Language through Literature
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”. One of the shortest stories on the shelf, and the sharpest — 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.
Медведь — The Bear
A widow in mourning, the creditor who will not leave, and a duel proposed in the name of equal rights. Chekhov’s one-act farce, played everywhere since 1888.
Скрипка Ротшильда — Rothschild's Violin
A coffin-maker counts his life in losses — until a willow by the river shows him what it cost.
Анна на шее — Anna on the Neck
A girl barely out of school is married to a frightened official three times her age, discovers at one ball what her beauty is worth, and never looks back.
Человек в футляре — The Man in a Case
A schoolmaster who keeps his umbrella, his watch and his face in cases, and holds a whole town in fear for fifteen years.
Крыжовник — Gooseberries
A man spends his life saving for a country place with gooseberries in it, and gets one. His brother cannot forgive him for being happy.
О любви — About Love
A man and a married woman spend years not saying what they both know, and understand it only when the third bell rings.
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.
Душечка — The Darling
Olenka can only think her husband’s thoughts. Chekhov’s gentlest and most unsettling story, and Tolstoy’s favourite.
Палата № 6 — Ward No. 6
A doctor who has decided that suffering does not matter is put in his own asylum ward. Chekhov’s longest and hardest reckoning.
Дом с мезонином — The House with the Mezzanine
An idle painter, two sisters, and an argument about whether small good deeds help at all. It ends on three words everybody in Russia knows.
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.