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A.P. Chekhov’s Museum in Yalta (White cottage) was given the status of a State Museum
“There are four places in Russia which are rich of a great lyric force and covered with real people’s love: the house of Chekhov in Yalta, the house of Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, the grave of Pushkin in Holly Hills and the grave of Lermontov in Tarkhany. Our heart and hopes belong to these places: they appear to accumulate all the charm of life”.
K. Paustovsky
In 1898 according to doctor’s advice Anton Pavlovich Chekhov decided to settle in Yalta where he moved with his mother Eugene Yakovlevna and sister Maria. The author bought a holding in two kilometers from the embankment in a Tartar village Autka (today a Yalta’s suburb named Chekhovo). According to the design of architect L. P. Shapovalov on this holding was built a two-story house with an attic storey which the contemporaries used to call the ‘White cottage’.
In Kuprin’s opinion the White cottage ‘… was the most original building in Yalta. It was all white, clean, light, nicely non-central, without any particular architectural style, with a tower, unexpected projections, a glass veranda downstairs and an open terrace upstairs, with straggling now wide, now narrow windows, it would look like a building in art nouveau style if there was not somebody’s peculiar manner about it.
The house comprised 9 rooms. The study and the bedroom of Anton Pavlovich and his mother’s room were on the first floor along with a dining room which adjoined a glassed veranda and a balcony. Maria’s room was located in the attic storey. The ground floor housed guest rooms for relatives. The kitchen and rooms for a gardener and a cook were located in a wing. Later in 1912 a veranda was adjoined to the mother’s room.
In Yalta house Chekhov wrote the plays ‘Three sisters’ and ‘The cherry orchard’; the novels ‘The lady with the dog’, ‘The bishop’, ‘The bride’; the story ‘In a ravine’ and other; prepared for publication his collected works. Many eminent workers of the Russian and world culture: writers M. Gorky, A. P. Kuprin, I. A. Bunin, D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak, S. A. Naydyonov, S. Ya. Elpatievsky, composer S. V. Rakhmaninov, the famous opera singer F. I. Chaliapin, artists I. I. Levitan, V. M. Vasnetsov, G. F. Yartsev and other.
After Chekhov’s death in July of 1904 according to his will his sister Maria Pavlovna inherited the Yalta house along money and profit from drama works.
Chekhov’s house in Yalta was opened for visitors the first year after the author’s death.
On April 21 (May 4), 1919 the Military-revolutionary Committee of Yalta issued for Maria Pavlovna a charter of immunity; she was charged with the organization of a museum. This was the document which marked the beginning of the Museum of A. P. Chekhov in Yalta. M. P. Chekhova had been the director of the Museum for 36 years. For her work of maintaining the memorial house Maria Pavlovna was awarded with the Order of the Labor Red Banner and given the title of the Honored Art Worker.
Today the Museum of A. P. Chekhov is known as the initiator and organizer of the International scientific conferences ‘Chekhov’s readings in Yalta’. Such a tradition was laid back in 1954.
Lit.: Биография А. П. Чехова [Электронный ресурс] // Дом-музей А. П. Чехова в Ялте. URL: http://yalta-museum.ru/ru/biografija-ap-chehova.html.
Based on the Presidential Library’s materials: