Russian Literature
Please, select a book, poem or story from the list below:
Notes from Underground (by Dostoyevsky)
Russian authors are among the best in the world. These pages will help you discover the writers and works from the various eras. Many of our original Russian texts come with side-by-side English translations. Not only will you enjoy reading famous Russian authors but you will also be able to expand your Russian vocabulary and improve your reading skills.
Prior to the 19th century, the Russian literary tradition was being shaped with simple and authentic works of such writers and poets as Derzhavin, Krylov, Lomonosov, Fonvizin and Karamzin.
The Russian literature underwent an astonishing Golden Age in the beginning of the 19th century that brought world-famous masterpieces filled with beautiful language, philosophy and tradition. Some of the outstanding authors during that era were the poet Alexandr Pushkin, great novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the the playwright Anton Chekhov. The authors lived and worked mainly in Moscow, St Petersburg and other historical hubs. And now, you too can learn Russian in St Petersburg and experience the same places where the famous Russian writers and poets lived.
The beginning of the 20th century started the Silver Age of the Russian poetry. Esenin, Blok, Balmont, Gumilyov, Akhmatova, and Mandelstam are among the best poets of this period. Some avant-garde poets like Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov were trying to overturn the existing Russian literature tradition of that time. The Soviet era that followed brought new faces that were writing about many changes in life, values and ideology that Russia experienced during the Soviet regime. The most prominent authors of that period included Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gaito Gazdanov and Vladimir Nabokov.