The problem isn’t the story itself. It’s how the book is written.

I’m talking about Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin.

Novel in Verse

Pushkin wrote it using a highly specific poetic form called the Onegin stanza, while filling it with wordplay, irony, literary references, and cultural nuances.

And Nabokov spent years working on his English translation . But he made a radical choice. He sacrificed rhyme and poetic form for literal accuracy.

His translation was deliberately prosaic and rhymeless, and it came with hundreds of pages of detailed commentary.

Nabokov believed that preserving Pushkin’s exact meaning was more important than trying to recreate his poetry with new English rhymes.

But other translators made the opposite choice. For example, Walter Arndt’s translation preserves Pushkin’s rhyme scheme and the Onegin stanza. It’s much more musical, but something inevitably changes in translation.

Then Why Should You Read It?

And yet, I absolutely recommend reading it, even in translation.

1️⃣ Eugene Onegin was famously described by the critic Vissarion Belinsky as an “encyclopedia of Russian life.”

And it really is: the novel gives you a fascinating glimpse into Russian society at the beginning of the 19th century (from fashion and food to social conventions, marriage, fidelity, and a woman’s expected role).

2️⃣ Onegin is one of the earliest and most influential examples of the “superfluous man” in Russian literature, and it’s fascinating to see how modern his character can still feel today.

Also, if you want to understand Russian literature, it’s important to start recognising literary types.

So which would you choose: a translation that preserves the rhyme, or one that stays as close as possible to Pushkin’s exact meaning?

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Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

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Of course, this isn’t entirely fair. Russian literature has plenty of humor, playfulness, absurdity, and even relatively happy endings (here is my article about it). But if you look at the works that have become internationally famous, suffering is certainly a recurring theme.

Still, I don’t want you to suffer.

I want to make your literary life a little less complicated and a lot more fun. Because reading is much more enjoyable when you understand what you’re looking at. You don’t have to read a 600-page novel on autopilot, desperately trying to reach the last page so you can check it off your list.

Russian literature becomes much more interesting once you know what questions to ask.

So here are five questions that can help you understand almost any 19th-century Russian classic.

And yes, you can use them even if you’ve never read Russian literature before.

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1. What is happening?

This sounds ridiculously obvious, but it’s actually one of the easiest things to forget.

Russian literature is famous for being philosophical, psychological, and full of long conversations about God, morality, society, politics, and the meaning of life. But underneath all of that, there is still a story.

Take Crime and Punishment. A man kills an old woman. That’s essentially the plot in one sentence. Then we follow him and ask: Will he regret it? Will he be caught? What will happen to him?

But even when the plot seems almost secondary, you still need to understand what is actually happening. Once you understand what happens, you can start asking the much more interesting question:

2. Why does this matter?

Russian literature is, in many ways, a literature of ideas. The plot, prose, characters do matter, but underneath them are universal questions: How should we live? What is truth? What is good? What do we owe other people? What is God? What happens when our ideas collide with reality?

Characters often become a way for writers to explore these questions.

Take Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. One of its central characters, Bazarov, is a nihilist. He rejects many of the values, traditions, and beliefs of the older generation.

At first glance, the story is fairly simple. Bazarov and his friend Arkady arrive at Arkady’s family estate and encounter his father and uncle (imagine yourself going to a friend’s place for a sleepover :D)

But the estate becomes a kind of laboratory for ideas. The older generation represents one way of seeing the world. Bazarov represents another.

And that is how a simple plot evolves into a much larger question: What happens when a new generation rejects everything the previous generation believed in?

Seeeee: the plot and then the idea behind it.

3. When does this take place?

The characters may live in the same country you recognize on a map, but they may be living in a completely different social world, so look up when the book was published and when the story takes place. It can completely change your reading.

And I will give you thge most important historical date for Russian literature of the 19th century:

1861 — the abolition of serfdom

Before 1861, serfdom was a fundamental part of Russian society. Peasants were legally and socially tied to landowners and the land on which they lived. Noble landowners could own estates, while the peasants living and working on those estates were a major source of their income.

And once you know this, certain literary characters suddenly make much more sense.

Take Goncharov’s Oblomov. The novel was published before the abolition of serfdom. So why can Oblomov spend years sitting at home doing practically nothing? Because his estate continues generating income. He doesn’t need to work. His servant Zakhar also belongs to a social world in which simply leaving and finding another job isn’t as straightforward as it would be in a modern economy.

Now compare this with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, written after serfdom was abolished. We’re watching a society trying to figure out what comes next. Why does Stiva Oblonsky have financial problems? Because the old lifestyle of the landed nobility is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Why does Levin struggle to organize agricultural labor? Because the peasants are no longer serfs. He can’t simply order them to work. They are now free workers who can negotiate their labor.

Even the social awkwardness between Levin and the peasants becomes more understandable when you remember the old hierarchy. Levin may want to work alongside them, but to them he’s still a barin—a landowning gentleman.

So one historical fact—1861: serfdom was abolished—can transform the way you understand an entire generation of Russian novels.

4. What type of character am I looking at?

If you’re a beginner, the first three questions are enough (and I mean it).

What is happening? Why does it matter? When is it happening?

Start there.

But if you’ve already read some Russian literature, there’s another useful question: What kind of character is this? Because 19th-century Russian literature has recurring character types. And once you learn to recognize them, you’ll start noticing that writers aren’t always inventing characters completely from scratch.

There are roughly four types that I want you to know.

“Superfluous man”

If you get the feeling that this person simply doesn’t fit into the world around them, you’re probably looking at the “superfluous man.”

The superfluous man is usually an educated, intelligent nobleman who has the ability and privilege to do something with his life, but somehow cannot find a meaningful place in society. He is often bored with the social world around him, sometimes openly criticising it, but at the same time he is unable (or unwilling) to change it.

Examples: Eugene Onegin in Pushkin, Pechorin in Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, or Oblomov by Goncharov. They are very different characters, and we shouldn’t reduce them to the same person, but they all have something in common: they cannot find a meaningful way to live within the society they were born into.

“Little man”

If you find yourself thinking, “Oh my God, this is so unfair. Someone please help this person,” you’re probably looking at the “little man.”

The little man is usually someone of low social status: poor, powerless, ordinary, and without any significant influence over the world around him. And what makes this type so powerful is precisely how ordinary he is. He isn’t a great hero. He isn’t changing history. He’s just a human being trying to survive in a world that barely sees him.

Examples: Samson Vyrin in Pushkin’s The Stationmaster, Akaky Akakievich in Gogol’s The Overcoat, or Makar Devushkin in Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk.

“New man”

If you’re reading a character and thinking, “Wait, these ideas actually sound surprisingly modern,” you may be looking at the “new man.”

This type emerges particularly strongly in the literature of the 1860s, after the major reforms of the period. The new man is often someone who does not belong to the traditional nobility and tends to be associated with democratic and reformist ideas. He rejects old traditions and social hierarchies, believes in science, reason, education, and productive work, and wants to transform society rather than simply complain about it.

The most famous example is Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. You also see versions of this type in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? These characters are important because they represent a completely different relationship to life: instead of asking why the world is broken, they want to build a new one.

“Underground man”

If the character is literally sitting in some kind of “underground,” congratulations, you’ve probably found the “underground man.”

This is a very different type. The Underground Man from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is trapped not by his social position but by his own consciousness. He overthinks everything. He is bitter, self-conscious, contradictory, resentful, and deeply skeptical of the idea that human beings are rational creatures who simply act according to their own interests. He can’t stop analyzing himself, and at the same time, he can’t stop sabotaging himself. His prison is his own mind.

5. What is not said?

This might be the most important question of all.

What is left unsaid?

Russian literature loves details (=descriptions). A piece of clothing. A room. A facial expression. A gesture. The weather (oh THE WEATHER!). An oak tree. A color. An object that appears again and again.

And sometimes you’ll find yourself thinking:

Okay, it’s a shawl. Why are we spending so much time talking about this shawl?

Because it might not just be a shawl.

Take Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment.

Sonya finds herself in an incredibly difficult situation and is forced into sex work to support her family. At the same time, Dostoevsky surrounds her with ideas of compassion, faith, sacrifice, and spiritual purity. And she has a green shawl. You could simply notice the shawl and move on. But Dostoevsky often uses details as part of a larger symbolic system.

He doesn’t stop the novel and say:

Dear reader, I will now explain the symbolic meaning of the green shawl.

He shows it to you. You have to notice. And no, you’re not supposed to magically know all of this. Nobody is born knowing Russian literary symbolism (I swear, every time I discover new symbols in old novels).

That’s part of the fun of reading.

You don’t need to decode every symbol. But you should learn to pay attention. Here are five things I recommend watching for:

1. Names

Russian names can tell you a surprising amount about a character. Pay attention to what people are called—and how they’re called.

2. Weather

Dostoevsky especially loves this. In Crime and Punishment, the oppressive heat and stuffiness of St. Petersburg echo Raskolnikov’s psychological state. Weather becomes part of the atmosphere of the novel rather than simple background decoration (I also cover it in the guide).

3. Homes

Where does a character live? What does their room look like? Is it spacious or cramped? Clean or chaotic? Private or exposed? A character’s home can tell you things the character never says directly.

4. Recurring objects

Pay attention when something keeps coming back.

For example, Anna Karenina’s recurring red bag can become much more interesting once you start noticing how objects accumulate meaning throughout a novel.

5. References

Listen to what characters talk about. Who do they mention? Which writers? Which historical figures? Which philosophers?

Obvious example: Raskolnikov talks about Napoleon. That’s not random. Sometimes a character’s intellectual heroes tell you almost as much about them as their actions do.

So, how should you actually read Russian literature?

You don’t need to become a Russian literary scholar before opening your first book. But you should keep in mind these five questions:

1. What is happening?

Follow the story.

2. Why does this matter?

Look for the larger idea.

3. When is this happening?

Understand the historical and social world.

4. What type of character am I looking at?

Look for recurring literary types.

5. What is not being said?

Pay attention to details, symbols, objects, weather, names, and references.

That’s it.

You don’t need to understand everything on the first reading. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. The best Russian classics are books you can return to years later and suddenly discover that you were reading a completely different book than you thought.

They’re conversations you gradually learn how to hear.

