this office: having received the title of county doctor in 1884 from one of the leading surgeons of the 19th century Nikolai Sklifosovsky, the writer practiced medicine until the last days of his life.

“He [Chekhov] is still sitting, writing, writing, writing. There is no day when he does not write… Sometimes, if there is no [medical] practice, he does not point out the whole day at the nose. Awful architect.
Alexander Lazarev-Gruzinsky ”

Chekhov’s bedroom next door has only one window facing Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya Street. However, unlike the study, the bedroom was quite bright. There is an iron bed against the wall with a woolen blanket and two large pillows, one of which wears a pillowcase embroidered by the playwright’s mother. Above the bed hangs a people’s flag, brought by the writer from a trip to Ukraine, and by the window there is a second desk, at which Chekhov worked when it became too dark in the office. On its surface are candlesticks, a lamp and a stack of books. On the walls of the bedroom are paintings of his brother Nicholas, in particular children’s portraits of the daughter of acquaintances Ani Mayevskaya and a peasant boy, made in 1880. Of the writer’s personal belongings, a university badge is presented here, an oboe – a musette, a briefcase, a vest, an upper shirt, a cap, and also a ribbon from a wreath from the last lifetime performance of the Chekhov play.

Room of Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov
Next to the writer’s private rooms was the bedroom of Mikhail Chekhov. At the time of his stay in this apartment, Mikhail was a student at the law faculty of Moscow University. The room features a bed, an authentic desk, personal belongings of M.P. Chekhov, as well as his watercolors.

Living room
On the stairs leading to the second floor, museum visitors enter the living room, located to the left of the site. Here the interiors of the Chekhov era have been completely restored: the walls are glued with light wallpaper, and the windows are decorated with lilac lambrequins. A round clock hangs between them, and on the windowsills are azaleas, ficuses and cacti. Near the right wall there is a sofa and an oval table with a velvet tablecloth, on which there is a porcelain lamp, an album with family photographs and an ashtray. On the left is a piano, over which a landscape painting hangs. Geometric rugs adorn the living room floors.an ornament. At the time of Chekhov, there was also an aquarium in the living room with fish, which the writer liked to watch in his spare time. As Alexander Lazarev-Gruzinsky recalled:

“Pointing to the aquarium, piano and furniture, Chekhov told me: “It’s good to be a writer… All this has given me literature.” But when I looked with some reverence at the things given by the literature, Chekhov laughed and explained that he had rented the piano, and that part of the furniture belonged to his brother Nikolai. It seems that it was in some way literary furniture.

The furniture in Chekhov’s living room really belonged to the former publisher of the journal ” Alarm Clock “, which, having gone broke in 1883, paid the fee to its employees with its own furniture. At that time, the elder brother of the writer Nikolai Chekhov worked for her, who presented the headset to his family. In the bookcases the family library, photographs of close friends, as well as art portraits of Anton Chekhov are stored, among which the work of the artist Valentin Serov stands out. The living room exposition includes autographed photographs and a collection of books donated to Chekhov by the second-hand bookkeeper Nikolai Sveshnikov.

Room of Maria Chekhova
The living room goes into the room of Maria Chekhova, who worked as a history teacher at the women’s educational institution of Lyudmila Rzhevskaya. The room is divided into two parts with protruding windows and a tiled stove: in one part there was an office, and in the other, Maria’s bedroom. The office exhibits a desk and sofa, and the bedroom has a bed and small bedside tables. In the middle of the joined rooms there is an easel, behind which Chekhov painted sketches and landscapes.

Dining room
In the dining room were family dinners and dinner parties of the Chekhov family. The walls are covered with light yellow wallpaper, visually increasing the space, and in the center there is a large dining table with Viennese chairs arranged around. In the left corner of the room there are also a tiled stove used for heating rooms, and a buffet with a kerosene lamp on it. On the walls of the living room hang a geographical map of Russia, as well as artworks by Nikolai Chekhov. In the afternoon, the family often spent together. Mikhail Chekhov described one of the evenings:

“Now, after dinner, when Masheta [Maria Chekhova], tired of pouring soup and laying out the plates of roast, falls apart on her couch, and Antosha and Vanya sit against her by the hot stove and begin to light their cigarettes, I grab dear Ivanenko by the sides, I sit him down at the piano and begin to sing to his accompaniment. Ivanenko plays and frowns, Anton smiles, and Macheta begs me to stop. “Tired! It’s just that your disgusting voice tears the soul apart! ”She screams from her room, and I sing and sing. I sing until my eyes begin to ache from the strain. “Well, voice,” Ivanenko says, looking into my eyes, and reproachfully… shakes his head.

Room of Evgenia Chekhova
The dining room is adjacent to the room of the mother of the writer Evgenia Chekhova. Here, historical interiors were not recreated due to the lack of preserved genuine furniture, as well as a detailed description of the rooms. Chekhov’s lifetime editions, as well as archival documents related to his literary activities, are exhibited in the walls of this room.