To N. A. Leikin, 13 April 1890. Moscow.

This is a telegram, not a letter — one of the shortest items in Chekhov’s correspondence: a two-sentence congratulatory greeting with no salutation and no closing courtesy, signed with the bare surname "Chekhov." The clipped grammar of the original ("Sincerely respect your fruitful activity. Warmly congratulate. Wish happiness.") — three short clauses strung together asyndetically, articles and connective phrasing omitted — is genuine telegraphic style, the wire-economy of the period, not literary terseness or a transcription artifact. The source’s own editorial note "На бланке:" ("On the form:") before the final line marks that what follows (the destination and addressee, "Petersburg, Leikin") is reproduced from the telegram blank itself, not part of the message body — this is the standard shape of a telegram transcription in this edition, not a sign of concatenated items.

The date, 13 April 1890, places this in the weeks before Chekhov’s departure for Sakhalin (he left Moscow on 21 April 1890), a period in which his outgoing correspondence is generally brief and businesslike as he wound up affairs before the journey.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin (Николай Александрович Лейкин) was the editor-publisher of the Petersburg humor weekly *Oskolki* ("Splinters"), for which Chekhov wrote extensively in the early 1880s under the "Antosha Chekhonte" byline, and one of his most frequent correspondents of that period. The occasion for this wire is not stated in the telegram itself; "your fruitful activity" (вашу плодотворную деятельность) reads as a general salute to Leikin’s prolific editorial and literary output rather than a reference to a specific event, but no external occasion (anniversary, publication) is given in the source and none should be inferred.