The year 2004 marks the death centenary of the Russian classical writer Anton Chekhov. Therefore 2004 has been declared Chekhov’s Year by the UNESCO’s decision. 

Chekhov once said in a humorous prophecy that his books would be forgotten in some seven years after his death. But a while later people would again take interest in his writings, and this time their interest would be lasting. His prophecy came true. Chekhov is indeed one of the more widely read authors both in Russia and elsewhere. 

Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 and died in 1904, when he was only 44. Although he could not use all his time for writing, because he also worked as a doctor, his literary heritage is extremely rich. His complete works filled 30 volumes. Whenever his contemporaries spoke of Chekhov, it was with admiration. The famous British playwright and writer George Bernard Shaw said once that Chekhov shone as a star of the first magnitude. The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote that he thought Chekhov had created writing forms for the whole world to enjoy that he had never come across before. 

Chekhov is incomparable as a short story teller. His language is beautiful, easy to understand and, importantly, modern-day. He could touch the fibers of the reader’s soul just by describing some real-life development in his own words. He invariably saw as important whatever happened around him, he never thought of any one thing as small. He could use any minor thing as a prism to see far and deep through. His short stories are in no way inferior to many-volume works by other writers. Chekhov wrote his “Lady with Lapdog” in just several dozen pages, but that’s enough for anyone to understand both the personal drama of two or three people and everyday life standards of the then “intelligentsia” society, choked by endless prejudices, a false understanding of decencies etc, which often destroyed people’s souls and lives. In his stories the reader clearly feels Chekhov’s strong compassion and love for his protagonists, love, that he never proclaimed and that the shortsighted critics had always taken for objectivity which, they insisted, bordered on indifference… But Tatyana Shchepkina-Kupernik, a writer and translator who was Chekhov’s intimate friend, wrote that Anton Chekhov did not like pathos, so he saw to it that his characters did not make florid or ebullient utterances. 

A travel to Sakhalin Island in 1880 became an important event in the writer’s life. Sakhalin was a place where convicts were sent to serve their terms. It is to have a better idea of their life that Chekhov undertook that tiring journey, one that in the long run brought him to his grave ahead of time. He endured untold suffering on his three-month long travel across Siberia. Once he reached Sakhalin, he immediately engaged himself in collecting material for a future book, in treating the convicts for what diseases they suffered from and discussing various things with them. He also made a Herculean effort by taking a census of the local 10,000 strong population. In his book “Sakhalin Island”, which came off the press three years later, he wrote that Sakhalin was a place of inhuman suffering that any person, whether free or serving a term at a hard labour camp, was hardly capable of enduring. In Sakhalin Chekhov learnt to be merciful to people. 

Living in Sakhalin Chekhov contracted tuberculosis. But he never sought any treatment, and it was not until  things got too far that he turned to doctors and went to live in the south, now in the Crimea, now in Nice. 

One of the founders of the Moscow Arts Theatre Konstantin Stanislavsky wrote in his memoirs that after his death Anton Chekhov grew extremely popular in Russia, in Europe and in America. And yet, he added, many still fail to fully understand and appreciate the famous writer and dramatist. Many still think that Chekhov was the singer of routine life, ordinary people and that his plays are a sad page of Russian life… They claim that the underlying idea of his stage works is either discontent that paralyzes any undertaking or the energy-killing despondency. “But this is all wrong,” Stanislavsky pointed out emphatically. “Anton Chekhov was the greatest of optimists that I have ever seen in my life. He energetically portrayed Russia’s beautiful future, in which he had strong faith.”