To K. S. Barantsevich, 15 April 1890. Moscow.

The repeated bare dateline in ("15 Apr." following the full "15 April 1890. The body has full, unelided Russian grammar, a warm personal salutation ("милый друг" / "милый Кузьма Протапыч"), an extended conventional closing courtesy, and a full initialed signature ("А. Чехов."), none of which match this corpus’s one confirmed telegram (. its bare "Чехов." signature and elliptical, preposition-dropping body). No structural or coherence concerns: this reads as a single continuous farewell note to a single addressee, written just before Chekhov’s departure for Sakhalin.

Chekhov writes to Konstantin Sergeyevich Baranzevich (already identified in this corpus, e.g., -519), a minor contemporary writer and friend, on the eve of leaving Moscow for his journey across Siberia to Sakhalin Island. He announces he will "disappear" from the Russian literary scene until December, gives his Sakhalin mailing address (Alexandrovsk Post), and notes that anything posted before 25 July will still reach him there. He invites Baranzevich to write freely of his own low spirits/melancholy ("хандра") in letters – these will be welcome distraction on "the convict island" – but jokingly forbids him to indulge that mood at home or in the street. He asks Baranzevich to convey condolences to the writer Albov over an unspecified recent loss ("потеря, какую он понес"), regretting that he never got to know Albov well enough himself to offer sympathy directly. He closes with an affectionate, joking farewell and signs simply "A. Chekhov."