Anything will be hard to translate between languages as distant as English and Russian, to be quite honest. Monday Begins on Saturday just has more contemporary cultural references that Russian readers understand. Chekhov's stories probably have just as many but they are just as lost to the contemporary Russian reader as they would be to an English translation one :)

On the other hand, I remember watching Russian translation of the Naked Gun and finding it extremely funny even though neither I nor the translator understood any references there so, I guess, it's still possible to enjoy art without the context.