 In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist.The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry.The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak.