the city is boring..."

City deputies, together with members of the Council of Elders, discussed the initiative to move the monument to Chekhov. According to city elders, such a sculpture does not decorate the governor’s quarter, and it needs to be moved to another place, for example, to the park in front of the Art Museum.

“The Governor’s Quarter is not a place for the image of Chekhov, or for anyone else. The Governor’s Quarter is the Governor’s Quarter, it must meet our life requirements and views,” said Pavel Sukhoteply, a member of the Council of Elders of Tomsk.

According to the Tomsk writer Sergei Zaplavny, the depiction of Chekhov through the eyes of a drunk man who has not read Kashtanka is a real blasphemy towards the writer. In his opinion, the sculpture should be made in a strict manner, and the humorous composition of Leonty Usov should be removed from the Embankment. “Look how he is depicted. Many people don’t know what kind of windings he has on his legs. He was riding, he had tight boots, it was cold, slushy weather. He stopped the chaise, took off his boots, and, as he wrote in a letter to his relatives, “My stockings are blowing my nose.” So the sculptor depicted these stockings. And then they started telling the story that his galoshes had disappeared,” the writer noted.

Following the meeting, the issue of the monument to Chekhov will be considered by the working group on urban design under the town planning council of the mayor's office. It includes deputies, representatives of the public and the media. The group will also include members of the Council of Elders.

The author of the sculpture, Leonty Usov, is pleased with the attention to his work. “I really like that every year this wave rises, love and interest in this monument does not disappear, the excitement does not stop, and again the people are fighting - everyone actually defends Anton Palych, except for a few people. From the side of sensible people, this fight for removing Chekhov is an insult to their feelings, the fact that I’m mocking Russian culture, of course, is good if I’m mocking it. It seems to me that this is some kind of panopticon,” the sculptor said.

According to him, a book about the Silk Road was published in England. “Each city where the route passed is marked with a brand, an emblem of the city. You open a page with Tomsk, and there is this monument,” added Leonty Usov.

From Anton Chekhov's letters about Tomsk: “They report that the assistant chief of police wants to see me. What is this? The alarm is in vain. The policeman turns out to be a lover of literature and even a writer; he came to me to worship. He went home for his drama and, it seems, wants to treat me with it . Now he will come and again interfere with writing...

The policeman returned. He didn’t read the drama, although he brought it with him, but he treated her to a story. Not bad, but too local. He showed me a gold bar. I asked for vodka. I don’t remember a single Siberian intellectual who, having come to me, would not ask for vodka. He said that he had a “Lover” - a married woman; He gave me a petition addressed to the highest name for divorce to read. Then he suggested that I go and see the Tomsk brothels.

Returning from brothels. Disgusting. Two o'clock in the morning. Tomsk is a boring, drunken city, there are no beautiful women at all, the lawlessness is Asian. This city is remarkable because governors die in it.”