Chekhov's Journey to Sakhalin, 1890

The family had lived at No. 6 Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya since 1886. Chekhov kept his plan to go to Sakhalin secret until January 1890, and its announcement made a great impression on society. On 21 April 1890 he left Moscow for Sakhalin and the East; on 1 May his family moved out of the house too. Today it is a branch of the State Literary Museum, dedicated to his life and work.

Visitor guidance: The Chekhov House-Museum at Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya 6; check opening hours before you go.

Chekhov spent about a week in Tomsk and wrote to his sister: "Tomsk is a very dull town." In 2004, for the city's 400th anniversary, Tomsk answered with a two-metre bronze Chekhov on the Tom embankment. He is shown barefoot, as if he had lost his shoes in the city's mud, facing the Slavyansky Bazar restaurant where he dined. Students rub the statue's nose before exams.

Visitor guidance: The statue stands on the Tom embankment, opposite the Slavyansky Bazar.

Chekhov travelled across Siberia by train, horse-drawn carriage and river steamer. The crossing took 82 days, and along the way he wrote nine sketches collected as From Siberia. In Irkutsk he stopped in 1890 and called it an "intelligent city", a kinder verdict than the one he gave Tomsk. His lodgings are not recorded, so the pin marks the centre of the city.

Location precision: Sources say only that he stopped in Irkutsk; the pin marks the city centre, not a lodging.

Chekhov stayed in Nikolayevsk from 5 to 8 July 1890, before the last stretch to Sakhalin. In the first chapter of Sakhalin Island he notes the gloomy air of a town that had once prospered; by 1895 its population had dropped to about 1,000. On the Amur steamer to the island he saw a convict who had murdered his wife, in fetters, with his six-year-old daughter clambering after him; at night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers in a heap.

Location precision: The sources name the town but not where he stayed; the pin marks the town.

Chekhov reached Sakhalin on 11 (23) July 1890. Alexandrovsk, the administrative centre of the penal colony, was his base while he gathered material. By his own account he made a full census, personally talking to every convict and settler, and filled more than ten thousand cards. His book devotes several chapters to the post and calls it the "Sakhalin Paris". The town now has a Chekhov regional museum and a literary museum, Chekhov and Sakhalin.

Location precision: Chekhov's lodgings are not pinned; the pin marks the town of Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky.

Visitor guidance: The Chekhov museums are in the town; the 1864 lighthouse at Cape Zhonkier lies about 3 km away.

In the 1870s Dui became a kind of capital of the Sakhalin convict colony. Chekhov, who visited in 1890, wrote that its smooth, even street was like a parade ground and the whole place like a small old fortress, with only a drumroll missing. In the tidy little houses lived the commander of the military detachment, the prison warden, a priest and officers. The prison at Dui closed in 1904.

Location precision: The pin marks the settlement of Dui, not a specific building described by Chekhov.

Chekhov sailed home by sea on the steamer Peterburg. In Vladivostok it stood from 26 to 31 October, and he worked in the library of the Society for the Study of the Amur Region, gathering more material for his Sakhalin book. Then came Hong Kong, Singapore, Ceylon, the Suez Canal, Constantinople and Odessa. On 7 (19) December 1890 his family met him in Tula.

Location precision: The source places him in the Society's library; the pin marks the Society's museum building on ulitsa Petra Velikogo.