Before the beginning of the Second World War, the museum had received some 40,000 visitors, and was one of the first cultural institutions in the Crimea to start functioning again when the Nazi occupation ended. It was attracting up to 2,000 visitors a day up until the early 1990s, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, attendance was down to 25,000 a year. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Crimea became part of an independent Ukraine, the fate of museums in the region which celebrated Russian cultural achievements was suddenly put in doubt. They had previously been the recipients of generous funding by the Soviet government, but who would be responsible now for their upkeep, and where would the money come from? The Chekhov Museum in Yalta now falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, whose budget s extremely иго ted The seriousness of the problem may be gauged from the fact that n 1999 there simply were no longer any funds to pay for profesi onal secui cy ser 'ces. The director of the museum, Gennadi Shalyugin, was forced at one point to invite the television cameras to film h m patrolling the museum himself with his dog (a dachshund, of course).7 This prompted the Moscow News reporter wittily to suggest a title for a new story: 'The Gentleman with the Little Dog' 8 These were indeed black days for the White Dacha, as another journalist remarked.
When President Putin visited the White Dacha wth Leonid Kuchma, the Ukrainian president, and their respective wives, during his state visit on 4 May 2003, it seemed that perhaps help was nigh: no Russian head of state had ever visited the museum before. Gorbachev, it is true, had thought about it once when he was hol'day'ng down the road on the Crimean coast (wbch is where he was when power was wrested from him in August 1991). The museum's staff were nstructed to make preparations and awaited his arrival all day, but in the end Mikhail Sergeyevich decided to take Ra sa to Alupka instead.9 Preparations foi the presidential v^sit in 2003 involved the inevitable heightening of security measures in the area - a costly exercise - but the irony of this was clearly lost on Putin and Kuchma, who were presented with a personally addressed letter of appeaclass="underline"
Tolstoy called Chekhov, in whose veins flowed Ukrainian blood (his
grandmother Efrosinia Shimko was Ukrainian), 'the most Russian writer'.
Chekhov's work is the national property of both the Russian and
Ukrainian peoples. Concern for the preservation of Chekhov's house in
Yalta is the cultural duty of both governments, but it is a duty that is not being fully carried out. Cheichov's 'White Dacha' is subject to various damaging processes. This is leading to the deterioration of the building, which is a hundred years old, to constant hydrological problems, and damage caused by leaks when it rains. During the winter period, the temperature ;n Chekhov's house does not rise above 10°, which in view of the high humidity is detrimental to the preservation of the exhibits. The building which houses the literary exhibitien is n a state of collapse. For five months there has been no money to pay for security and the burglar alarm has had to be switched off because of debts. The museum's collection, which includes valuable canvases by Levitan worth tens of thousands of dollars, is being abandoned to the whim of fate . ..
Dear Vlad' nn Vladr.i/irovich and Leonid Dar lovich! 2004 w. 1 mark the centenary of the death of Russia and Ukrame's great son Chekhov. Resolvmg the urgent problems of the Chekhov Museum, a'be;t a hundred years after the writer's death, would be the best proof chat your meetings in Yalta were truly of major significance.10
The presidents left fulsome thanks in the visitors' book - Putin even thoughtfully presented the museum with a book about na onal handicrafts and left his vis'ting card - but no money.11
In his will, Chekhov left the Gurzuf dacha to Olga, who continued to make annual summer visits until 1953. Maiia Pavlovna was a regular guest, and she l;ked to sit and play patience on the veranda as her brother used to do. Olga had wanted to leave the dacha to the Moscow Art Theatre after her death,12 but it was sold to a painter in 1956, and when he died ten years later the property was acquired by the Union of Artists for use as hol'day accommodat'on by ts members. Only in 1987 did it finally become a branch of the Chekhov Museum in Yalta, and was opened to the public for the lirBI time in 1995. The exhibits include materials relat ing to the historic Moscow Art Theatre production of Three Sisters staged by Nem. rovich-Danchenko in 1940, which remained in the repertoire for half a century.
