Pavel Alexandrovich Gaideburov

Addressee of this letter, named in the salutation only by first name and patronymic ("Pavel Alexandrovich"); historically identifiable as the Petersburg journalist, editor, and noted public reader/lecturer P. A. Gaideburov, whose invitation to Chekhov to give a public reading -- a genre Gaideburov himself practiced -- is consistent with the letter's content of polite refusal, though the letter itself supplies no further biographical detail. Flagged as provisional: he does not otherwise recur in the consulted corpus, apart from one incidental co-mention (as a first-time addressee of the volume, not as a correspondent within a letter's body) in the editorial front matter of, not yet translated.