To the Chekhovs, 4 June 1890. Pod Irkutskom.

This is a brief postcard-length letter to Chekhov’s sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, written on 4 June 1890 while he was en route to Irkutsk during the overland leg of his journey across Siberia to the penal colony on Sakhalin Island. The trip, made mostly by horse-drawn conveyance over the Siberian post road in the weeks before the Trans-Siberian Railway existed, is the same expedition that would produce Ostrov Sakhalin (The Island of Sakhalin) and the linked travel sketches "Iz Sibiri" ("From Siberia"). This item belongs to that same run of short, hurried notes home that punctuate the journey.

The content is slight by design: Chekhov reports the heat (hot enough that the party is removing coats and boots while travelling), notes his own good health and spirits, sends greetings to the household, and asks after two family friends, Semashko and Ivanenko. He promises a longer letter once he reaches Irkutsk. A brief postscript mentions sending out for kvass, which he found good there. The letter closes with the reverse-side address block (city and addressee), preserved here as separate sections because the source text itself sets it off with "На обороте:" ("On the reverse:") – this is a structural feature of the postcard, not a second document.