Taganrog

Reading notes

• Departed from Moscow: §2 Taganrog

  Chekhov's own birthplace, a provincial port city in southern Russia on the Sea of Azov; the joke turns on the wild disproportion of 145 lawyers descending on so small a town.

• Toward a Characterization of the Peoples §19 Taganrog

  Chekhov's own birthplace, a Sea of Azov port town with a substantial Greek merchant community.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 4 November 1877. Taganrog. §4 Here in Taganrog

  The provincial port town on the Sea of Azov where the Chekhov family had lived since before Anton's birth; he alone stayed behind there to finish the gymnasium after the rest of the family moved to Moscow.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 16 April 1878. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  Chekhov's home port town on the Sea of Azov, where he lived until 1879 finishing gimnaziya while the rest of the family had already moved to Moscow.

• To P. Ye. and Ye. Ya. Chekhov, 20 June 1878. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  The port town on the Sea of Azov where Chekhov was born and where his family lived until his father's bankruptcy forced most of them to Moscow; the eighteen-year-old Chekhov was still finishing school there alone.

• To M. P. Chekhov, 1879. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  Chekhov's home port town on the Sea of Azov, where he stayed alone finishing his last year of gimnaziya after the rest of the family had already moved to Moscow in 1876.

• To L. A. Kamburova, 17 September 1880. Moscow. §11 Taganrog

  Chekhov's home port town on the Sea of Azov, where the addressee lived and where the Chekhov family had its roots.

• To M. E. Chekhov, June 1886. Babkino. §26 the annexation of Taganrog to the Don Region

  A rumor circulating in the mid-1880s that Taganrog and its surrounding district -- administratively part of the Yekaterinoslav Province but populated largely by Don Cossacks and their descendants -- might be transferred into the neighboring Don Cossack Host Region (Donskaya oblast). Chekhov, a native of Taganrog, asks after the rumor with evident personal interest; no such transfer in fact took place at this time.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 9 March 1876. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  The provincial Sea of Azov port town in southern Russia where Chekhov was born and raised, and where he was still finishing gymnasium when he wrote this letter.

• To L. A. Kamburova, 1880. Moscow. §9 living in Taganrog

  The provincial port town on the Sea of Azov that the Chekhov family had recently and precariously left behind after their father's bankruptcy, referenced here for the money Nikolai earned there before the move.

• To S. Kramayev, 8 May 1881. Moscow. §4 Taganrogians

  Chekhov's home port town on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia; here the butt of his running joke about provincial graduates thriving, studiously, in the capital.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 8 November 1882. Moscow. §4 Taganrog customs house

  Alexander then held a post with the customs service in Taganrog, the family's home town on the Sea of Azov; Anton addresses the letter care of his office there, hence the mock heading "Customs."

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 8 November 1882. Moscow. §33 Taganrog

  The Chekhov family's home town on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia, where Alexander then held his customs post.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 25 December 1882. Moscow. §5 Taganrog

  The Chekhovs' native town in southern Russia, where Alexander was then stationed with the customs service -- the letter contrasts its quiet with Moscow's holiday bustle.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 7 December 1876. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  The port town on the Sea of Azov where Chekhov was born and where, at sixteen, he was still finishing his schooling while the rest of the family had relocated to Moscow.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 25 January 1883. Moscow. §7 Taganrog

  The port town on the Sea of Azov where Chekhov was born and where much of the extended family and its social ties still centered.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 17–18 April 1883. Moscow. §2 Taganrog

  The Chekhov family's home town in southern Russia, on the Sea of Azov, where Alexander's household was then living.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 1 January 1877. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  Chekhov's birthplace, a port town on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. By this letter his family had already fled north to Moscow, leaving the sixteen-year-old Chekhov behind alone to finish school.

• To N. A. Leikin, 1883. Moscow. §7 Taganrog customs house

  The customs house in Chekhov's home port town of Taganrog, where Alexander took a clerkship after an embezzlement scandal had already stripped the office of anything worth stealing -- the joke behind Chekhov's backhanded compliment.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 8 February 1877. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  Chekhov's home port town on the Sea of Azov, where he lived until 1879 finishing gimnaziya while the rest of the family had already moved to Moscow.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 15–28 October 1883. Moscow. §13 Taganrog

  The Sea of Azov port town where Alexander was then living and, in Chekhov's view, eating badly off market produce.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 10 April 1877. Moscow. §3 twelve hundred versts

  The distance between Moscow and Taganrog, the Chekhov family's home city in the south of Russia, where Anton had been left behind to finish school while the rest of the family relocated. A verst is roughly two-thirds of a mile.

