The Russian Writers on Arthur's Classic Novels

Arthur's Classic Novels: Complete Russian Writers

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Anton Chekhov

The Kiss by Anton Chekhov

The Witch and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The Wife and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

Swan Song by Anton Chekhov

The Slanderer by Anton Chekhov

The Sea-Gull by Anton Chekhov

The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The Schoolmaster and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Chekhov

The Party and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov

Love and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

Letters of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov

The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

Ivanoff by Anton Chekhov

The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The Duel and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The Darling and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The Chorus Girl and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The Bishop and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

Best Russian Short Stories by Anton Chekhov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment
This confusion became more and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street he cried out, "Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly. . . . No, it's nonsense

The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
and for no reason whatever, plunged loudly and gratuitously into the general conversation. Above everything I wanted to pick a quarrel with the Frenchman; and, with that end in view I turned to the General, and exclaimed in an overbearing sort of way--indeed, I think that I actually interrupted him--that that summer it had been almost impossible for a Russian to dine anywhere at tables d'hote.

The Brothers Karamazov
For the present I will only say that this "landowner" - for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate - was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else.

The Dream Of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now

A Raw Youth
I cannot resist sitting down to write the history of the first steps in my career, though I might very well abstain from doing so. . . . I know one thing for certain: I shall never again sit down to write my autobiography even if I live to be a hundred. One must be too disgustingly in love with self to be able without shame to write about oneself. I can only excuse myself on the ground that I am not writing with the same object with which other people write, that is, to win the praise of my readers. It has suddenly occurred to me to write out word for word all that has happened to me during this last year

The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I will say at once that Stepan Trofimovitch had always filled a particular role among us, that of the progressive patriot, so to say, and he was passionately fond of playing the part -- so much so that I really believe he could not have existed without it.

The Idiot
Some of the passengers by this particular train were returning from abroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly with insignificant persons of various occupations and degrees, picked up at the different stations nearer town. All of them seemed weary, and most of them had sleepy eyes and a shivering expression, while their complexions generally appeared to have taken on the colour of the fog outside.

Bobok
A strange requirement. I did not resent it, I am a timid man; but here they have actually made me out mad. An artist painted my portrait as it happened: "After all, you are a literary man," he said. I submitted, he exhibited it. I read: "Go and look at that morbid face suggesting insanity."

Best Russian Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The other day I saw a wedding... But no! I would rather tell you about a Christmas tree. The wedding was superb. I liked it immensely. But the other incident was still finer. I don't know why it is that the sight of the wedding reminded me of the Christmas tree. This is the way it happened:

The Peasant Marey
It was the second day of Easter Week. The air was warm, the sky was blue, the sun was high, warm, and bright, but there was only gloom in my heart. I was wandering behind the prison barracks, examining and counting off the pales in the sturdy prison stockade

The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoevsky
we have all heard of miracles being wrought ever since the 'age of miracles' passed away to return no more. We had, and still have, our saints credited with performing the most miraculous cures; and, if we can believe their biographers, there have been those among them who have been personally visited by the Queen of Heaven.

The Crocodile
As Ivan Matveitch had already in his pocket his ticket for a tour abroad (not so much for the sake of his health as for the improvement of his mind), and was consequently free from his official duties and had nothing whatever to do that morning, he offered no objection to his wife's irresistible fancy, but was positively aflame with curiosity himself.

The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky
He yawned, stretched, and at last opened his eyes completely. For two minutes, however, he lay in his bed without moving, as though he were not yet quite certain whether he were awake or still asleep, whether all that was going on around him were real and actual, or the continuation of his confused dreams.

Poor Folk
Then suddenly, for some reason or another, I raised my eyes--and felt my very heart leap within me! For you had understood what I wanted, you had understood what my heart was craving for. Yes, I perceived that a corner of the curtain in your window had been looped up and fastened to the cornice as I had suggested should be done; and it seemed to me that your dear face was glimmering at the window

Notes From The Underground
I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious).

A Gentle Spirit A Fantastic Story
Oh, while she is still here, it is still all right; I go up and look at her every minute; but tomorrow they will take her away - and how shall I be left alone?

