Audioguía Teacher's apartment

Before the late 1890s, the vast majority of rural schools in Russia were arranged in common countryside izba (log houses), rented from local peasants. As a rule, such premises did not meet sanitary and hygienic requirements. From the mid-1890s, the provincial Zemstvo (taking into account the recommendations of the district sanitary boards) began to make plans for school buildings and regulate their construction.

Each school, built by A. P. Chekhov, had a flat for the teacher, and "not a little one, it was of three or four rooms".

The Melikhovo school was smaller in size than those in villages of Talezh and Novoselki; the teacher’s apartment in it had two rooms and a kitchen. Maria Ivanovna Gracheva, who used to be a teacher in the Melikhovo school, described her flat in detail:

"A room for dining was oblong. A large window facing the South was curtained off with white canvas blinds. In the corner there was a large cupboard, a big Indian rubber tree was growing by the window up to the ceiling. Against the wall there was a table; it was large and well made. At the window and near the table there were four yellow bentwood chairs (in Russian - Viennese chairs).”

In the evenings, the teacher was sitting at a large writing desk by the light of a kerosene lamp in complete silence: she was preparing for the next day of the school. It was rather difficult to conduct lessons for all three classes simultaneously in one room, therefore, a teacher needed much time to prepare, and thus she had to be very resourceful through gaining experience. 

The teacher’s side of the school building had a Russian stove; it was large enough to warm up the whole apartment. The school room had a Dutch style tiled stove. Its front side warmed the teaching area while the other side gave additional heat to the teachers’ apartment.  Local peasants were responsible to bring firewood for the school; they stocked up firewood in winter for the whole year. Luba, a school watchman’s wife, was in charge of keeping fire in the stoves.

There is a medicine box on the left side of the wall. It stores small empty old-time glass bottles and boxes used for drugs. The teacher kept them not only for her family. During the Civil War Maria Gracheva assumed one more important responsibility. She provided medical treatment for local residents, since there was only one hospital in the area located in Davydova Pustyn’ monastery.

Some other Melikhovo teachers also lived in this comfortable apartment of the school. The first Melikhovo schoolteacher was Maria F. Terentyeva, who came here on invitation of Anton P. Chekhov, and then here came V. A. Lewandowski-Nemirovich and A. I. Shelagurova.

The teachers, who worked here later, had their own houses in the village of Melikhovo, and then the teacher's apartment was rearranged into another classroom.