So don’t be intimidated by the long novels, the philosophical discussions, the unfamiliar names, or the reputation for suffering.

Have you heard that Russian literature is depressing? What have you read? I’d love to know in the comments.

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Is Russian Literature Actually Depressing Or Have We All Been Lied To?

Top 5 Must-Read Russian Novels (If You Think Russian Lit Is Boring)

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

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Although I think I did a good job, something happened during the discussion that was completely beyond my capacity to plan. And this is why I’ll sleep peacefully at night knowing that AI will never replace writers, readers and books in general.

A Little Context for the Lecture (SPOILER ALERT)

During the lecture, I pointed out that Vronsky is deeply involved with horses and horse racing and Tolstoy repeatedly draws attention to his teeth. It is a detail that makes him almost horse-like. I also mentioned that, to my ear, his surname, Vronsky, sounds somewhat like the Russian word voronoy (вороной), an adjective traditionally associated with a black horse (and Vronsky has short black hair).

Near the end of the novel, Vronsky has a terrible toothache as he is leaving for the war, essentially going off in search of death.

After discussing Vronsky, we moved on to Anna’s suicide.

One of the participants, who has a background in psychiatry, talked about the possibility of interpreting Anna’s behaviour through the lens of borderline personality disorder.

Of course, Tolstoy had never heard of this term but that doesn’t mean the psychological phenomena we describe today didn’t exist in his time.

And then, at the end of the lecture, another participant said that everything we had discussed made her think about Vronsky differently.

She remembered the scene in which Vronsky breaks Frou-Frou’s back. Frou-Frou is the horse who is often interpreted as paralleling Anna, whom Vronsky also fails, in a sense, to “master.”

But then she went one step further. She asked a question:

What if Vronsky should be read as a horse himself?

Think about it: Frou-Frou’s back is broken, and she has to be killed because she can no longer continue living. And Vronsky, in a strange parallel, is also broken. But unlike Anna, he cannot successfully kill himself. He tried and failed!

So his only remaining option is to go to war, where, as I had pointed out earlier, he is essentially going in search of death. Like a horse, Vronsky cannot kill himself; he needs someone else to pull the trigger and liberate him from suffering he cannot escape (his back is already broken!).

Isn’t that just WOW?

We don’t know whether Tolstoy consciously intended this parallel (I wish he left us the explanations of every scene!) but we can discuss it as readers because a book can’t be seen only through the eyes of a writer (hi Roland Barthes!).

The magic happened in Google meets.

All those tiny details we had discussed separately—Vronsky’s teeth, horses, Frou-Frou, Anna’s suicide, Vronsky’s failed suicide attempt, his decision to go to war—suddenly connected and became something much deeper.

That happened because we were looking at the same book through completely different lenses, bringing different backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking to the discussion. No AI can do that.

AI can give us analysis (that is already done by someone), answer some questions (sometimes not correctly), but it cannot recreate that moment when one person says something, another person connects it to something else, and suddenly the entire book opens up in a new way.

That moment of collective discovery is why I don’t think AI will ever replace book clubs or books (writers) themselves.

Artificial intelligence can analyze. It can generate. It can connect ideas. But it cannot experience. It is our personal experience, our own way of seeing the world, that makes us read books differently, talk about them, and discover something new in them. And, if we are writers, it is that same experience—our particular way of seeing and FEELING the world—that makes our voices unique.

AI can imitate a voice. It can produce a convincing style. But it cannot have lived the life that created that voice in the first place.

Somewhere on Instagram, I saw a reader write something along these lines:

“No, I don’t want AI to write a book about a parent’s death. I want a real human being who has lived through it.”

I also want a SOUL behind a book, and I can tell the difference (I am sure you can too!).

However, there are other things AI brings with it that genuinely worry me: the environmental cost, the appropriation of artists’ work, and the growing flood of soulless AI-generated content. That does terrify me.

But AI replacing writers and books? No. At least not in my lifetime.

What do you think?

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P.S. If you’re wondering how to watch a recording of my Anna Karenina lecture, I’m happy to share that I’m currently working on a series of YouTube videos featuring literary analysis, as well as a closer look at Tolstoy’s life and his relationship with Sofia Tolstaya.

Stay tuned and follow me on YouTube!

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Sex Work in Russian Literature: Compassion Instead of Condemnation?

Top 5 Must-Read Russian Novels (If You Think Russian Lit Is Boring)

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

This is how Anna Karenina begins, and perhaps this is how I can describe all Russian literature about marriages.

For better or worse, finding a happy marriage—or even a family that resembles the warmth of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott—in the Russian novel is very difficult (though the Rostovs in War and Peace come close in spirit: chaotic, yes, but loving, warm, and supportive). In Russian literature, happy marriages are rarely the norm. More often, writers focus on “failed” unions: marriages poisoned by emotional coldness, tyranny, infidelity, unequal power, financial calculation, or impossible expectations.

You could argue that happiness simply makes for a less interesting story, readers want drama, conflict, heartbreak. And you might be right. I cannot climb inside the heads of Russian classics to find out why they were so fascinated by unhappiness :D

BUUUUUTTTT—

I am publishing this essay on my wedding day: the day I myself say “yes” to the person whom I hope will remain beside me for the rest of my life. (Yes, it sounds cliché, maybe naïve, perhaps even slightly embarrassing in our age of cynicism. But what can I say? I was raised on ideals of eternal love.)

So, despite all the evidence provided by Russian literature, I decided to go looking for happy marriages.

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Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Moral Question of Marriage

Tolstoy began writing Anna Karenina immediately after finishing War and Peace. If, as he himself said, War and Peace was driven by “the thought of the people” (мысль народная), then Anna Karenina is animated by what he called “the family thought” (мысль семейная). Tolstoy asks a question: What is a marriage? or How to build a happy marriage?

At first glance, Anna Karenina appears to be a novel about adultery. In reality, it is a novel about models of love and marriage.

The dominant social model in 19th-century Russian aristocratic society was what we might call a contractual marriage. It often functioned as an alliance between families, a social arrangement shaped by class, financial security, reputation, and dynastic continuity. Affection could emerge later but it was rarely the prerequisite.

Anna and Karenin embody this structure almost perfectly.

Anna marries Alexei Karenin, a government official nearly twenty years her senior, not out of passion but suitability. Their marriage is based on respectability, stability, and social function. Karenin is not monstrous; in many ways, Tolstoy deliberately refuses to make him one. He is dutiful, disciplined, morally rigid, and emotionally restrained. The tragedy is precisely that nothing dramatic is “wrong” (except the absence of intimacy).

Anna’s affair with Vronsky initially appears to offer liberation: passion instead of propriety, emotional authenticity instead of obligation. Yet Tolstoy refuses to romanticize desire. What begins as ecstatic love slowly corrodes under jealousy, insecurity, and social isolation. Passion alone, the novel suggests, cannot sustain ordinary life.

Tolstoy’s suspicion of erotic love is personal. By the time he wrote Anna Karenina, he had developed an increasingly ascetic moral philosophy shaped by Christianity, classical ethics, and patriarchal ideals of domestic order. He viewed marriage as an ethical institution rather than a vehicle for self-fulfillment. Monogamy, family responsibility, self-restraint, and mutual moral labor mattered more than emotional intensity. Sexual desire itself often appears in Tolstoy as destabilizing—even dangerous—when detached from moral purpose.

This is partly why Anna and Vronsky seem doomed from the start. Their relationship is built on passion, and in Tolstoy’s moral universe, passion burns brightly but cannot endure.

But Anna Karenina offers another possibility.

Kitty and Levin are often described as the novel’s “happy” couple

They are Tolstoy’s counterweight to Anna and Vronsky. Yet what makes their marriage fascinating is that it is far from idealized.

They misunderstand one another constantly. Kitty struggles to comprehend Levin’s existential and spiritual anxieties. Her world revolves around the domestic sphere, children, and the rhythms of everyday life; Levin is consumed by philosophical doubt, religious searching, and moral self-interrogation. At times, she finds his intellectual obsessions puzzling, even unnecessary. Why read philosophy endlessly if one simply wishes to believe?

And yet, unlike Anna and Vronsky, Kitty and Levin are not sustained by passion alone. Their marriage survives because it learns how to absorb difference. Love here is not ecstatic transcendence but daily practice: compromise, care, forgiveness, ordinary presence.

Leo Tolstoy was a fierce opponent of women’s emancipation

However, as nice as it sounds—learning to live with one another—I won’t let you forget that Tolstoy held deeply anti-women views. He criticized women’s pursuit of equality, arguing that their primary purpose was motherhood and family life, and that any attempt to participate in public life would ultimately lead to social decline. Tolstoy believed that women’s activities were always shaped by what he saw as their “reproductive nature”.

He was also highly skeptical of equal rights and women’s participation in traditionally “male” spheres—science, medicine, politics—viewing such developments as destructive to the traditional social order.

This context matters when we read Kitty. Her “naivety” and, to some extent, even her simplicity, reflect the kind of woman Tolstoy idealized. Kitty is not unintelligent, but she is written as emotionally intuitive, domestic, and deeply devoted to family life. In many ways, exactly the kind of woman Tolstoy believed women should be.

What About Female Writers?

Russian literature may be dominated by men, but women writers were there from the very beginning, even if literary history often pushed them into the margins. One of the most fascinating examples is Elena Gan, a writer who was once enormously popular but later slipped into relative obscurity.

Literary critics frequently credit Elena Gan with introducing explicitly female experience into Russian literature. Some even regard her as one of the founders of a distinctly feminist tradition in Russian writing. During her lifetime, she was sometimes called the Russian George Sand, and contemporaries placed her name alongside Pushkin and Lermontov — praise that feels almost shocking today, given how little she is read now.

Marriage as a Prison for Women

In many ways, Gan’s heroines embody what the “ideal” Tolstoyan woman might actually feel like from the inside (yes, Tolstoy was younger than Gan, but their ideas about marriage emerged within the same broader social world).

If Tolstoy often presents domestic devotion as a moral ideal, for Gan, marriage without mutual love, intellectual companionship, or spiritual closeness is not merely disappointing, it is tragic. A social system that expected women to dissolve themselves entirely into marriage could become, for educated and emotionally complex women, a form of mental imprisonment. Society, in her works, punishes almost every attempt at female self-expression.

