А. П. Чехов
Смерть чиновника
Free
1883
The Death of a Clerk
A clerk sneezes on a general, and cannot survive having done it.
The bookshelfRussian · Language through Literature
Language through Literature
24 Russian classics you can actually read
Choose an original Russian story by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Read with word meanings, sentence translations and audio beside you. Complete free stories and free openings let you begin without an account; a subscription opens the wider library and guided courses across all four languages.
А. П. Чехов
Толстый и тонкий
Free
1883
Fat and Thin
Two childhood friends meet at a station — until they establish which of them holds the higher rank.
А. П. Чехов
Хамелеон
Free
1884
Chameleon
A police inspector changes his mind about a dog — depending on whose dog it turns out to be. The classic on rank-worship.
А. П. Чехов
Лошадиная фамилия
Free
1885
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.
А. П. Чехов
Злоумышленник
Free
1885
The Malefactor
A peasant has been unscrewing nuts from the railway line — “for fishing weights”. An interrogation that is funny and then frightening.
А. П. Чехов
Студент
Free
1894
The Student
A cold evening, a fire, a story about the apostle Peter — and suddenly everything connects. Chekhov's own favourite.
А. П. Чехов
Ванька
Free
1886
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.
А. П. Чехов
Мальчики
1887
The Boys
Volodya comes home for the holidays with a mysterious friend. The escape to America is set for tomorrow.
А. П. Чехов
Спать хочется
1888
Sleepy
A thirteen-year-old nursemaid rocks somebody else's baby, night after sleepless night. One of the most frightening things Chekhov wrote.
А. П. Чехов
Медведь
1888
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.
А. П. Чехов
Скрипка Ротшильда
1894
Rothschild's Violin
A coffin-maker counts his life in losses — until a willow by the river shows him what it cost.
А. П. Чехов
Анна на шее
1895
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.
А. П. Чехов
Человек в футляре
1898
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.
А. П. Чехов
Крыжовник
1898
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.
А. П. Чехов
О любви
1898
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.
А. П. Чехов
Дама с собачкой
1899
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.
А. П. Чехов
Душечка
1899
The Darling
Olenka can only think her husband’s thoughts. Chekhov’s gentlest and most unsettling story, and Tolstoy’s favourite.
Л. Н. Толстой
После бала
1903
After the Ball
A ball, a mazurka, and what the same man was doing at dawn.
Н. В. Гоголь
Нос
1836
The Nose
Major Kovalyov's nose leaves his face and is seen about Petersburg in the uniform of a State Councillor.
Н. В. Гоголь
Шинель
1842
The Overcoat
A small man and his great overcoat. The founding story of Petersburg clerkdom, and of Russian prose after it.
Ф. М. Достоевский
Белые ночи
1848
White Nights
Four white nights and a morning. A dreamer meets Nastenka on the embankment and speaks to another person for the first time in his life.
И. С. Тургенев
Первая любовь
1860
First Love
Sixteen years old, a dacha outside Moscow, a princess next door — and the discovery of who she really loves.
А. П. Чехов
Палата № 6
1892
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.
А. П. Чехов
Дом с мезонином
1896
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.
Not sure where to start, or how many words you need first? Read how much Russian you need to read Chekhov — the honest numbers, measured on these very texts. The full ledger, book by book, is at Russian classics, counted, and whether you hold a particular book yet is answerable in forty words at can you read it.
Begin with «Лошадиная фамилия» — measured the easiest text on the shelf, and the most famous joke in Russian. The Chekhov shorts follow it, a thousand words or so each, all free; Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev stand at full length behind them.
Open the reader — the free stories are on the shelf the moment it loads.
Questions learners ask
- How long until you can read Dostoevsky in Russian?
- Is Chekhov hard to read in Russian?
- Can you learn Russian just by reading?
- A LingQ alternative for reading Russian literature
- A Readlang alternative for Russian
- The best way to read Russian literature in the original
The other four rooms
The same reader, the same glosses, four more languages. The German room holds eight tales from the Brothers Grimm and Johann Peter Hebel, with «Der süße Brei» free entire. The Spanish room holds Horacio Quiroga's «Cuentos de la selva» — eight jungle tales of 1918, written for his own children and among the very few works a beginner in Spanish can read whole and in the original. The French room holds Perrault's fairy tales and three of Daudet's stories, with «La Dernière classe» free entire. One subscription opens all four. The Italian room holds Collodi's «Cappuccetto Rosso», four of Capuana's fiabe, two tales from De Amicis's «Cuore» and Pirandello's «La giara», with «Cappuccetto Rosso» free entire.