Language through Literature
The best way to read Russian literature in the original
Where the general tools stand
Most tools that claim to teach you Russian through reading are general-purpose readers pointed at whatever text you supply. They work, and for news or modern prose they work well.
What this is for instead
Nineteenth-century literature is a different problem: old orthography in the sources, heavy inflection, unwritten stress, and sentences built to be strange on purpose. This is built for exactly that — original classics with prepared word meanings, a translation for every sentence and the stress marked on every word.
The numbers, since they are checkable
Original texts by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: 114,550 running words in 8,637 sentences, 10,386 distinct dictionary words, and 22,409 inflected forms with prepared meanings and stress marks. The reading assistance is subject to correction. Just under half of the vocabulary — 4,731 words — appears exactly once, which is why the word lists here are ordered by how many whole sentences a word unlocks rather than by frequency.
Seven free editorial reading pages
Seven complete Chekhov stories are open on their reference pages with no account and no email address. The interactive courses have a separate learning sample:
- Смерть чиновника — The Death of a Clerk, 677 words
- Толстый и тонкий — Fat and Thin, 511 words
- Хамелеон — Chameleon, 901 words
- Лошадиная фамилия — A Horsey Name, 904 words
- Злоумышленник — The Malefactor, 1063 words
- Студент — The Student, 1124 words
- Ванька — Vanka, 1153 words
Try the learning sample · the full interactive library is €5 a month or €39 a year, cancellable in one click, and your reading record stays yours whatever happens to the subscription.