Anton Pavlovich Chekhov spent almost five years in Yalta. And throughout this time, life in his house was in full swing. The Chekhov family was famous for their hospitality. The guests of the ‘White Dacha’ were Maxim Gorky, Alexander Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Konstantin Balmont, Vladimir Gilyarovsky and many others. Contemporaries noted that Anton Pavlovich was very fond of Ivan Bunin’s company, whom he met in Moscow in 1895, and became close in 1899 in Yalta. Bunin understood Chekhov better than anyone else. Their moods often assonated. They could be silent for a long time together, occasionally exchanging completely unexpected thoughts. Bunin visited Chekhov several times in the Crimea. Here he wrote the stories “Pines”, “Fog”, several poems, including those that were dedicated to Chekhov and his “White Dacha”. At the end of his life, in France, he worked on a book about Chekhov, but it remained unfinished.


Thanks to Chekhov, “White Dacha”, and Yalta in general, have become a kind of Mecca for cultural luminaries. “The creative life began to zip in Yalta, and we gradually began to forget about Melikhovo, ” Maria Pavlovna Chekhova wrote in her memoirs. But the Yalta landscape will not be complete if not to mention the “Antonovkas”. That was the family nickname of the ladies and girls - the admirers of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

Among them were well-known names such as Lydia Mizinova, Tatyana Schepkina-Kupernik, Lydia Yavorskaya, Sophia Bonnier, Fanny Tatarinova, Olga Solovyova… Chekhov skillfully directed the enthusiasm of Antonovkas into a creative path. So, Sofia Pavlovna Bonnier helped the writer in charitable matters (she was a member of the Yalta trusteeship for the needs of visiting patients), visited poor tuberculosis patients, assisted them in settling down. She gave mementos to the writer. One of these gifts is the “Pug” sculpture, well known to the guests of the “White Dacha”.

The owner of the Suuk-Su estate in Gurzuf, Olga Mikhailovna Solovyova, willingly donated a significant amount to the Yalta charitable society. Fanny Karlovna Tatarinova left a deep mark on charity and the organization of the cultural life of Yalta. According to the contents of her album, now kept in the funds of the Chekhov’s House-Museum, one can see an unusually active nature, which was able to stage almost the entire classical Russian opera repertoire with the help of amateurs.

At the Chekhov’s Readings, the film critic Vitaly Wolf once said that there are people in America who dream of coming to Yalta just to kneel in front of Chekhov’s house and the house where Alla Nazimova, a famous Hollywood actress, lived. Her name is also on the list of Chekhov’s Yalta acquaintances. She often met Chekhov when she came to Yalta with her lover, actor Pavel Orlenev, whom Anton Pavlovich loved very much. Here in Yalta, they learned about Chekhov’s death.