Russia celebrated the 150th birthday of...
Sea city after suffering a major hemorrhage in his lungs in 1897, when doctors insisted he change his lifestyle.On Sakhalin, where Chekhov spent three months in 1890, interviewing 10,000 convicts and settlers for a census, a ceremony was held on Friday to kick off the Year of Chekhov.
Chekhov undertook the 81-day trip to the Far Eastern island, a gloomy place used for penal servitude and exile, at the peak of his literary career in Moscow and despite his illness.
He was shocked by what he saw on Sakhalin and later published his findings in a book called The Island of Sakhalin. The book is believed to have forced the tsar to improve prison colony conditions on the island.
"Chekhov"s truth about Russia is a painful truth," Russian Deputy Culture Minister Andrei Busygin said at a ceremony to lay a wreath at the writer"s tomb at Novodevichy Convent"s cemetery in Moscow, attended by officials and culture figures from Russia and other countries.