Her novella The Ideal (Идеал) offers the clearest example

Here, marriage becomes the primary source of unhappiness, spiritual isolation, and the gradual destruction of a woman’s inner life.

Its heroine, Olga, is trapped in a loveless marriage arranged by circumstance and parental expectation. Her husband, Colonel Golts, sees her less as a companion than as part of his social status. Lonely and emotionally starved, Olga escapes into fantasy, idealizing the poet Anatoly as someone who might finally understand her. But Gan refuses easy romanticism. Anatoly turns out to be neither soulmate nor savior, merely another disappointing man.

In the end, Gan brings her heroine to a tragic yet, within the writer’s worldview, almost inevitable conclusion. Anatoly’s deception and her husband’s emotional coldness shatter Olga’s illusions, leading to her premature death.

In The Ideal, marriage becomes a kind of sentence. One from which, for an intelligent and thinking woman, there seems to be no escape except religious resignation or destruction.

A somewhat similar (though not identical) perspective to Tolstoy’s is offered by Mikhail Sholokhov

For him, marriage is not only a private relationship but the moral foundation of communal life. In And Quiet Flows the Don, he portrays the world of the Don Cossacks, where patriarchal family structures and tradition shape everyday existence. Yet although Sholokhov respects these traditions, he also insists that marriage cannot truly survive without mutual love.

Like Tolstoy, Sholokhov suggests that passion alone is not enough. The central love story between Grigory and Aksinya—both married, both unfaithful to their spouses—is driven by powerful desire but ultimately leads to suffering and tragedy.

In Sholokhov’s worldview, an ideal marriage seems to require both tradition and love.

Perhaps this complexity came from Sholokhov’s personal experience. He spent his entire life married to Maria Sholokhova, a partnership often described as one of deep loyalty and mutual devotion. Maria consistently spoke warmly of her husband, and it seems like they did have a genuinely happy marriage.

Any happy marriages, please?

I could come up with dozens of unhappy marriages in Russian literature but there are also a few genuinely happy ones.

(careful, spoilers ahead)

In Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter…

Grinev is a decent, morally grounded man who marries a similarly good and principled woman. They are in love, but more importantly, they are both capable of responsibility. Their relationship is not dramatic or destructive; it is steady, ethical, and rooted in mutual trust.

In Goncharov’s Oblomov…

the situation becomes more complicated. Olga Ilinskaya and Stolz are often read as a “functional” happy couple: they share similar values, mutual respect, and a belief in personal development. Perhaps Olga needs a bit more emotional intensity, but overall their marriage is built on compatibility rather than illusion.

Some readers might also argue that Oblomov himself is “happy” with Agafya Matveevna, and in a way, he is. But it is a troubling kind of happiness: one that slowly draws him further into passivity and physical decline. So the question remains whether comfort alone can be called happiness.

In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment…

Dunya Raskolnikova and Razumikhin are, for me, one of the most genuinely balanced couples in all of literature. They meet as equals. There is respect, emotional clarity, and a shared sense of humanity between them — something rare in Dostoevsky’s world of psychological extremes.

Gogol’s Old World Landowners…

gives us something less fancy but deeply moving: Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna. Their marriage is built entirely on tenderness, routine care, and mutual dependence. There is no grand passion, but there is a kind of gentle unity so complete that it becomes its own form of love.

And finally, Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog…

Two people trapped in unhappy marriages meet and fall into an affair, only to choose each other in the end despite uncertainty and social consequences. Tolstoy would definetely not approve of that. But don’t people deserve a second chance at love?

In the end, Russian literature does not give us a single answer to what a “good” marriage is

If for Tolstoy marriage is primarily a moral choice—and, to some extent, the narrowing of a woman into an object rather than a subject within that union—then for Elena Gan this very “narrowing into an object” reveals why such a marriage cannot bring happiness to a woman at all.

To be fair, a “happy marriage” in Russian literature is, overall, a rare phenomenon, but not an impossible one. Even in the darker world of Dostoevsky, we can still find moments of happiness.

What do you think?

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You can find more Russian lit recs on my Substack:

Sex Work in Russian Literature: Compassion Instead of Condemnation?

Top 5 Must-Read Russian Novels (If You Think Russian Lit Is Boring)

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)


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Share Olga Ruchina on Substack | Russian lit

I know “sex work” is a modern term for prostitution, but in 19th-century novels it wasn’t used. I’m going to stick to both terms and use them interchangeably to describe the same thing: women selling sexual services.

In many cases, Russian literature approached sex work not through condemnation, but through compassion. Writers were often less interested in judging women who sold sex and more interested in asking: what social conditions brought them there? Poverty? Lack of choices? Gender inequality? Violence?

That does not mean Russian writers were universally progressive, nor that they celebrated prostitution. Far from it, especially when we consider how male writers can give us so many detailed portrayals of brothel life and the lives of sex workers. But many major authors showed empathy toward women in prostitution and framed their stories as tragedies of circumstance rather than individual moral failure.

Let’s talk about a few examples and some historical context.

A Historical Note: Prostitution in the Russian Empire

Prostitution in the Russian Empire was legalized and regulated from 1843 until 1917. Women engaged in prostitution were registered, monitored by police, and often required to undergo medical examinations aimed at preventing the spread of venereal diseases.

Authorities also attempted to regulate age restrictions: officially, women in prostitution were not supposed to be younger than sixteen. And yet, despite the efforts of the state and medical authorities, the problem only grew.

This historical context matters because writers like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and especially Kuprin were not writing about an abstract moral issue, it was actually a visible social reality, which partly explains why prostitution appears so frequently in Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The “Yellow Ticket”: A Symbol of Shame and Survival

Largely because of Dostoevsky, the yellow ticket became one of the most recognizable symbols associated with prostitution in Russian culture. Dostoevsky’s most famous sex worker in Russian literature is probably Sonia Marmeladova from Crime and Punishment.

Sonia becomes a sex worker because her family is starving. Her father is an alcoholic. The family has no money. The children are hungry. And Sonia chooses prostitution as an act of sacrifice.

Read Crime and Punishment with me!

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Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

Crime and Punishment is often read as a psychological story about a murder, but the novel is far richer and more complex than its plot alone (of course!). Many of its key meanings are hidden in details that are easy to miss, especially if you’re not familiar with the historical and social context of 19th century Russia…

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5 months ago · 5 likes · 5 comments · Olga Ruchina

Dostoevsky does not portray Sonia as morally corrupt or spiritually ruined. Quite the opposite. In many ways, Sonia becomes the moral center of Crime and Punishment. While Raskolnikov intellectualizes murder and spirals into alienation, Sonia embodies compassion, faith, and unconditional love.

Dostoevsky even invites religious parallels between Sonia and Mary Magdalene, a figure historically associated sexual sin who later becomes a symbol of redemption in Christian tradition.

Sonia’s profession does not erase her dignity in the eyes of the novel. Society may call her “fallen,” but Dostoevsky repeatedly emphasizes her humanity and spiritual strength.

Garshin’s Nadezhda Nikolaevna: The “Fallen Woman” with a Name

An interesting variation of the “fallen woman” figure appears in the work of Vsevolod Garshin.

A fun fact about Garshin:

Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably seen his face. For some reason, his portrait was used on the cover of Oblomov in some editions (which, in my opinion, is a very questionable design choice).

In his short story Nadezhda Nikolaevna, the heroine is not portrayed as a stereotypical “figure of vice”. Instead, she is educated, intelligent, and self-aware. As far as I know, Garshin is one of the first Russian writers to refer to a woman involved in prostitution not simply as a type or social category, but by her full name and patronymic: Nadezhda Nikolaevna.

This may sound like a small detail, but in Russian culture (patronymic is used when you respect someone) it matters. Even Dostoevsky usually calls Sonia Marmeladova simply “Sonya,” only occasionally using her patronymic, Semyonovna. Garshin’s linguistic choice gives individuality back to someone whom society tends to reduce to a label. In doing so, he subtly shifts the reader’s perception: away from abstract moral judgment and toward personal recognition.

It is a devastating story, but an important one because Garshin asks a question if society can ever truly forgive a “fallen woman”?

A Personal and Biographical Layer in Tolstoy’s Resurrection

A similar tendency—trying to understand the circumstances that pushed women into sex work rather than simply condemning them—can be found in Tolstoy’s Resurrection.

So, Katusha ends up in prostitution after sexual exploitation and economic hardship. And once again, Tolstoy’s focus is not condemnation, but the circumstances that pushed her there.

By the way, the story was, according to Tolstoy himself, partially inspired by events from his own biography, and he later expressed remorse about them.

Do I even have to say that Sofia Tolstaya was not thrilled about this?

In her diary, she wrote:

“I suffer also because Lev Nikolaevich, a seventy-year-old man, with particular relish, like a gourmet savoring delicious food, describes scenes of adultery between a maid and an officer. I know — he himself told me in detail — that in this scene Lev Nikolaevich is describing his own affair with his sister’s maid in Pirogovo. I later saw this woman, Gasha, now almost a seventy-year-old old woman. He himself pointed her out to me, to my profound despair and disgust.”

Whatever we think of Tolstoy’s personal life, one thing is clear: he does not judge Katusha for sex work. Instead, Resurrection becomes a story about guilt, social injustice, and the devastating consequences of abandonment.

Kuprin’s The Pit (Yama): A Whole Novel About Prostitutes

And then there is perhaps the most famous Russian novel dedicated almost entirely to prostitution: Alexander Kuprin’s The Pit (Yama).

Published in the early 20th century, The Pit follows the lives of women working in a brothel, offering an unusually detailed and often uncomfortable portrait of sex work in the Russian Empire.

This was very controversial. Kuprin was accused of immorality, vulgarity, and excessive naturalism. But interestingly, many readers were scandalized not simply because prostitution appeared in the novel but because Kuprin portrayed prostitutes with sympathy rather than condemnation.

Instead of reducing the women to stereotypes, he explores the different paths that led them into brothels in the first place: poverty, violence, abandonment, homelessness, lack of options. In other words, Kuprin shifts the focus away from individual morality and toward social conditions.

Not all readers appreciated that challenge. For many, what felt unacceptable was not prostitution itself, but the uncomfortable possibility that these women deserved compassion rather than moral judgment.