The Insulted and Injured by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I am not a mystic. I scarcely believe in presentiments and divinings, yet I have, as probably most people have, had some rather inexplicable experiences in my life.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Gogol

The Inspector-General by Nikolai Gogol

A May Evening by Nikolai Gogol

Maxim Gorky

Confronting Life
"I wish for freedom -- to live in harmony with my desires, and do not want to be unto my neighbor, from sense of duty, either a brother or a servant. I would be that which I should freely choose -- a slave or brother.

Reminiscences Of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy by Maxim Gorky
These fragmentary notes were written by me during the period when I lived in Oleise and Leo Nikolaevich at Gaspra in the Crimea. They cover the period of Tolstoy's serious illness and of his subsequent recovery.

Philip Vasilyevich's Story
Beyond the river, in the yellow velvet of withered grass, a small lake was glimmering; the dull autumn sky reflected itself in it mournfully; the pale disk of the moon was wasting away in the sky. The sun had long set behind the dark wall of the distant forest and the purple strip of the setting sun, amidst the thick, dark-blue clouds, seemed like a stream of fire in the mountain straits.

Foma Gordyeef by Maxim Gorky
Built like a giant, handsome and not at all stupid, he was one of those people whom luck always follows everywhere--not because they are gifted and industrious, but rather because, having an enormous stock of energy at their command, they cannot stop to think over the choice of means when on their way toward their aims, and, excepting their own will

Creatures That Once Were Men
In front of you is the main street, with two rows of miserable-looking huts with shuttered windows and old walls pressing on each other and leaning forward. The roofs of these time-worn habitations are full of holes, and have been patched here and there with laths; from underneath them project mildewed beams

Through Russia by Maxim Gorky
To the left, the tops of the mountains hung fringed with dense, fleecy clouds of the kind which presages rain; and these clouds were sending their shadows gliding over slopes green and overgrown with boxwood and that peculiar species of hollow beech-stump which once came near to effecting the downfall of Pompey's host, through depriving his iron-built legions of the use of their legs as they revelled in the intoxicating sweetness of the " mead " or honey which wild bees make from the blossoms of the laurel and the azalea

Alexander Sergeievitch Pushkin

The Daughter of the Commandant by Alexander Pushkin

The Queen Of Spades by Alexander Pushkin

The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems by Alexander Pushkin

Boris Godunov by Alexander Pushkin

Marie by Alexander Pushkin

Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Boyhood
Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe. In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other--a britchka--sat Woloda, myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps. He made the sign of the cross at the windows of the carriages

Resurrection
Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paying the ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the town.

War and Peace Volume I
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you -- sit down and tell me all the news."

War and Peace Volume II
The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor -- idleness -- was a condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at ease.

Childhood
"Suppose," I thought to myself," that I am only a small boy, yet why should he disturb me? Why does he not go killing flies around Woloda's bed? No; Woloda is older than I, and I am the youngest of the family, so he torments me. That is what he thinks of all day long--how to tease me.

Father Sergius
In Petersburg in the eighteen-forties a surprising event occurred. An officer of the Cuirassier Life Guards, a handsome prince who everyone predicted would become aide-de-camp to the Emperor Nicholas I and have a brilliant career, left the service, broke off his engagement to a beautiful maid of honour, a favourite of the Empress's, gave his small estate to his sister, and retired to a monastery to become a monk.

The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
Ivan The Fool, A Lost Opportunity, Polikushka, The Candle.
Travellers left and entered our car at every stopping of the train. Three persons, however, remained, bound, like myself, for the farthest station: a lady neither young nor pretty, smoking cigarettes, with a thin face, a cap on her head, and wearing a semi-masculine outer garment; then her companion, a very loquacious gentleman of about forty years, with baggage entirely new and arranged in an orderly manner; then a gentleman who held himself entirely aloof, short in stature, very nervous, of uncertain age,

Master and Man
Nikita was a peasant of about fifty from a neighbouring village, 'not a manager' as the peasants said of him, meaning that he was not the thrifty head of a household but lived most of his time away from home as a labourer. He was valued everywhere for his industry, dexterity, and strength at work, and still more for his kindly and pleasant temper.

