A LingQ alternative for reading Russian literature
What LingQ is better at
LingQ is the most complete reading platform there is: dozens of languages, a huge imported library, its own audio, and a well-worn known/unknown word system. If you want breadth, or you are learning three languages at once, it is the better tool and this is not close.
What this is for instead
This is the opposite bet: one language, fifteen books, and every word of them prepared by hand rather than machine-imported. Stress marks on every form — which matters enormously in Russian and which imported texts almost never carry. A translation written for each sentence, not a machine gloss. And no monthly platform to belong to: seven complete Chekhov stories are free with no account at all.
The numbers, since they are checkable
Fifteen texts by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: 68,172 running words in 5,075 sentences, 7,746 distinct dictionary words, and 15,261 inflected forms glossed by hand with their stress marked. Just under half of the vocabulary — 3,824 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.
No trial, no card — the seven are simply free
Seven complete Chekhov stories are open with no account and no email address, so you can judge all of this yourself in about five minutes rather than taking a comparison page's word for it:
- 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
Open the reader · the full library is €5 a month or €39 a year, cancellable in one click, and your reading record stays yours whatever happens to the subscription.