Alexandra Kollontai: Prostitution as an Economic Question

So far, we’ve been talking about the male literary gaze on prostitution which makes sense, considering how few women writers were published and canonized in Russian literature. But I also wanted to include a female perspective on sex work.

Alexandra Kollontai was a revolutionary, feminist, political theorist, and one of the first women in Russia to write extensively about prostitution as a social issue (essay Prostitution and ways of fighting it)

Kollontai argued that prostitution could not be understood simply as a question of morality. For her, it was fundamentally an economic issue. She believed prostitution would disappear only when women became economically independent from men. In her view, capitalism often forced women to “sell themselves” either openly through prostitution or indirectly through financially dependent marriages.

Tthis idea appears in Dostoevsky too. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya, considers marrying the wealthy Luzhin not out of love, but for financial security and to support her family. To Raskolnikov, this resembles a form of sacrifice close to Sonia Marmeladova’s situation. The difference lies only in social respectability.

Kollontai also argued that prostitution damages not only women, but men as well. Because when intimacy becomes transactional, the buyer may begin seeing women not as equals, but as objects of consumption rather than fully human partners.

Conclusion

Across Russian literature, sex work is rarely treated as a simple moral category. Instead, it becomes a narrative tool for exploring poverty, gender inequality (without being called “gender” inequality), violence, and economic dependence. It exposes the systems (economic, social, and emotional) that shape women’s choices.

In simple words, prostitution is not presented as an isolated act of vice, but as a social symptom.

What do you think?

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Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

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1. A story about a gambler written by a gambler

Who could tell it better? Probably no one.

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a gambler himself. Roulette pushed him into enormous debt, and many episodes in The Gambler draw directly from his own experiences. Yet, unlike his protagonist, Dostoevsky eventually managed to stop.

A not-so-fun fact: the novel itself exists because of a gamble.

In the summer of 1865, Dostoevsky lost all his money at the roulette table. Crushed by debt, he signed a brutal contract with the publisher Fyodor Stellovsky. According to the agreement, Dostoevsky had to deliver a new novel by November 1, 1866. If he failed, Stellovsky would gain the rights to all of Dostoevsky’s future works for the next nine years—without paying him anything.

To meet the impossible deadline, Dostoevsky hired a young stenographer, Anna Snitkina, and chose a subject he knew intimately: gambling. Together, they completed The Gambler just in time.

But the story did not end there. Working on the novel brought Dostoevsky and Anna closer, and they eventually married. Soon after, while in Baden-Baden, Dostoevsky once again lost a large sum at roulette and promised his wife he would quit gambling forever. This time, he kept his word.

In this sense, The Gambler is partly autobiographical. The crucial difference is that Dostoevsky overcame his destructive obsession, while the novel’s protagonist, Alexei Ivanovich, seems unable to climb out of the abyss.

2. One of the best* female characters in Russian literature — Polina

*According to me, at least.

Russian literature often portrays women as saints: pure, self-sacrificing, idealized to the point of feeling almost unreal. Dostoevsky himself was not immune to this tendency (Sofia and Dunya from Crime and Punishment, Nastenka from White Nights etc.). Many of his women embody suffering, devotion, or moral redemption. To be honest, at some point saint women started to bore me 😅

But in The Gambler, he gives us Polina, and she is nothing like that.

Polina is complicated, contradictory, emotionally unpredictable, manipulative at times, fiercely independent, and entirely capable of making her own choices. She refuses to be reduced to a romantic ideal or a passive love interest. Instead, she constantly destabilizes both the protagonist and the reader.

What makes her so compelling is that she never fully reveals herself. Does she love Alexei? Is she using him? Testing him? Punishing him? Even Alexei cannot understand her, and his obsession with decoding her motives becomes as consuming as his obsession with roulette.

In many ways, Polina plays with the protagonist just as much as he plays with the casino. Their relationship becomes another form of gambling: irrational, addictive, humiliating, impossible to walk away from.

The character becomes even more fascinating when you learn that Polina was partly inspired by a real woman in Dostoevsky’s life: Apollinaria Suslova (in short version — Polina, same as the character), with whom he had an obsessive and turbulent relationship. Dostoevsky was deeply infatuated with her, and the affair began while his first wife was still alive but extremely sick (apologies if this was not the Dostoevsky fact you expected to learn today).

Perhaps that is why Polina feels so alive: she was not invented from theory or idealism, but written from emotional chaos, longing, resentment, and real experience. A similar character is Nastasya Filippovna from The Idiot (also was inspired by Apollinaria Suslova).

Here you will find a biography of Dostoevsky with all the details.

3. This is Dostoevsky’s most “European” novel

The Gambler is set almost entirely in Europe, which makes its atmosphere quite unusual compared to Dostoevsky’s other major works, which are deeply rooted in Russia, especially Saint Petersburg.

And if you are French or German, a small warning: the protagonist is not exactly a fan of European society or lifestyle.

Instead of the familiar “dark Petersburg” of Crime and Punishment, this novel unfolds in a world of casinos, resort towns, money, social performance, and constant psychological tension. The setting is bright on the surface but deeply unstable underneath.

Europe here is not portrayed as refined or orderly—it becomes a stage for obsession, status anxiety, and emotional collapse, where people gamble not only with money, but with pride, relationships, and their own self-control. Where did you see this Europe?

0,5. The Gambler is fast to read!

This is only half of the reason, because I don’t know if the length of the book is important for you. But let me reassure you that The Gambler is a short novel. It took me around 6 hours to finish it (I listened and also read some parts).

I’ve read nothing of Dostoevsky. Should I read The Gambler first?

I’d say: go for it. I don’t believe there is a “right order” for reading Dostoevsky. Just don’t start with The Brothers Karamazov and don’t stop at one book. So, answering the question — yes, it can absolutely be your first Dostoevsky novel.

What translation should I choose?

I honestly believe translation is a form of art, so it can never fully reproduce the exact words Dostoevsky used. If you are a casual reader, any published translation is fine.

But if you want more in-depth advice, here it is:

What I’ve checked for sure (I compared available pages with the Russian original):

• Hugh Aplin — The free sample I found on Amazon was good; the translation is very close to word-for-word. However, some say it doesn’t sound very natural in English. Personally, I’m not sure: to me, it sounds fairly native.

• C. J. Hogarth — This translation is available for free on Project Gutenberg. However, it seems weaker: from the first paragraph, I can already see that the translator sometimes adds or changes details.

For example:

“To luncheon there were expected that day a Monsieur Mezentsov, a French lady, and an Englishman; for, whenever money was in hand, a banquet in Muscovite style was always given.”

But in the original, there is no French lady mentioned — instead, it is a French man who is expected. It’s a small detail, but it matters.

• Constance Garnett — a classic choice. Not strictly word-for-word, but her translations are very readable and flow naturally in English.

• Ronald Meyer — I couldn’t find a free sample of The Gambler, so this one is a question mark. If you have the physical book and want to help me find the best translation, feel free to send me photos of the first pages, and I can compare them with the original! Contact me on Insta or here on Substack.

And if you read The Gambler — or are planning to read it — check out my guide on the novel with a deeper analysis.

From this guide you will understand how Dostoevsky transforms a simple gambling story into a full philosophical system where roulette is not entertainment, but a hidden model of reality itself. You will see how Roulettenburg functions as more than a setting, it becomes a symbolic machine where desire, money, power, and fate all circulate around a single spinning centre. We will also unpack why Alexei Ivanovich’s hostility toward Europe is not just personal irritation, but a deeper psychological and cultural response shaped by humiliation, identity conflict, and 19th-century Russian–European tension.

Available exclusively to paid subscribers. Your support allows me to create more in-depth and useful content, since very few sources explore Russian literature from multiple contexts and in English ❤️

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Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

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At its core, the novel explores how addiction replaces free will, love, and even life itself. Drawing from his own experience, Dostoevsky shows how the desire for easy money turns a person into a slave, erases their identity, and destroys moral direction.

Plot summary (skip if you’ve recently read it)

The story takes place in a fictional German resort town called Roulettenburg.

At the center is a ruined Russian general’s family and their entourage. The protagonist, Alexei Ivanovich, is a tutor who is passionately—but hopelessly—in love with the general’s arrogant stepdaughter, Polina. She, in turn, emotionally manipulates him and keeps him in constant psychological tension.

Polina and the General are in desperate financial trouble and are waiting for the death of the General’s wealthy grandmother to solve their problems. However, the “grandmother” arrives unexpectedly in Roulettenburg, very much alive, and shocks everyone by losing a massive fortune at the roulette table.

To help Polina and save the General’s family from debt, Alexei begins gambling. He unexpectedly wins a large sum—but instead of stopping, he becomes addicted. His life quickly turns into a cycle of bets, victories, and devastating losses.

How the novel was written (and it matters)

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People often point to authors like Sally Rooney and argue that her success comes partly from her political views, especially her Marxist perspective. More recently, I’ve seen similar discussions around Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke—a novel about a tradwife who wakes up in 1855—with some people claiming its popularity was driven by a feminist or “agenda-driven” hype.

Honestly, I understand where this reaction comes from. We live in a world shaped by wars, economic instability, and a general sense of uncertainty about the future. Politics often feels unavoidable online — people discuss it constantly, sometimes in a very intense or polarised way.

Because of that, it is not surprising that discussions about books can also become charged. At times, even literature gets pulled into debates about whether an author’s views are “acceptable” by today’s standards, or whether a work fits into current cultural expectations — whether progressive, conservative, feminist, anti-feminist, or simply aligned or misaligned with today’s sensibilities.

This is especially noticeable in what some people refer to as the contemporary literary climate, where cultural and political interpretations of texts often sit alongside the works themselves.

Some people can feel tired of this and prefer to find refuge in what is often called “real” literature (meaning classic books) that doesn’t feel as directly politically charged. From there, it is not difficult to arrive at the conclusion: “Real literature isn’t political.”

But is that actually true?

Russian lit as an example

I write about Russian literature and one thing becomes impossible to ignore when you study it alongside Russian history:

Russian literature has always been deeply political.

Not as a form of propaganda or activism in the modern social media sense. But political in a broader sense: shaped by the social tensions, moral crises, philosophical debates, and ideological conflicts of its time.

