To N. A. Leikin, 2 December 1891. Moscow.

Written from Moscow on 2 December 1891 to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor-publisher of the Petersburg humor weekly russian"Осколки" ("Oskolki,Splinters"), one of Chekhov’s most frequent correspondents. This letter opens with an extended, half-exasperated request for practical advice on a bureaucratic tangle – Chekhov’s residency papers – then turns to Moscow deaths of the season, Chekhov’s own recent illness, and a closing note on theater.

The letter is a single continuous piece of correspondence, one sitting, one register throughout (bureaucratic complaint, apology, news of deaths, health update, theater gossip, closing greetings) are the doubled dateline (full form, then the abbreviated notation), the same convention seen elsewhere in this edition’s letter headers. is Chekhov’s long, weary account of the residency-permit runaround – his university diploma no longer sufficing as a passport, the vague requirement to obtain "honorary citizenship" through some unnamed department, and his appeal to Leikin (who had recently been through the same process) for practical guidance: which department, what petition, how many revenue stamps, what documents. is a brief apology for the imposition. reports the deaths that autumn of the poet Liodor Palmin and the writer Alexander Kurepin, and of the sugar manufacturer Ivan Kharitonenko, whom Chekhov calls "a very interesting man." reports Chekhov’s own bout of influenza, complicated by catarrh of the right lung, from which he is only now recovering. turns to the theater: Leikin’s play The Medal is running successfully at Korsh’s theater alongside Ivan Myasnitsky’s The Hare; Chekhov relays secondhand praise for Leikin’s play at the other’s expense, and closes with a wry, bitter aside on the state of the Russian stage and press – writers pushed out, plays and papers left to amateurs and tradesmen. closes with good wishes and regards to Leikin’s wife and son. is the signature.