To the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers, 16 November 1887. Moscow.

This is not a personal letter but a formal membership pledge, dated 16 November 1887 in Moscow and addressed to the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers (a professional and copyright-protection body for playwrights and composers, founded in the 1870s under Alexander Ostrovsky’s leadership). By late 1887 Chekhov had had two full-length plays produced in Moscow – Ivanov premiered that November at the Korsh Theatre – and joining the Society was both a practical step, securing his standing to collect royalties on stage performances of his work, and a mark of his emergence as a recognized dramatist alongside his reputation as a story writer.

The document is terse by design: a dateline, a short registration-style notation ("16/09/87," likely an internal Society filing or membership-book date distinct from the letter’s own date), the single sentence of the pledge itself, and Chekhov’s signature. There is no salutation and no personal content – it reads as a boilerplate form of words that any incoming member would have signed, which is itself of interest for what it shows about the Society’s institutional life and Chekhov’s steadily accumulating memberships and formal affiliations in this period.