Think about the major Russian work’s:

Leo Tolstoy and his Resurrection

At first glance, it looks like a story about guilt, redemption, and spiritual awakening. But beneath that, Tolstoy delivers a devastating critique of the Russian Empire’s entire social and political system. The novel attacks almost every major institution of late imperial Russia: the legal system, the prison system, the aristocracy, the Church (just saying, the Church as an institution “cancelled” Tolstoy for his beliefs and sharp critique).

I won’t even mention his War and Peace because you know, a book about War is political at its core.

Ivan Goncharov and his Oblomov

Without political context of Russian 1850s, it may look like a novel about a lazy man who never leaves his couch. But the novel is actually about the decline of the Russian aristocracy. Serfdom was collapsing, Russian society was changing, and Goncharov portrays a man psychologically incapable of adapting to the modern world. That is deeply political.

Ivan Turgenev and his Fathers and Sons

At the center of the story is Bazarov, one of the most famous characters in Russian literature. Bazarov calls himself a nihilist.

Today, the word “nihilist” often means someone who believes in nothing. But in 19th-century Russia, nihilism was also a political and intellectual movement. Young radicals rejected authority, aristocratic culture, romanticism, religion, and traditional social values. They believed only science, reason, and practical action mattered (do you see how it resonates with some modern views?).

Nihilism was a very “hyped” topic at that time. But do you really think that Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons to be “cool”, “progressive” and to get his share of “hype”?

Fun fact: the novel was controversial from every political side. Conservatives thought Turgenev sympathized too much with radical young people. Radicals accused him of mocking them. Nobody was fully satisfied with the novel (which, in my opinion, is a sign of a very powerfull book).

Nikolai Chernyshevsky and his What Is to Be Done?

Unlike Tolstoy or Goncharov, whose novels contain politics alongside philosophy, psychology, religion, and morality, Chernyshevsky wrote literature that was openly ideological.

His most famous novel, What Is to Be Done?, was not simply a novel. It was a political project, and its influence on Russian history was enormous.

Chernyshevsky wrote it while imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress because of his revolutionary activities. The book became incredibly influential among radical Russian intellectuals of the 1860s and later inspired generations of revolutionaries — including Vladimir Lenin himself, who later borrowed the title for his own political pamphlet.

Don’t get me started on the 20th century

In 20th-century Russia, when the communists (Bolsheviks) came to power, and many, many books became political. And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov, Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, and Cynics by Anatoly Marienhof are all set during the Revolution and the Civil War, and politics in their books play a crucial role.

And even books that do not seem political at first sight were often deeply political underneath.

For example,

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

At first glance, it looks bizarre and almost comedic: a professor transforms a stray dog into a human. But beneath the satire, Bulgakov is criticizing the entire Soviet attempt to create a “new man.”

The newly transformed Sharikov becomes aggressive, vulgar, destructive, and obsessed with ideological slogans. Bulgakov essentially questions whether human nature can really be remade through political engineering. And that idea was extremely dangerous in the Soviet Union. The novella was banned for decades because Soviet authorities understood perfectly well that it was political satire.

Now let’s talk about a king of Russian lit —Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dpstoevsky was himself very political. C’mon, he was almost executed (!!!) and later sent to Siberian prison camps because of his political stances.

Watch my YouTube video about his life. You will know why exactly he was sentenced to death and how he avoided it.

Politics wasn’t external to his writing, it shaped his worldview.

But not all of his novels approach politics in the same way.

For example, politics barely touches his White Nights. It is an intimate and deeply personal story about love, loneliness, romantic idealism, and emotional vulnerability.

Olga Ruchina on Substack | Russian lit

White Nights: A Brief Guide to Dostoevsky’s Most Tender Story

White Nights is, on the surface, a simple story: a lonely man wandering through Saint Petersburg meets a young woman, Nastenka, and over the course of a few summer nights, he falls in love with her. But she is waiting for someone else…

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4 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Olga Ruchina

But Crime and Punishment is profoundly political beneath its psychological depth. Raskolnikov is not “simply” a murderer. He is the product of a historical moment and political circumstances.

The novel was written during the rise of radical ideologies in 19th-century Russia after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Dostoevsky was responding to a generation of radicalized young intellectuals who believed that “extraordinary people” had the moral right to commit violence for the sake of a supposedly better future. In many ways, the novel becomes an argument against ideological extremism.

And history proved those fears were not imaginary: Tsar Alexander II was eventually assassinated by revolutionaries.

I talk A LOT about historical context that helps to understand Crime and Punishment in my video guide. Check it out here.

Olga Ruchina on Substack | Russian lit

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

Crime and Punishment is often read as a psychological story about a murder, but the novel is far richer and more complex than its plot alone (of course!). Many of its key meanings are hidden in details that are easy to miss, especially if you’re not familiar with the historical and social context of 19th century Russia…

Read more

5 months ago · 6 likes · 5 comments · Olga Ruchina

Other Dostoevsky novels explore politics differently.

The Gambler and The Idiot focus more on spiritual decay, vanity, obsession, and moral weakness but there is some kind of political influence. Meanwhile, The Brothers Karamazov turns politics into something inseparable from faith, morality, philosophy, and the crisis of belief itself.

Why do many modern readers do not see politics in classics?

The reason many modern readers fail to notice the politics inside classic literature is simple: we no longer live in the 19th century, and many of the political issues of that time are no longer relevant or “charged” in the same way.

And without knowledge of Russian history, many of the political debates inside these novels become invisible.

This is exactly why the statement “great literature is not political” often feels misleading to me.

Great literature often is political. Not always (like White Nights), but more often than many people assume.

Then why does it survive across generations and cultures?

However, people who say that “real” literature is not political are not entirely wrong. I think what they actually mean is that the political side of classic literature is not what makes a book great and timeless.

A classic does not survive because of the political side it took (with some exceptions).

Universal Human Questions

Even highly political books ask timeless questions:

• What is the meaning of life?

• Are we truly free?

• What matters more: reason or emotion?

• Can suffering lead to redemption?

• What do people owe each other?

• What is love?

These are universal questions that connect generations and cultures.

For example, What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky (I’ve mentionned it earlier!). Beneath its political agenda, it still asks questions like: Can human beings be reshaped into something better? Can rationality fully organize human life? What does a “better” society actually mean for individual happiness? And after all, what is love?

In Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (also mentionned!), the political conflict between generations is rooted in 19th-century Russia. But the novel is not only about ideology. It asks: What happens when a generation rejects everything its parents believe in? Can reason alone replace emotion? And is it possible to destroy old values without losing something essential about being human?

That is why Bazarov remains such a powerful character even today. Not because readers care about Russian nihilism specifically (I didn’t when I was 16, my first time reading it), but because the conflict between certainty and doubt, tradition and rebellion, still exists in every generation.

This is the reason classics survive. Not because their politics remain relevant, but because the human questions inside them never stop repeating themselves in new forms.

Russian literature rarely exists simply for entertainment

There is one more thing that makes Russian lit so great. Most Russian novels are built around large political, philosophical, social, or moral ideas, but they are also much bigger than politics.

That is true for War and Peace. It is a novel filled with politics, philosophy, war, history, and competing visions of society. But also it is a coming-of-age story that will be relevant for a lot of people.

The difference is that classics contain something larger than politics — something deeply human that allows them to outlive their own era.

The real question is not whether literature is political. The real question is whether it can become something more than politics.

Politics may give a novel urgency and “hype” at a certain time, but humanity is what gives it immortality.

What do you think?

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Is Russian Literature Actually Depressing Or Have We All Been Lied To?

Top 5 Must-Read Russian Novels (If You Think Russian Lit Is Boring)

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

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It’s a bittersweet story about brief love, loneliness, and holding onto a moment of happiness even after it’s gone.

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What’s a white night in the first place?

The title isn’t metaphorical—at least not at first.

Sometimes people assume that white nights mean you don’t sleep the whole night, but actually, in Russian, “a white night” in Petersburg means something different.

It’s a night when the sun barely goes below the horizon and the sky stays almost the same as during the day (looks like more continuous twilight). In Petersburg, white nights happen at the end of May–early June.

This is the atmosphere in which the entire story unfolds: dreamlike, weightless, and slightly outside of reality. It’s the perfect setting for a love that feels real in the moment, but cannot quite survive daylight.

A turning point in Dostoevsky’s life

White Nights was published in 1848. That date matters more than it might seem.

Just a year later, Dostoevsky was arrested, sentenced to death, and subjected to a mock execution before being sent to hard labor in Siberia (watch my Youtube video about this here or below). It’s difficult to overstate how much this experience changed him.

White Nights belongs to what I call his “romantic” period—a time when his writing was softer, more sentimental, and deeply focused on inner emotional worlds. After Siberia, his work becomes darker, more philosophical, and psychologically intense (and I have to admit this is why we have his most powerfull works).

If you’ve only read White Nights, you haven’t yet seen the full depth of Dostoevsky’s genius. And if you’ve only read his later novels, you may not realize how gentle and tender he could be.

Read Crime and Punishment with me! (it was written after Siberia)

Olga Ruchina on Substack | Russian lit

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

Crime and Punishment is often read as a psychological story about a murder, but the novel is far richer and more complex than its plot alone (of course!). Many of its key meanings are hidden in details that are easy to miss, especially if you’re not familiar with the historical and social context of 19th century Russia…

Read more

5 months ago · 6 likes · 5 comments · Olga Ruchina

Why the name “Nastenka” matters

Nastenka is a very specific form of the name

I don’t think it’s a secret that Russian names have weird diminutives, like Alexander becomes Sasha, Ivan becomes Vanya (but to be fair, Richard → Dick isn’t obvious either).

The full name of Nastenkas is Anastasia, but please, if you know any Anastasias, don’t call them Nastenka without their permission: it’s rude and can be inappropriate unless you are romantic partners.

Normally, Anastasia gets shortened to Nastya, and the suffix “-enka” adds a tender, affectionate tone. Nastenka feels softer and more intimate, and in literature it can make the character seem younger or more innocent.

Nastenka from White Nights is basically still a kid (well, she’s 17, to be fair), and this form of the name highlights that. She’s naive, innocent, and pure.

What happens to the Dreamer?

Dostoevsky never tells us. There’s no sequel, no continuation, no resolution beyond that final emotional note. The Dreamer is left alone again, holding onto a memory that is both painful and precious.

