100TH ANNIVERSARY OF CHEKHOV'S DEATH

MOSCOW, May 15 (RIA Novosti's culture analyst Maria Tupoleva) - Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Russian writer Anton Chekhov. Konstantin Stanislavsky once called him "the best of men." Leo Tolstoy considered him the prose equivalent of Alexander Pushkin. Although he only lived for 44 years, he left a great literary legacy. His famous plays, "The Cherry Orchard," "The Three Sisters," "Uncle Vanya" and "The Seagull" are wildly popular all over the world. Unesco declared that 2004 was Chekhov Year.

Many newspapers covered the anniversary of the prominent writer's death. "The 100 years since Chekhov's death did distance us from the beloved writer but, on the contrary, deepened, refined and clarified many aspects of his life and work," Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary newspaper) said. Chekhov's works remain current. In the beginning of 2004, the Young Chekhov international conference was held in Taganrog (southern Russia), where he was born. Melikhovo, the village in the Moscow region where he wrote remarkable works like "The Grasshopper," "Rothschild's Fiddle," "The Teacher of Literature," "The Seagull," "Uncle Vanya," "The Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard," was the location of the 100 Years after Chekhov international conference. Chekhov researchers from England, Italy, Poland, the U.S., Iran, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Germany, Japan, France, Finland and Taiwan attended the conference. The best materials from the conference were included in the collection, "100 Years after Chekhov."

A monument to Chekhov will finally be unveiled in Yalta, where his story "The Lady with the Lapdog" is set. The writer had to move to the Black Sea resort because he suffered from tuberculosis.

Commemorative events were also held in Moscow. As part of the Stanislavsky international foundation's Chekhov Season, theatre events were held in Moscow Moreover, there will be a festival showing films of the best performances of Chekhov plays and the presentation of the album, "The Cherry Orchard: 100 Years."

According to Literaturnaya Gazeta, Chekhov's talent is respected in Russia and overseas. For instance, the Diogenes Publishing House (Germany) will release the most complete collection of Chekhov's works ever published. This fall Chekhov researchers will gather in Badenweiler, a health resort in Germany where the writer died. The Vietnamese literature institute held a research conference on his unique talent.

Today literature and art figures and common people will go to Chekhov's grave in the Novodevichy cemetery to pay tribute to the writer.