Anton Chekhov in Russian
Chekhov is where a learner should start, and not as a consolation. His sentences are short, his vocabulary is the vocabulary of ordinary life, and a whole story fits in an evening — so the reward for finishing arrives while the effort is still fresh in the hand.
His works in the library
Смерть чиновника — The Death of a Clerk
A clerk sneezes on a general, and cannot survive having done it.
Толстый и тонкий — Fat and Thin
Two childhood friends meet at a station — until they establish which of them holds the higher rank.
Хамелеон — Chameleon
A police inspector changes his mind about a dog — depending on whose dog it turns out to be. The classic on rank-worship.
Лошадиная фамилия — A Horsey Name
The general has toothache, and the name of the man who can cure it is “something to do with horses”… The most famous joke in Russian.
Злоумышленник — The Malefactor
A peasant has been unscrewing nuts from the railway line — “for fishing weights”. An interrogation that is funny and then frightening.
Студент — The Student
A cold evening, a fire, a story about the apostle Peter — and suddenly everything connects. Chekhov's own favourite.
Ванька — Vanka
Nine-year-old Vanka writes a letter “to grandfather, in the village”. The shortest and the sharpest story on the shelf — and thick with village words: save it for later, not for first.
Мальчики — The Boys
Volodya comes home for the holidays with a mysterious friend. The escape to America is set for tomorrow.
Спать хочется — Sleepy
A thirteen-year-old nursemaid rocks somebody else's baby, night after sleepless night. One of the most frightening things Chekhov wrote.
Дама с собачкой — The Lady with the Dog
A holiday affair in Yalta that turns out, against everyone's intention, to be the central event of two lives.
The other writers
Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev and Dostoevsky — what each asks of a reader. Or see which book to start with and how much Russian you need.