the early 1990s, and has since been carefully renovated and reconsecrated. Services at the Oreanda church also ceased after the 1917 Revolution, and the building's survival seemed particularly doubtful when a large crack appeared in the altar following a major earthquake in the area in 1927. Between the end of the Second World War and 1992, when it was finally returned to the Orthodox Church, it was variously used as a workshop for the construction of a nearby sanatorium, and as a warehouse for storing building materials and vegetables. Although much of the delicate Venetian glass of its precious mosaics has been lost, either through being used as target practice by Young Pioneers wielding catapults, or simply through theft, careful restoration has transformed the church from its parlous state of
neglect in the early 1990s. Nowadays there is an elderly black-robed nun living in a caravan instead of a night watch, but the church once again has its own priest.16
The Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Moscow, where Chekhov married Olga, was also threatened with demolition on numerous occasions after the Revolution. It miraculously continued to hold services until 1930 because it was situated in what were then the suburbs of the city, but its degradation then proceeded rapidly. First its icons were stripped of the silver and gold decorations which had been donated by the wealthy merchants in the parish, then its cupola and belfry were destroyed. The priest was arrested and sent to the camps, and his former residence and the almshouse later turned into the Korean Embassy. Then the frescoes were painted over and the church was turned into a button factory, with a second floor added to provide accommodation for the employees. In the 1970s, production changed from buttons to men's shirts. When the Soviet authorities made a new proposal to pull the church down in the early 1990s, only the fact that Chekhov had been married there saved it.17 The building was handed back to the Orthodox Church in 1992, and restoration proceeded in a typically Russian way, with the church's current spruce appearance owing a great deal to the personal intervention of the Russian minister of defence, who happened to be a local resident. Having seen the sorry state of the building as she walked past it every day, his wife persuaded her husband to help, and materials and labour were contributed to the restoration effort, which began in 1996. The building company next door then offered to help with the construction of a new cupola and belfry. With ten-storey apartment blocks for nouveau riche oligarchs springing up all around, Moscow seems set to remain a city of striking contrasts – one of the characteristics Chekhov had so loved about it.
Shrines to Chekhov continue to appear, and not only in Russia. The most recent Chekhov museum opened on the anniversary of his death in 1999 in the Grand Oriental Hotel in Colombo, where the writer had stayed during his journey back from Sakhalin (Sri Lankan actors staged a production of The Cherry Orchard in Singhalese the following year).18 The previous year, a Chekhov museum opened in Badenweiler, to join the bronze bust, granite memorial and discreet plaque fixed to one of the first-floor balconies of the former Hotel Sommer which commemorate his connection with the resort. The bust of Chekhov
unveiled on the wooded hill below the castle ruins in Badenweiler in 1908 appears to have been the first statue of the writer to be erected anywhere in the world, and probably the first of a Russian writer abroad. The idea of commissioning it had come from Stanislavsky, who visited Badenweiler in 1906 during a Moscow Art Theatre tour. Public commemoration of a foreign writer in Wilhelmine Germany was a political matter, however, necessitating the diplomatic assistance of the Russian consul and the official approval of Grand Duke Friedrich I and his government in Karlsruhe, capital of the state of Baden. After an additional delay caused by the official mourning following Friedrich I's death in 1907, funds were finally allocated, and the Russian deputy consul, a sculptor in his spare time, produced a bust showing Chekhov as if out for a walk in hat and overcoat. The unveiling ceremony was attended by several hundred people, and included a service of blessing led by the Russian Orthodox priest in Karlsruhe. Olga Knipper and others came from Russia to lay wreaths, and the festivities were marked by concerts and a performance of Chekhov's perennially popular one-act farce The Bear. During the First World War, however, the bust was melted down for munitions, and when Stanislavsky came to consult Dr Schwoerer in 1929 about his heart problems, not even the memorial plaque on the balcony outside Chekhov's room at the Hotel Sommer had been replaced.
In 1963 a simple rectangular granite memorial to Chekhov was unveiled under one of the giant sequoias in the park near to the Hotel Sommer. Political factors again delayed the execution of an idea first raised at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of Chekhov's death in 1954, although inevitably this time of a different kind, given postwar German-Soviet relations. The question of jeopardizing Badenweiler's reputation as a health resort by drawing attention to someone who had died there, furthermore, was still an issue for the town's local authorities, who were adamant that the new memorial should not in any way resemble a gravestone, although that is precisely what it looks like. When the plinth of the original bust of Chekhov was found under thick undergrowth in 1985, the energetic director of the Sakhalin Chekhov Museum commissioned a local sculptor to produce a replacement bust (this time Chekhov without a hat), and brought it all the way from Siberia in the back of his van.19
The 'Tschechow Salon' Literary Museum, which opened in 1998,
prides itself on being the first dedicated to Chekhov 'in the western world'. It is located in the cultural centre built on the site of the original pump-room, where in former times gentlemen could repair to smoke cigars and play cards, or dance with the ladies (if they had removed their hats). One of the prize exhibits is a pair of Chekhov's pince-nez, an article the writer is associated with, although he only wore them in the last years of his life. The visitors' book in the museum is also something of an exhibit in itself. As well as heartfelt comments from numerous Russian Chekhov admirers who have made the pilgrimage to Badenweiler ('I am touched to the depths of my soul'), and the signatures of contemporary writers like Viktor Erofeev paying homage on the actual anniversary of Chekhov's death, the book contains the scrawls of several German teenagers ('I was here and found it dead boring'; 'I love you all!!!'), and some furious invective from a prim professor doctor from Moscow State University, outraged at the low cultural level of such people, 'who in my opinion should not be allowed to visit museums at all'. Clearly this high-minded Russian scholar had forgotten a humorous early publication by Chekhov, 'The Complaints Book' (1884), containing the following imaginative entries:
Your excellency! Just trying my pen!?
While approaching this station and looking at the countryside through the
window, my hat flew away. I. Yarmonkin
Don't know who wrote this, but I am an idiot to read it.
Nikandrov is a socialist!
Katinka, I love you madly!
Since I am being sacked for supposed drunkenness, may I declare that you
are all scoundrels and thieves. Kozmodemyansky the telegraphist.10
The complaints books at provincial railway stations used to make Chekhov laugh out loud,21 and he would probably have chortled with delight to read the visitors' book at his own museum here.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The writing of this book has been informed throughout by the experience of translating Chekhov's stories and letters, and amongst the many people who have helped me both directly and indirectly, I should particularly like to