Reminiscences Of Tolstoy By His Son, Count Ilya Tolstoy
Translated By George Calderon
I am afraid to believe it. It is too good to be true. My brother's chief characteristic was neither egotism nor self- renunciation, but a strict mean between the two. He never sacrificed himself for any one else; but not only always avoided injuring others, but also interfering with them. He kept his happiness and his sufferings entirely to himself.

Ivan Turgenev

A Lear of the Steppes and Other Stories
We were a party of six, gathered together one winter evening at the house of an old college friend. The conversation turned on Shakespeare, on his types, and how profoundly and truly they were taken from the very heart of humanity. We admired particularly their truth to life, their actuality. Each of us spoke of the Hamlets, the Othellos, the Falstaffs, even the Richard the Thirds and Macbeths--the two last only potentially, it is true, resembling their prototypes--whom he had happened to come across.

Torrents of Spring
At two o'clock in the night he had gone back to his study. He had dismissed the servant after the candles were lighted, and throwing himself into a low chair by the hearth, he hid his face in both hands.

The Jew and Other Stories
At first the French kept us amused with sorties, but they quickly subsided. We soon got sick of foraging expeditions too; we were overcome, in fact, by such deadly dulness that we were ready to howl for sheer ennui. I was not more than nineteen then; I was a healthy young fellow, fresh as a daisy, thought of nothing but getting all the fun I could out of the French . . . and in other ways too . . . you understand what I mean . . . and this is what happened.

The Diary of a Superfluous Man
At last I have got at something definite! For all his cunning, he had to speak out at last. Yes, I am soon, very soon, to die. The frozen rivers will break up, and with the last snow I shall, most likely, swim away . . . whither? God knows! To the ocean too. Well, well, since one must die, one may as well die in the spring.

Smoke
He took to gazing out of the window. The day was gray and damp; there was no rain, but the fog held on, and low-lying clouds veiled the sky. The wind was blowing in the contrary direction to the course of the train; whitish clouds of steam, now alone, now mingled with other, darker clouds, of smoke, swept, in an endless series, past the window beside which Litvinov sat.

A Hunter's Sketches
On a visit to Zhizdra District in search of sport, I met in the fields a petty landlord of the Kaluga province called Polutikin, and made his acquaintance. He was an enthusiastic hunter; it follows, therefore, that he was an excellent fellow. He was liable, indeed, to a few weaknesses: he used, for instance, to pay his addresses to every unmarried heiress in the province, and when he had been refused her hand and house, broken-hearted he confided his sorrows to all his friends and acquaintances, and continued to shower offerings of sour peaches and other raw produce from his garden upon the young lady's relatives

A House of Gentlefolk
She was, however, very sweet and agreeable when all her wishes were carried out and none opposed her. Her house was among the pleasantest in the town. She had a considerable fortune, not so much from her own property as from her husband's savings. Her two daughters were living with her; her son was being educated in one of the best government schools in Petersburg.

Fathers and Sons
Nikolai Petrovich--though so far from brave that he had even been called a "funk"--was intended, like his brother Pavel, to enter the army; but he broke his leg on the very day he obtained a commission and after spending two months in bed he never got rid of a slight limp for the rest of his life.

A Desperate Character and Other Stories
He came into God's world, I remember, in 1828, at his father's native place and property, in one of the sleepiest corners of a sleepy province of the steppes. Misha's father, Andrei Nikolaevitch Poltyev, I remember well to this day. He was a genuine old-world landowner, a God-fearing, sedate man, fairly--for those days--well educated, just a little cracked, to tell the truth--and, moreover, he suffered from epilepsy.

Virgin Soil
At one o'clock in the afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868, a young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was toiling up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers Street in St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden goloshes and slowly swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at last reached the very top flight and stopped before a half-open door hanging off its hinges. He did not ring the bell, but gave a loud sigh and walked straight into a small, dark passage.

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