Chekhov's Purchase of Melikhovo for 13,000 Roubles and the Rebuilding of the House in the 1950s

Chekhov bought Melikhovo after a long search for suitable property in other regions: he came across an advertisement in a newspaper and all but sight unseen decided to take it. It was the first house of their own, one might say, since the days of serfdom, and the whole large Chekhov family settled there. A spacious corridor with ‘Italian’ stained-glass windows connected the cosy drawing rooms and the small bedrooms of his parents, his sister and Anton Pavlovich himself. The estate consisted of scattered plots of a size enormous by our standards, upwards of two hundred desyatinas, and it cost not so very much by the measure of today's Moscow region: 13,000 roubles, which in our money comes to some 17 to 20 million, and for 213 hectares with buildings, orchards, fields, a pond and a forest that is simply a dream, is it not? 😏 After the revolution the house fell into ruin, although up to 1917 the new owners had kept it in impeccable condition, and in the 1950s it had to be rebuilt from scratch on the surviving foundations, while the furniture and exhibits for the museum collections were gathered bit by bit, from relatives, local peasants, acquaintances, friends and goodness knows where else