But if you continue reading Dostoevsky, you’ll encounter echoes of this type.

In The Idiot, for example, Prince Myshkin feels like a version of the Dreamer placed into the real world—a person defined by sincerity, openness, and emotional vulnerability, but now tested against society rather than a fleeting moment.

!!!! It’s not a continuation of the same character!!! But it is a return to the same type of a character. Dostoevsky became older and wiser, he saw a lot of things and he said goodbye to his old fantasies.

In the end, White Nights isn’t just about lost love.

It’s about the strange beauty of moments that don’t last, and the way they can still shape a life long after they’re gone.

Did you read White Nights?

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Is Russian Literature Actually Depressing Or Have We All Been Lied To?

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Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

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So my instinctive answer was simple: you should start reading Dostoevsky when you want to. There is no “best” age, only genuine interest.

A lot of people agreed in the comments: forced reading is always a bad idea. But is it always bad? The more I thought about it, the less certain I became.

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How did I get lucky to love Russian lit?

A bit of a context. I went to a regular public school in Russia, the one in our neighbourhood (same situation as for the majority of Russian students). Literature classes meant working through the giants: Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, and, ofc, Dostoevsky. The curriculum was fixed, so there was no choice.

For me, it mostly worked. I already loved literature, and I genuinely enjoyed classroom discussions, even if my teacher had very strong opinions and there wasn’t much space to disagree with her (otherwise she rolled her eyes like we were crazy).

At home, my mom expanded that world beyond the Russian canon, she gave me more book recs, she brought me to our local library where I took girls’ romances world classics (along with fantasies and girls’ romances :D). Reading felt like a way to see lives and ideas I would never encounter otherwise.

But looking back, I realize how easily it could have gone differently.

Because for many of my classmates, it did.

The Illusion of Reading

Since reading classis was forced by school and there was no choice, a surprising number of students didn’t actually read the books. They read summaries and memorized them. Some even copied essays from the internet when we had an essay to write about a book.

And this created some weird illusion of reading without actual reading.

They know the plot = enough for the mark = reading done.

Some of them later returned to those books and discovered them properly. But others didn’t. I thnk to some of them it still feels like they already know this book.

So why read it again?

=> Forced reading didn’t just fail to create readers. It sometimes created the illusion of having read.

Then there were those who didn’t read anything, and they grew to hate literature itself. Once it became associated with pressure, evaluation, and performance, it was very hard to recover the original joy.

But Here’s the Problem: What Happens If We Don’t Force It?

It’s easy to criticize forced reading. But what is the alternative? If we remove it entirely, will students read?

Some will. Curious kids tend to find books anyway.

But others? Maybe they won’t. Or they will stick to comfortable, familiar genres, while classics require an emotional effort. On top, school actually gives us space to discuss the books under a correct guidance, and in a grown-up life we have to create this space ourselves by joining book clubs, for example.

Imagine if Crime and Punishment isn’t discussed with a teenager? It can be percieved as a very dangerous ideology for teens.

By the way, I have a video guide on Crime and Punishment, check it out here. It will help you to actually understand the book.

Olga Ruchina on Substack | Russian lit

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

Crime and Punishment is often read as a psychological story about a murder, but the novel is far richer and more complex than its plot alone (of course!). Many of its key meanings are hidden in details that are easy to miss, especially if you’re not familiar with the historical and social context of 19th century Russia…

Read more

5 months ago · 5 likes · 5 comments · Olga Ruchina

I believe in a liberal approach in teaching but I also know that some kids and teens can be lazy or not motivated enough to read, and sometimes they need a push tp read.

And here’s my own truth: as a teenager, I needed this push myself for sme books.

In fact, when I read War and Peace at 17, I found large parts of it boring. I didn’t have the life experience to understand the philosophical depth. I cared more about whether Natasha would end up with Andrei than about Tolstoy’s reflections on history.

And yet, being forced to read it still shaped me. It made me think. It exposed me to something bigger than my immediate interests.

So the question isn’t simply “Is forced reading bad?”

It’s: When does it help and when does it backfire?

The Timing Problem

One of the biggest issues is not what we read, but when.

Many classics require emotional and intellectual maturity. Without it, students reduce them to plot summaries (like I did with War and Peace) or shallow interpretations.

Take a short story Mumu by Turgenev (read it here in English). I read it when I was around 11. What is it about? As I remeber it, it was a story about a man forced to drown his beloved dog.

I was 11. Imagine yourself at 11 reading a story about killing a pet? Sounds traumatic.

I didn’t see the critique of serfdom. I didn’t understand the moral conflict or the social context. I just saw cruelty and it pushed me away from reading for months. Only later did I understand what the story was actually about (after history classes + some life experience).

that is why I am certain that some books are not inappropriate because of their content, but because of their timing.

Teenagers are Rebellious

This is also a point about timing. Teenagers tend to resist control, and that’s not a flaw, it’s a normal development. Which is why forced reading often produces a predictable response: refusal.

But interestingly, refusal doesn’t always mean disengagement from reading itself.

I had a classmate who ignored the curriculum entirely and read Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche instead. She still reads today. Eventually, she came back to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but on her own terms.

=> Sometimes the problem isn’t that teenagers don’t want to read. It’s that they want ownership over what they read.

The “Last Chance”

Tho I agree that forced reading is a bad idea, there’s also a practical reality: school might be the only time many people engage with “serious” literature.

Once university begins, reading becomes instrumental—textbooks, research, professional material. Fiction shrinks to the margins (at the uni, I read tops one fiction book a month). If the habit or curiosity isn’t formed earlier, it often never is.

Which is why forced reading persists. Not because it works perfectly, but because educators fear the alternative: a generation that never encounters literature at all.

And Yes, Some People Just Don’t Like Reading

This is the part we don’t say out loud enough. Not everyone enjoys reading. And that’s fine.

People can be deeply intelligent, thoughtful, and educated without being avid readers. My partner, for example, reads a few books a year at most and has a PhD in astrophysics, he is the one person with whom I can discuss anything, even the ideas from books he hasn’t read.

But even for non-readers, exposure matters.

A shared cultural baseline—some familiarity with major works, ideas, and narratives—can be valuable. And school is often the only place where that baseline can be built.

So What Should Replace Forced Reading?

If forced reading alone doesn’t work, but abandoning it isn’t the answer, what’s the alternative?

Total freedom VS rigid canon? Maybe something in between?

Instead of fixed reading lists, we could think in terms of reading pathways.

Not: “Everyone must read this.”

But: “If you’re interested in this, here’s where you can go next.”

For example (for Russian lit enthusiast):

• Start with Fathers and Sons by Turgenev → move toward more radical ideas with What Is to Be Done? by Chernyshevsky

• Like Dostoevsky’s social canva? Begin with Poor Folk → then read Crime and Punishment → expand into social themes with Les Misérables by Hugo

I believe that sounds more like an invitation to read rather than an obligation.

And that shift—from obligation to curiosity—can change a lot.

The Real Responsibility

If there’s one conclusion I’ve come to, it’s this:

No one can force people to love reading. But we can shape the conditions in which love for reading becomes possible.

That responsibility doesn’t belong only to schools. It belongs to parents, teachers, and increasingly, to culture itself—platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube now influence what young people read as much as classrooms do (maybe even more these days because this sparks a true interest when your fav blogger advises something to read).

What we actually need is something more uncertain, but more powerful: interest. Because once someone genuinely wants to read, no curriculum is needed. And without that, no curriculum is enough.

What do you think? Share your perspective!

Leave a comment

📚 Read more on my Substack

You can find more Russian lit recs on my Substack:

Is Russian Literature Actually Depressing Or Have We All Been Lied To?

Top 5 Must-Read Russian Novels (If You Think Russian Lit Is Boring)

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

👉 Don’t forget to like and/or share—it really helps the blog grow ❤️

Good news: most of them are available in English (and other languages), and some can even be found online.

Let’s start 👇

🧸 For Little Ones (3+)

Masha and the Bear

(link to read online)

You’ve probably seen the cartoon Masha and the Bear—it’s hugely popular around the world. But it’s quite different from the original story. In the traditional fairy tale, Masha gets caught by the bear and he does'n’t let her go. Eventually, she finds a smart way to escape!

The Little Bun (aka Kolobok)

(link to an audiostory on YouTube)

An old man and woman bake a little bun. But instead of being eaten, the bun jumps out of the window and rolls away into the forest.

On his journey, he meets different animals—a hare, a wolf, and a bear. Each one wants to eat him, but Kolobok escapes by singing a song about how clever and fast he is.

Eventually, he meets a fox. She pretends to admire his song and tricks him into coming closer… and then eats him.

Lesson: Overconfidence can be dangerous

The Wooden House (aka Teremok)

(link to a read online)

In the forest, there’s a small empty house (a teremok). One by one, different animals find it—a mouse, a frog, a rabbit, a fox, and even a wolf. Each time a new animal arrives, they ask, “Who lives here?” and are invited to join.

They all live together peacefully, sharing the tiny space.

But then a big animal comes along. He tries to join too—but he’s too large, and the house collapses.

Lessons:

• Cooperation and sharing help everyone survive

• But there are also limits—sometimes things break if pushed too far

The Turnip (aka Repka)

An old man plants a turnip—and it grows huge. When it’s time to harvest it, he tries to pull it out… but he can’t do it alone.

Lesson: Teamwork makes the impossible possible

📚 For Older Children

The Adventures of Dennis by Viktor Dragunsky (6+)

This was one of my favorite books growing up, and I still keep my copy to read to my future kids!

The stories are funny and warm.

My favorites:

“The Mystery Clears”

Denis throws his porridge out the window… but the truth finds its way back.

Lesson: The truth always comes out.

“Tell Me About Singapore”

A hilarious story about a long-awaited visit that goes completely wrong because of a dog (or not a dog?)

Lesson: Honestly, none. It’s just very funny. I’m still laughing while reading :D

❗️ A note for parents:
Some stories reflect older stereotypes. For example, in Chicken Soup, men are portrayed as incapable of cooking. Still funny but worth reading with a modern perspective.

Dunno’s Adventures (aka Neznaika) by Nikolai Nosov (6+)

(link to a read online)

This is one of the most famous Russian children’s book series, often called Neznaika in Russian (literally means “Dunno” or “I-don’t-know”).