• To N. A. Leikin, 22 January 1884. Moscow. §6 Taganrog, Customs House

  Chekhov's brother Alexander was then living in Taganrog, working at the customs house there; Chekhov gives the address so Leikin can send the fee directly.

• To M. M. and Ye. M. Chekhov, 6 May 1877. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  A port town on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia, Chekhov's birthplace and, at this date, still home to the school he was finishing while the rest of the family had already relocated to Moscow.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 9 June 1877. Taganrog. §1 Taganrog

  Chekhov's home port town on the Sea of Azov, where the seventeen-year-old was finishing gimnaziya while the rest of the family had already relocated to Moscow.

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 11–12 March 1887. Petersburg. §6 a free passage to Taganrog and back

  Chekhov is angling for a complimentary rail ticket to his native Taganrog, likely through Shekhtel's contacts; he wants the return half left undated so he is not locked to a fixed departure.

• Letter to N. A. Leikin, March 28, 1887 §4 Taganrog, Kontornaya Street, the house of M. E. Chekhov

  Chekhov's native town, where he is heading for his health; M. E. Chekhov is his uncle Mitrofan Yegorovich Chekhov, at whose house on Kontornaya Street he would be staying.

• To N. A. Leikin, 30 March 1887. Moscow. §7 Taganrog

  Chekhov's birthplace and boyhood home on the Sea of Azov, the destination of the trip south he is about to make.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 20 April 1887. en route to Novocherkassk. §3 Taganrog

  Chekhov's native town on the Sea of Azov, the destination of this leg of his spring 1887 journey and the place he asks his brother to direct further letters.

• To N. A. Leikin, 22 May 1887. Babkino. §9 The doctors of the town of Taganrog

  "D-ra" in the source, an abbreviation for "doktora" (doctors); a joking collective thanks on behalf of Chekhov's Taganrog medical acquaintances for newspaper clippings on massage technique that Leikin had evidently sent along, a nod to Chekhov's own medical training and circle.

• To N. A. Leikin, 9 June 1887. Babkino. §3 Taganrog

  Chekhov's home town on the Sea of Azov, where his family still had connections; a letter from Leikin had gone astray there before reaching him at Babkino.

• To N. A. Leikin, 23 April 1888. Moscow. §11 I'm leaving my library to Taganrog, where I was born and went to school

  Chekhov's native town in southern Russia, on the Sea of Azov, where he attended the gymnasium; he later did in fact bequeath his personal library there.

• To D. T. Savelyev, 4 February 1889. Moscow. §7 I'll let you know by telegram from Taganrog. At the dacha I'll be living near Sumy or in Poltava province

  Ordinary travel logistics using Chekhov's established geography for this period: Taganrog as his hometown staging-point, and Sumy/Poltava province (the Lintvaryov estate country) as his prospective summer dacha location -- no further disambiguation required.

• To Ye. M. Shavrova, 16 September 1891. Moscow. §3 Taganrog Greek girl

  Chekhov's own birthplace, invoked here as a stock type ("taganrogskaya grechanka") rather than a real acquaintance -- Taganrog had a substantial Greek merchant community, and Chekhov reaches for the phrase as a shorthand for provincial local color, the kind of incidental female character he tells Shavrova to cut from her story at loc. 5.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 31 January 1891. Moscow. §5 We were friendly in Taganrog with a well-off Polish family

  Taganrog, Chekhov's birthplace and boyhood home on the Sea of Azov; the long, somber account that follows -- of a once-comfortable family's ruin through trial, illness, and poverty -- is one of the letter's few extended passages, in contrast to its otherwise rapid, miscellaneous items.

• The Mysteries of One Hundred and Forty-Four Catastrophes §6 Taganrog

  Chekhov's own birthplace, a port city on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia -- used here purely as a stock exotic-sounding origin for a melodramatic telegram.

• On Christmas Night §55 Taganrog

  A port town on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia, Chekhov's own birthplace, here reached by Litvinov and his men after being driven off course by the blizzard.

• Notebooks. Diaries §4031 Taganrog

  Chekhov's birthplace and childhood home, a port city in southern Russia on the Sea of Azov, which he continued to visit and support (notably its public library) throughout his life.