Russian President Dmitry Medvedev jetted to Chekhov's hometown of Taganrog in southern Russia, where he described the physician-turned-writer's short stories and plays as "immortal". Clutching a bouquet of cream roses, the Kremlin chief said we can still learn from the dozens of Chekhov works, which enjoy an enduring universal appeal and have inspired other renowned writers, including James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
Though his myriad of short stories are enormously popular in his homeland, it is his theatrical contributions to world drama that have earned Chekhov international fame. British playwright Top Stoppard and America's David Mamet have both re-worked works by the humble, often bespectacled Chekhov and women revered him for giving them a strong voice by creating complex female characters.
At his snow-covered grave in Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery, where he lies beside his wife, actress Olga Knipper, theatre enthusiasts huddled in -20 C (-4 F) temperatures to pay homage to the writer who was born on January 29. 1860. Laying down a wreath, Faivre d'Arcier, who has directed Chekhov plays for years, compared the Russian writer to 17th century French playwright Jean-Baptiste Moliere.
Russia this week launched a nation-wide, six-month festival in honour of Chekhov, who lived throughout the Russian empire working as a doctor, including a stint in the Far East island of Sakhalin on the Pacific. His biographers say it was there, in 1890, as he interviewed prisoners in a penal colony for the census, that he became deeply preoccupied with human suffering.