The story follows Dunno, a small, mischievous character who lives in a colourful city called Flower Town, where tiny “shorties” live (small people with big personalities).

Dunno is curious, energetic, imaginative but also lazy, impulsive, and often clueless. He gets into trouble constantly, not because he is bad, but because he doesn’t think before acting.

Lesson: Curiosity is great but learning matters a lot!

The Black Hen, or The Underground Inhabitants by Antony Pogorelsky (8+)

(link to read online)

This is one of the earliest Russian literary fairy tales—written in 1829—and it feels more like a short novel than a simple children’s story.

A young boy named Alysha studies at a boarding school in St. Petersburg. He feels lonely and isolated, with no close friends. One day, he saves a black hen from being killed by the cook. But the hen turns out to be magical.

As a reward, she takes him into a secret underground kingdom inhabited by tiny people. Their king gives Alyosha a special gift: a magical seed that allows him to always know the right answer in class—without studying.

At first, everything goes well. Alyosha becomes the best student. But slowly, he becomes lazy, arrogant, careless with the secret. Eventually, he breaks his promise… and loses everything.

Lessons:

• Achievements require effort

• Laziness and arrogance can cost you everything

❗️ Note: This story is a bit sad, but very meaningful.

The Malachite Casket: Tales from the Urals by Pavel Bazhov (10+)

A collection of stories set in the Ural Mountains—full of miners, craftsmen, folklore, and magic.

(link to read online or buy a paperback copy)

Here you will find two most famous stories from the book (and they MUST be read in this order)

“The Mistress of the Copper Mountain”

A young miner named Stepan works in the Ural Mountains. One day, he meets a mysterious woman—the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. She’s not an ordinary person. Sometimes she appears as a beautiful woman, sometimes as a lizard. She is the spirit and guardian of the underground riches

She tests Stepan’s character and helps him gain his freedom from his cruel master but there’s (ofc) a catch.

Even though Stepan gains freedom and wealth, he never truly finds happiness again. His encounter with the Mistress changes him forever and he becomes distant from ordinary life.

Lessons:

• Nature is powerful and must be respected

• Greed and ambition come with consequences

• Not all rewards bring happiness

“The Malachite Casket”

A girl named Tanya receives a beautiful malachite jewelry casket. It’s not just a gift, it’s connected to the mysterious power of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain.

The casket seems to carry its own magic and influence. Tanya grows up surrounded by its beauty, but also by expectations, temptation, and the weight of something that doesn’t fully belong to the human world.

As she matures, she has to choose between a normal human life or being drawn deeper into the magical, hidden world.

Lesson: True worth lies in who you are, not what you own.

✍️ Final Note

I tried to include stories that are original (with the possible exception of Kolobok, since similar “runaway food” tales exist in other cultures). Still, all of them are meaningful, and their lessons feel universal—beyond time, language, or culture.

What makes these stories special is that they continue to resonate today, even though many were written long ago. They speak about things children (and adults) still deal with: curiosity, honesty, friendship, responsibility, and the consequences of our actions.

📚 Read more on my Substack

You can find more Russian lit recs on my Substack:

Is Russian Literature Actually Depressing Or Have We All Been Lied To?

Top 5 Must-Read Russian Novels (If You Think Russian Lit Is Boring)

Guide to Crime and Punishment: Before, During, and After Reading (with Video Explanations)

👉 Don’t forget to like and/or share—it really helps the blog grow ❤️

Leave a comment

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Who was Gogol?

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer and one of the most important figures in 19th-century literature. He is best known for blending dark humor, satire, and the grotesque to expose the absurdities of society. His works often explore themes of identity, bureaucracy, and human weakness.

Here there is a short video about Gogol (leads to Insta).

Some of his most famous works include:

• Dead Souls

• The Viy

• The Overcoat

• The Nose

• The Government Inspector (a play)

Gogol had a huge influence on later Russian writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, who famously said, “We all came out from under Gogol’s ‘Overcoat.’”

Later in life, Gogol became deeply religious and struggled with inner turmoil, which influenced his writing and contributed to the many myths and mysteries surrounding his death.

Gogol was suffering from taphophobia

Gogol died in Moscow on February 21, 1852. Even during his lifetime, he had an air of mystery. This was partly due to his dark, introspective personality and partly because his close friends knew he had a deep fear of being buried alive, a condition known as taphophobia. He even wrote about this fear in his letters.

What exactly was weird in his grave

The rumor that his nighmare, being burried alive, became true, got popular in 1931, when Gogol’s grave was opened and his remains were moved from the Danilov Monastery cemetery to Novodevichy Cemetery. This happened during the Soviet era, when the monastery was closed.

Several people witnessed the exhumation, including Soviet writers. One of them, Vladimir Lidin, later became the main source of the legend. He claimed:

• Gogol’s skull was missing and may have been stolen (though no evidence supports this)

• scratches inside the coffin and said the skull was turned to the side

… which fueled the idea that Gogol had woken up underground.

Was Gogol truly dead?

However, historical evidence strongly contradicts this story. Seven years before his death, Gogol wrote to friends asking them not to bury him until clear signs of decomposition appeared. He explained that during illness, his pulse and breathing could become so weak they might seem to stop. His friends took this request seriously.

At the time of his death, Gogol was under the care of some of the best doctors in Moscow. Shortly after he died, sculptor Nikolai Ramazanov created a death mask and confirmed in letters that Gogol was truly dead.

The death mask of Gogol

So is it a myth?

Even if we believe Lidin’s claim that Gogol’s head was turned inside the coffin, there’s nothing mysterious about it.

Experts say that over time, the sides of a coffin decay, and the lid can shift. When it moves, it may push against the skull, causing it to turn.

The claim that the inside of the coffin was scratched also doesn’t hold up. After nearly 80 years underground, even strong wood would not preserve such marks.

So both Gogol’s contemporaries and modern experts agree: the story that he was buried alive is just a myth.

Have you heard about this myth before?

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1) Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy

The story follows Anna, a married woman who enters a scandalous relationship with Count Vronsky, risking her reputation, family, and place in society. At the same time, we see a parallel storyline of Levin, who is searching for meaning, love, and a different kind of life. The contrast between these two paths makes the novel incredibly rich—and emotionally gripping.

Yes, it’s famous, and yes, you might already know the ending. But the novel still pulls you in with its emotional depth and vivid portrayal of 19th-century Russian high society. What I love most is how it shows the lives of women at the time, and everything that was deeply wrong with that world.

2) Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Raskolnikov, a poor ex-student in St. Petersburg, believes he has the right to commit a crime for a “greater good.” After committing a crime, he is forced to live with the psychological consequences of his actions.

You already know a murder is planned, and (surpriiiiise!) it happens. But that’s not the point. The real question is: what comes after? Will Raskolnikov confess, break down, escape? The psychological tension is what makes this impossible to put down.

And if you want to go deeper, I also have a full guide to Crime and Punishment (with video explanations) where I unpack all the hidden meanings, historical context and the ideas behind the story. Check it out here 👇

3) Dead Souls — Nikolai Gogol*

Chichikov arrives in a provincial town with a strange plan: to buy the “souls” (serfs) who have died but are still listed as alive on official records. His goal is to use them to appear wealthy and secure a better social position. As he travels and negotiates with landowners, the novel turns into a satirical journey through absurd, corrupt, and unforgettable characters.

This one is surprisingly funny. It’s almost like a dark comedy adventure: you follow Chichikov and can’t help but wonder if he actually can pull off his bizarre scheme.

*Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer, and I make a point of recognising both his Ukrainian roots and his role in Russian literature.

4) We — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Set in a futuristic totalitarian state where everything is controlled—including people’s thoughts and relationships—the novel follows D-503, an engineer who begins to question the system after falling in love. What starts as a perfectly ordered life slowly unravels into doubt, desire, and the conflict against the system.

Not what people expect from Russian literature at all. This is a dystopian novel that inspired 1984. It was actually the first dystopia I ever read and I couldn’t stop because I had to know how it ends (no one warned me dystopias can be… unsettling 😅).

5) The Heart of a Dog — Mikhail Bulgakov

A professor in Moscow performs an experiment by transplanting human organs into a stray dog, transforming him into a man.

Sci-fi? Satire? Something in between. The premise alone is wild: can a dog become a human? And if yes, what does that say about humans? It was really interesting to read.

Did you read any of those?

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Share Olga Ruchina on Substack | Russian lit

Recurring symbols, weather, colours, names, and religious references all play a crucial role in shaping our understanding of Raskolnikov and his inner conflict.

That’s why I created this guide! I want to help you truly understand the novel, not just add it to your “books I’ve read” list.

Let’s start!

Introduction

Video 1. How to use this guide

In short:

• If you haven’t read Crime and Punishment, follow the steps in order: start with the “Before Reading” section, then read the novel, and only after that watch the remaining videos.

• If you’ve already read the book, you can use this guide to deepen your understanding and revisit key ideas.

Read more

And I get it. That image is everywhere. But here’s the question I keep coming back to:

Is Russian literature actually more tragic than other literature? Or is this just a very persistent cultural stereotype we keep repeating without really examining it?

Let me make a case.

First — What Even Is a “Sad Book”?

Before we argue about Russian literature, we need to agree on terms.

To me, a sad book is one where the ending is tragic, so someone dies, goes to prison while innocent, loses everything. A book with no real glimpse of hope. One where you close it and think: why did I do this to myself?

That’s different from a book that makes you think deeply. Heavy and sad are not the same thing. A book can leave you unsettled, questioning, uncomfortable and still not be a tragedy.

With that distinction in mind — let’s look at the rest of world literature for a moment.

The Rest of the World Isn’t Exactly Writing Beach Reads Either

French literature: Sartre’s Nausea left me personally feeling like nothing had meaning. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables gave me nightmares about poor children. Émile Zola — social misery described with brutal, surgical realism.

German literature: Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front. War, exile, loss. I cried more over Remarque than over all Russian classics combined.

Even the so-called “lighter” classics: Little Women or Good Wives still kills off a character, which makes us sad. Jane Eyre puts its heroine through social restrictions. Wuthering Heights is a masterclass in tragedy.

