Chekhov’s direct participation in the development of public education, which had begun at Melikhovo estate, continued after the writer’s arrival in Yalta. In 1898 he wrote that he became a member of the board of trustees of the Yalta women’s gymnasium. Journalist Alexander Yakovlevich Beschinsky mentioned that Anton Pavlovich was knowledgeable in education and considered it a matter of state importance. He wrote: ‘Without a well of the people, the state will collapse like a house made of poorly fired bricks.’

The author of the sketch on the stand is Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov. It depicts a Yalta gymnasium. The same building is shown on the postcard in the lower right corner of the stand. Anton Pavlovich was friends with Varvara Konstantinovna Kharkeevich, who ran this educational institution, and even named the gymnasium ‘his shelter’ in one of his letters.

Chekhov’s personality attracted artists wherever he settled. In the fall of 1898, while in Yalta, he spent a lot of time in communication with Fyodor Chaliapin, Sergei Rachmaninov, Konstantin Balmont. In the same period, Anton Pavlovich met the writers Yevgeny Chirikov, Alexander Beschinsky and Mikhail Pervukhin. At the same time, a doctor and writer Sergei Yakovlevich Elpatyevsky, with whom Chekhov made friends, lived in Yalta.

Besides famous personalities, Anton Pavlovich, while in Crimea, closely communicated with many public figures of Yalta and prominent citizens. Chekhov had a special relationship with Isaak Abramovich Sinani, the owner of the book and tobacco shop ‘Russian Hut’.

On September 26, 1898, the writer and Isaak Abramovich went to the village of Kuchuk-Koy, located 30 km from Yalta, where a small estate was being sold. Chekhov liked the local pristine nature so much that he bought a small two-story mansion there in December. The relatively low cost of this estate also influenced the decision to purchase. Actually, Anton Pavlovich never lived in this house, for which he called it ‘a queer estate.’ In October of the same year, Sinani took Chekhov to look at a site in the Yalta suburb of Verkhnyaya Aoutka. And already at the end of the month Anton Pavlovich became the owner of this ‘little navel of the earth with an excellent view of the sea and mountains’ and began to build a house here. It was this place that became Chekhov’s permanent residence in the Crimea.