Chekhov's houses are in a better state than the 450-seat Yalta Theatre, which once hosted the Moscow Art Theatre when it came on tour but was closed at the end of the 1990s due to its dangerous condition. Reconstruction was begun, but work was abandoned after partial demolition of its inteiior, and the theatre now stands in ruins behind a scruffy hoarding. T э the Moscow News journalist who visited in June 2003, it looked as if it was a theatre in the bombed-out Chechen capital of Grozny, rather than in Yalta.13 A'exander Kalyagin, an important figure in Russian theatre and a member of President Putin's Council for Culture, came on a tour of inspection in May 2003, just before Putin's visit, and declared that the ruined theatre was a source of pain for all of Russia. With his eye on UNESCO's proclamation of 2004 as the Year of Chekhov, he decided that it was time to revive the tradition of 'Chekhov Seasons' at the theatre. Meetings with the Ukrainian minister of culture and the mayor of Yalta resulted in the signing of a deal with a local firm: in return for paying for the restoration of the theatre, it would be given - this being the brave new world of post-Soviet Ukraine - premium land in Yalta to bi Jd a hotel.14
Chekhov once made a note about the Muslim custom of digging wells to save one's soul, adding: 'It would be good if each of us left a school or a well or something similar, so that our lives did not go by and disappear into eternity without trace.'15 He took this custom to heart and built not one but three schools during his lifetime, and through his posthumous fame saved as many churches. The Autka church of St Theodore Tyron, where bis mother worshipped, suffered an ignominious fate in the Soviet period, but nevertheless survived demo.iuon thanks to the Chekhov connection. Clementine Churchill added her vociferous support when she met with the 82-year-old Maria Pavlovna during her visit to the Soviet Union in 1945, a few months after the famous Yalta conference. For most of the latter part of the twentieth century it was used as a gymnasium, but was returned to the Orthodox Church in the early 1990s, and has since been carefully renovated and reconsecrated. Services at the Oreanda church also ceased after the 1917 Revolution, and the building's survival seemed particularly doubtful when a large crack appeared in the altar following a major earthquake >n the area in 1927. Between the end of the Second World War and 1992, when it was finally returned to the Orthodox Church, it was variously used as a workshop for the construction of a nearby sanatorium, and as a warehouse for storing building materials and vegetables. Although much of the delicate Venetian glass of its precious mosaics has been lost, either through being used as target practice by Young Pioneers wielding catapults, or simply through theft, careful restoration has transformed the church from its parlous state of neglect in the early 1990s. Nowadays there is an elderly black-robed nun living in a caravan instead of a night watch, but the church once again has its own priest.16
The Church of the Exaltat on of the Cross in Moscow, where Chekhov married Olga, was also threatened' with demolition on numerous occas ons after the Revoluron. It miraculously continued to hold services until 1930 because it was situated in what were then the suburbs of the city, but its degradai con then proceeded rapidly. First its icons were stripped of the silver and gold decorations which had been donated by the wealthy merchants in the par.sh, then its cupola and belfry #ere destroyed. The priest was arrested and sent to the camps, and his former residence and the almshouse later turned into the Korean Embassy. Then the frescoes were painted over and the church was turned into a button factory, with a second floor added to provide accommodation for the employees. In the 1970s, production changed from buttons to men's si irts. When the Soviet authorities made a new proposal to pull the church down in the early 1990s, only the fact that Chekhov had been married there saved it.17 The building was handed back to the Orthodox Church n 1992, ana restoration proceeded In a typically Russian way, with the church's current spruce appearance owing a great deal to the personal intervention of the Russian minister of defence, who happened to be a local resident. Having seen the sorry state of the building as she walked past i: every day, his v fe persuaded her husband to help, and materials and labour wete contributed to the restoration effort, which began ;n 1996. The building company next door then offered to help w;th the construction of a new cupola and belfry. With ten-storey apartment blocks for nouveau riche oligarchs springing up all around, Moscow seems set to remain a city of striking contrasts - one of the characteristics Chekhov had so loved about it.