Franz Kafka. Ernest Hemingway’s famous six-word story (supposedly his) — “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Emotional devastation in one sentence.

So why does only Russian literature get the label depressing?

“It’s the Weather” — No, It Isn’t

Some people blame the climate. Cold, dark, gray — of course the literature is bleak.

But this falls apart immediately. Russian summers are sunny. Springs are warm. Winters in European Russia are full of entertainment, not just despair. The “Russia is always frozen and miserable” image is itself a stereotype.

And more importantly: Gabriel García Márquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude under the Mexican sun. That is not a happy beach read. Soooo, sunshine doesn’t produce happy ending

“It’s the History” — Everyone Has History

The other common argument: Russian history is uniquely tragic. Revolution, war, repressions, collapse.

But whose history is calm? France had revolutions and guillotines. America had slavery and segregation. India and China experienced invasions and colonial violence. Latin America faced brutal colonization. Tragedy is not uniquely Russian, it’s universal.

History shapes literature everywhere. It doesn’t explain why Russian literature specifically gets singled out.

Two Writers Became the Face of an Entire Tradition

Here’s what I actually think happened.

In the nineteenth century, Europe was fascinated by Russia, especially after Napoleon’s defeat. Russia was vast, mysterious, exotic to Western readers. At the same time, Europe was deep in Romanticism and Realism, hungry for literature that explored serious moral and philosophical questions.

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky fit perfectly into that appetite. They were translated early, promoted widely, and gave Western readers something genuinely new — large, demanding, philosophically rich novels.

And so they became the face of Russian literature abroad.

The problem is that Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina were never meant to be light reading. These are moral, philosophical works that demand something from the reader. Of course they feel heavy and depressing.

But here’s the thing: heavy and sad are, again, not the same.

A Note on Dostoevsky Specifically

Dostoevsky is often called the king of despair. But there’s something important that gets lost in translation (culturally, not linguistically).

In the Orthodox Christian tradition, which shaped Dostoevsky deeply, suffering is not meaningless. It can purify, transform, lead somewhere. Suffering in Dostoevsky is often metaphysical, not just social. He is not a pessimist, he is intensely, sometimes too much, religious.

And the ending of Crime and Punishment? In Dostoevsky’s eyes, it is a happy ending. Raskolnikov suffers. And then he finds a way through. That is the point.

We read it as tragedy because we’re reading it without that frame. Which is fair but it changes the book entirely (a bit of a promo: on March 28, I will host a literary workshop on Crime and Punishment, info here)

Russian Literature Can Also Be Funny. Very Funny.

This is the part that gets left out of every “Russian lit is depressing” conversation.

Oblomov by Goncharov — a novel about a man who genuinely cannot get off the couch. The premise sounds bleak. The dialogue is hilarious, especially if you’ve ever worked inside a bureaucratic system and recognize it from the inside.

Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector — corrupt officials panic and frantically try to bribe a minor clerk they’ve mistaken for a powerful state inspector. Absurd, sharp, painfully relevant to every era.

Chekhov’s The Chameleon — a police inspector repeatedly changes his judgment about a dog bite depending on whether he thinks the dog belongs to a general. A perfect miniature of social hypocrisy. And genuinely funny.

Ilf and Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs — Ostap Bender and his reluctant partner chase hidden diamonds through chaotic Soviet 1920s Russia, stumbling into one ridiculous situation after another. Fast, ironic, full of lines that entered everyday speech.

And even Dostoevsky — yes, that Dostoevsky — wrote a short story called Another Man’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed, which is exactly what it sounds like. Comedy. From the king of despair.

Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter and The Blizzard are romantic, adventurous, and warm. Not an existential crisis in sight.

So Why Does the Stereotype Persist?

Partly because of how Russian literature was first introduced to the West through its most demanding, philosophically serious works.

Partly because “Russian literature is depressing” has become a shorthand that people repeat without reading. It sounds sophisticated. It signals you’ve heard of Dostoevsky.

And partly because when a work is genuinely great and genuinely heavy — Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Anna Karenina — it leaves a mark. That mark gets attached to the whole tradition.

But saying all Russian literature is depressing because you read one tragic novel is like saying all Indian food is spicy.

What You’re Missing If You Believe the Stereotype

There are Russian books that are funny. Romantic. Adventurous. Ironic. Absurd. Playful.

Books that will not make you question your existence at 11pm on a Tuesday.

The stereotype scares readers away before they even try and that genuinely makes me sad. Yes, some books require emotional effort. So does great French, German, American, and Japanese literature. The effort is part of it.

But there are also books in this tradition that will surprise you, make you laugh, and feel lighter than you ever expected.

Have you heard that Russian literature is depressing? What have you actually read? I’d love to know in the comments.

The table was overflowing with salads, cold cuts, and homemade infusions. Of course, the “queen” of the table was mimosa. Not the flower or the cocktail but the salad. And it wasn’t just any mix of canned fish and vegetables, it was a piece of art. Layered neatly, topped with olives and surrounded by chips, the salad was arranged to look like a sunflower.

It was funny that the mimosa salad was shaped like a sunflower, but no one really thought about that during the meal. Everyone praised the hostess for such a creative touch, calling her inventive, even though they all knew she had gotten the idea from a seven-ruble issue of the magazine I Love Cooking.

image - 1000 menu

Honestly, I didn’t care about the mimosa or the sunflower. I was just waiting to get to the best part of the salad—the chips. Just the sight of them made me taste sour cream and dill in my mouth.

After a while, all the salads had been tasted, the chips eaten (not all by me, I swear!), and the guests were a little (or rather, a lot) tipsy. Their faces were flushed, their breath smelled a bit sour, and Auntie Valya started singing “Oh, Frost, Frost, Don’t Freeze Me”, which was surprising in the middle of a hot summer. A fat fly landed on my glass of raspberry kompot. Three salads ago, it had been a refreshingly cool drink, but now I was secretly glad I had an excuse not to finish that sweet, lukewarm sludge.

“Ah, I could go for some ice cream right now,” said a woman. Grandma called her Zoya, but I had no idea who Zoya was. Apparently, she babysat me sometimes.

“Yes, especially Soviet ice cream,” replied one of the men.

“No, regular ‘Lakomka’ is better,” Aunt Vera, the hostess, chimed in.

And just like that, a full-blown debate about the best ice cream in the world began. Some argued for a chocolate flavor, some for a crème brûlée one, and others for a “Hedgehog”, which was basically vanilla ice cream with a chocolate top and peanuts.

Someone even suggested buying all kinds of ice cream and holding a contest right then and there. But a few guests remembered that the nearest store was a twenty-minute walk away. Eventually, they agreed that Soviet ice cream was the real deal.

Me? I didn’t care. I knew nothing could beat fruit ice.

“Let’s cut the cake?” suggested Aunt Vera.

Cake?—thought I—that’s perfect! Especially since, as the only child there, I was sure to get a piece with a cherry on top.

Usually, after cake, grandma would start complaining about how late it was and how we still had to catch the bus back to the city. But this time something went wrong. She was deep in conversation with Aunt Zoya, completely carried away.

“Ah, life was good in the Soviet days,” Uncle Grisha said. The alcohol had worn off a little, but not completely.

I froze in anticipation. This was usually the moment when the adults started telling personal stories—the kind they rarely shared when I was around.

First, they reminisced about the past, swapping stories from their youth and reminding each other of funny incidents. Then the conversation turned to the USSR, how good and calm everything had been back then. They had all worked either at the town’s only factory or at the local school; one of them had been a doctor.

Finally, they scolded Gorbachev for the collapse of the Soviet Union and moved on to Yeltsin, accusing him of every mortal sin imaginable—from drunkenness to wild conspiracy theories about him being a secret American agent sent to discredit Russians. That was probably when my love for history—and my hatred of the “hungry” 1990s (and of Yeltsin)—was born.

When the men began arguing about the current time—some criticizing it, others defending—one woman said: “Boys, stop stirring up trouble. There’s food on the table and a roof over your heads. What more do you need?”

“Pfft, women don’t understand a thing in politics,” the men muttered, shaking their heads. But they stopped arguing and decided to play cards instead.

“My Vasya has always been like that! Fiery temper!” Aunt Lida declared. “The way he courted me, girls, oh, the way he did! All the other boys were afraid to come within a meter of me.”

“Oh please, my Gosha isn’t timid either. When he says something, you either obey or he gets his way anyway. A real man!” another woman boasted.

“Oh, they’re only like that on the outside,” an old woman with an eye patch interrupted. “Inside, they’re fragile creatures. Afraid of everything. Remember this, girls: in a family, the wife is the neck and the husband is the head. Wherever the neck turns, that’s where the head looks.”

“Yes, that’s absolutely true, Zinaida Vasilievna, what a wonderful way to put it!” the women chimed in together.

“Oh, and you should’ve seen what my Mishka did yesterday,” Aunt Valya began. “He suddenly decided to be jealous of our building manager! We’ve been married thirty years, and he’s still as restless as ever. He forbade me from going to the apartment meetings, said he’d go himself, as long as I didn’t see the manager.” She finished proudly.

“If he’s jealous, it means he loves you!” declared the relationship guru, Zinaida Vasilievna.

And then, from every corner of the table, stories of jealousy poured out. Some talked about being forbidden to leave the house without a husband or children, about men who were jealous not only of other men, but even of their wives’ single friends.

Only Aunt Vera, the hostess, remained silent.

“Verka, why are you so quiet? Cat got your tongue?” Aunt Zoya asked.

“I just don’t have anything to share,” Vera replied shortly. “I don’t have stories like that.”

“What, Tolya doesn’t get jealous?”

“No. Not once.”

“And he lets you go everywhere by yourself?”

“Yes. I even went to the seaside alone last year…”

The women shook their heads as if to say, poor thing, she must be unhappy in her marriage.

An awkward silence settled over the table.

Suddenly, that very Tolya appeared out of nowhere, carrying a large bag.

“Why so quiet, girls?” he said cheerfully. “I brought you something”.

“Ice cream!” the women squealed.

“It melted a bit,” Tolya said. He handed out vanilla ice cream to everyone and gave me a strawberry popsicle. Then he walked over to his wife.

“Verochka, here you go, ‘Lakomka,’ just like you wanted.”

“Thank you, Tolya!” Vera beamed.

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