ANTON CHEKHOV (1860-1904), the grandson of a liberated serf, was born and raised in the southern town of Taganrog. His father Pavel was abusive and hypocritical and his mother Yevgenia was a wonderful storyteller. ("Our talents we got from our father, our souls from our mother," he wrote.) The family fled to Moscow in 1876, to avoid Pavel being thrown in debtor's prison after his shop failed. Anton was left behind for three years to clean up the family business, to finish school, and to work as virtually an indentured servant. He moved to Moscow in 1879, after being admitted to medical school, and soon found he had a prolific talent for writing humorous sketches and short stories and that it paid, albeit rather little. Still, it was enough to keep his struggling family out of absolute poverty, and to pay his tuition bills. In 1884, he qualified as a doctor, the same year that he first began to show signs of having tuberculosis. By the time he was 26, he had written over 400 short stories. His stories are often ironic observations on human nature that seem simple on the surface, yet hide deep veins of human emotion. It was around this time that his popularity began to rise, and that he found a lifelong friend and benefactor in the rich publisher Alexey Suvorin. In 1890, he traveled across Russia to Sakhalin, returning with a monumental chronicle and indictment of Russia's system of katorga. By the turn of the century, his tuberculosis had worsened and he was forced to spend long periods of time in the South, in Yalta, and soon had to give up his refuge in Melikhovo, where he wrote and treated local peasants. He married the actress Olga Knipper in 1901, but their marriage did not last long, as Chekhov succumbed to tuberculosis on July 15. 1904, in the German resort town of Badenweiler.
