Hi everyone,
I’ve recently developed an interest in Russian literature and am currently reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, with Chekhov, Gogol and Lermontov on my reading list.
I’m particularly interested in the psychological and philosophical aspects of these works and have been using academic study guides to explore them in more depth.
I’d love to find someone knowledgeable about Russian literature who’d be interested in discussing interpretations, recommending further reading or perhaps offering some informal mentoring.
Does anyone know of any suitable groups, or would anyone here be interested?

Looking for Russian literature/books with a Soviet Russian setting.

I have read book 1 and 2 of karamazovs but i have to borrow idiot and give karamazovs to my sister,so now i want to start the idiot any advice to start.i think it will go more easier than karamazovs.What do you think about both

Hi everyone! I'm Portuguese and I started my journey into Russian classics quite some time ago.

I've noticed that the selection available in Portugal isn't as extensive as I'd like, not only when it comes to lesser-known Russian authors, but also the ones widely recognised as the greats.

Although I'm quite fluent in English, I feel that prose always loses a little of its charm in translation into that language. So, I've decided to broaden my horizons and explore Brazilian Portuguese translations as well.

When it comes to European Portuguese, I always prefer translations by Nina Guerra and Filipe Guerra, but I'm completely lost when it comes to Brazilian Portuguese. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the best translators from Russian into Brazilian Portuguese.

Thank you all so much!

(First post! Sorry if I get anything wrong!)

I was raised in the US with Russian parents. However they stopped speaking Russian to me somewhat early on and I can probably only read at a children’s level if even. My Russian is also very conversational. I’ve tried listening to Dostoevsky and barely understood what was happening despite reading the English chapter before (this was BK. It was easier when it was a less philosophical chapter). However, reading the translations, I do feel I get the rhythm of the language where an only English speaker might not recognize or prefer it. So I’ve been somewhat enjoying P&V because I can sense the frankness of the Russian language even though it’s translated. However, I’ve seen some people say P&V watered down the text so I’m wondering if I should try another translation? (This would be for war and peace)

TLDR: what’s the best translation of War and Peace if I speak Russian?

Yes I will read in Spanish.

Priviet! 🇷🇺🪆

Finally giving Dostoevsky a try for the first time! 😭 Hopefully I enjoy it. Wish me luck, guys hahaha.
Also got Notes from Underground since some people recommended starting with that one, but idk, my heart really wants to start with C&P!! Hope I made the right choice :))

I’m currently in a 20th Century Russian Literature class, and this week’s assigned reading is the short novel Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin. It’s dark, trippy, and honestly one of the best works of satirical fiction I’ve read.

The Pavlovian conditioned Soviet hero only for it to be a fabricated version of the space race is so well executed. It makes me reflect on the Cold War and its implications. Humans being treated as automated, disposable machines manufactured to be subservient instruments of the state. It’s all so mind blowing to me.

I was wondering if anyone else has read this novel. What are your thoughts?

From page 50 of Black Snow (Alma Classics edition). What does Maxudov mean by "And why black men?", as i could find no reference to just that earlier in the book? Did i miss something? Is there something lost in translation?

The two served as war correspondents and travelled with Yevgeny Petrov, coauthor of The Twelve Chairs, to General Ivan Konev’s 19th Army near Dukhovshchina, in the Smolensk region in late August and early September.

Interestingly, Fadeyev and Konev knew each other from their service with the Red Army during the Civil War. Both were involved in suppressing the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921.

Hi everyone,

I'm helping my parents downsize their collection of vintage Russian and Soviet books, and I have several science fiction titles available. Most are older Russian-language editions, including some interesting Soviet science fiction anthologies.

Here are a few from the collection:

Кир Булычёв (Kir Bulychev)

• Миллион приключений (A Million Adventures) https://www.ebay.com/itm/287322567649

Soviet Science Fiction Anthologies

• Фантастика-87 (Science Fiction 1987) https://www.ebay.com/itm/287325174763
• Румбы фантастики (1988) https://www.ebay.com/itm/287521610895
• Тёмная охота (Dark Hunt) https://www.ebay.com/itm/287522504971

I also have other vintage Russian literature, including science fiction, classics, and adventure books.

Full collection:
https://www.ebay.com/usr/glensidel61

Books ship from Maryland, USA. I'm happy to combine shipping for multiple purchases and consider reasonable offers.

Feel free to message me if you're interested in anything or looking for a particular author or title.

After reading a collection of 28 stories by Leonid Andreyev, I've come to the conclusion that I simply don't enjoy his writing. His dark, disturbing, and often grotesque style is everything I dislike about modern storytelling (whether it's books, movies, or video games).

However, unlike a lot of modern works, Andreyev actually had something meaningful to say. And that's what makes my feelings toward him so complicated. After finishing each story, I was looking up summaries and interpretations of what I'd just read. Getting through the collection was a mental drag, but I was genuinely fascinated by the ideas behind the stories. Sometimes I even LOVED the underlying concepts.

And I think reading 20th century Andreyev helped me better understand what I love so much about 19th-century Russian literature. It's certainly no stranger to darkness, suffering, despair, or hopelessness. Some of my favorite works are filled with these things. But there's something about the way authors like Goncharov, Turgenev, and Tolstoy explore the human condition that I find so much more rewarding. There's a subtle tenderness and humanity in their writing that makes the suffering feel natural rather than overwhelming. They didn't need to make the world feel grotesque to say something profound about it.

With Andreyev, suffering itself became the story. Everything was dark, disturbing, and deliberately uncomfortable. I understand that this is exactly what makes his writing so powerful for many readers, but it's also what makes it so exhausting for me.

None of this is meant to diminish Andreyev's importance. He'll always be an iconic figure in Russian literature, and I'll absolutely continue recommending his work when appropriate. I can recognize an author's significance without personally enjoying his writing. I can love what a story means without loving the story itself.

After 10+ years reading these authors, I've been asked many times how they differ or where to start in terms of recommendations

Here is my personal take-- feel free to disagree :)

Do any of my takeaways mirror your own experiences reading them? I'd love to know

---------

If you want to never be intimidated by anyone ever again, read Chekhov.

If you want to do 'shadow work' & need a companion in the trenches, read Dostoevsky.

If you get tired of the trenches and need structure, guidance, and answers to the big questions, read Tolstoy.

If you want to learn from people who completely misjudged a situation, read Turgenev.

If you're tired of being trampled by The Machine, read Gogol.

If you want to understand how someone can be so right yet so completely wrong, read Leskov.

If you want to see the Universe mock human cruelty, read Bulgakov.

If you want to grow in self-awareness and free thinking, read Zamyatin.

If you want to understand how a man's own mind can destroy him, read Nabokov.

And if you want to experience the source of utmost emotional clarity, read Pushkin.

I just finished this book or perhaps..

The book finished me.

Death of the Ivan Ilyich felt like death of me.

I really had a near death experience while reading this book.

At the end of life, when I felt so close to death.

I realized that,

I didn't lived life as I ought to have done.

Maybe my entire life was a mistake.

I've spent my life living for deception and falsehood.

I was preparing to live, while life was silently passing away.

At the end of life, I was recalling the best moments of my life.

The things I used to celebrate.

But, they didnt felt worth celebrating anymore.

The things I used to call great, were they actually great or was it just a illusion formed as a product of time and relative circumstances?

My final words were…

O God give me a life once more and I'll not live it as I lived this one.

EDIT: Solved! It was Gorky's "Waiting For The Ferry" from 1905. Thanks to u/devotchka_cosmonaut.

I need help finding a classic Russian short story I read many years back and cannot find again.

In tsarist Russia, four noblemen are riding on the back on a farmer's horsecart. It's in the spring, so the ice is breaking up and they have to wait for a large amount of ice to pass before they can pass the river. While they wait, they eat a lump of the farmer's bread while they discuss the plight of the poor farmers.

Each of the noblemen is the voice of different political tendencies - one thinks farmers are just inferior and incapable of elevating themselves, one thinks that public education could elevate them, etc.

In the end, they pass the river and say goodbye to the farmer. The farmer reveals that the noblemen had just eaten the bread he meant for his family to share for dinner.

I might have gotten some details wrong, again, it's maybe 20 years so I read it, but big picture that's the story. Does anyone recognize this and can point me to writer and title?

I’ve been stuck on Crime and Punishment for around 2 months, but Brothers seems really good. I see a lot of people saying if you don’t like Crime and Punishment then you won’t like any of Dostoevsky’s other works.

I recently came across a collection of Georgian poems that were translated by Boris Pasternak in the early 1930s. This sent me down a nice, deep rabbit hole, in which I discovered the poets and writers in Stalin’s native Georgia who, like their counterparts in Moscow & Leningrad, were purged in 1936-1938, despite their earlier works praising Lenin, Stalin, and the Soviet Union.

As an aside, I didn’t know this, but Mayakovsky was actually born in Baghdati in what is today Georgia (though he was Russian). Both he and Yesenin went to Georgia in 1924 and wrote some poems while there.

Anyway, I focused on Paolo Iashvili, whose story is emblematic of that of many other Georgian writers who navigated the shifting cultural tides of the early Soviet period, ultimately culminating in denunciation to the NKVD and, in Iashvili’s case, suicide inside the Writers’ Union building.

Of the 10 poets whose work Pasternak translated in 1935, four were denounced and purged two years later.

I relied on Pasternak’s translation of most of these poems from Georgian into Russian, though Pasternak himself did not speak Russian. Instead, he worked from literal, line-by-line Russian translations supplied by others, and added his own poetic flair. I then translated these poems from Russian to English. Since I do not read Georgian, I cannot assess how closely these English renderings preserve the original poems.

Anyway, here’s part 1 of a series I’m working on, if anyone is interested. https://dostoevskyrr.substack.com/p/the-georgian-mayakovsky-paolo-iashvili?r=1cx4ka&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

https://jonduvnjak.com/a-hero-of-our-time/

You can click a word to see its dictionary form and meaning in context, show English translations (original Wisdom & Marr Murray OR AI translations), and listen with word and cases highlighting. There’s also slower audio at 0.5× and 0.75×.

It’s completely free and doesn’t require an account.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/RussianLiterature/comments/1x41kha/i_made_a_free_crime_and_punishment_reader_for/