What's your attitude about Russian classic literature?

My friend got their grad degree in Russian studies, needless to say that this comes up often.

Other folks have touched on other popular titles and authors, missing from this discussion so far is Nabokov. He's known for Lolita, but it probably isn't the book you think it is if you just watched Kubrick's movie or saw a cover at the bookstore. To quote my friend though,

The thing about going into Lolita, is that it is not a titillating book about CSA - it's a book about how "charming, clever, and educated" men can utilize their language to make YOU an unreliable observer. It should make you uncomfortable!

However, the subject matter is inherently heavy. No matter how important I think the book is of a cultural landmark - I think it's OK to skip. Read Pale Fire or Invitation to a Beheading instead.

We like his prose and what he does with narrative. He was also a proper master of the Russian, English, and French languages and did many of his own translations, so they read quite well and not awkwardly as some others might.

I've also found Russian works to find humor in misery unlike others, along with a certain weirdness pervasive in even the older classics, but especially once we hit the Soviet era.

You're probably going to get a lot of folks who've only read Dostoyevsky. I'm one of them.

Crime and Punishment was a brutally difficult read.

The Brothers Karamazov occasionally caught my attention but was generally not an enjoyable read.

My main issue is that Dostoyevsky says in a thousand words what could have been said in ten. His characters are incredibly neurotic. I often felt like they were the cast of The Great Gatsby on steroids. More than that, I just don't care about the church or Christianity in general, so I find his musings on God very boring.

Classic literature in general can have these issues when you're spoiled by modern writing styles, which I am. I think I'm a reasonably intelligent person, but I'll admit I just don't enjoy slogging through old and boring texts. It's hard to admit to yourself though because there is an allure to this idea of being well-read in all the classics and understanding references to classic literature.

As for Russian literature in general, I very much enjoyed Roadside Picnic.

I'm by no means an expert, but I've read probably a few dozen works of classic Russian literature. I would caution against painting the genre with too broad a brush - there is a surprising variety in form, content, and themes, such that a prospective reader can seek out something especially suited to them.

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov. He only has one novel, but five novellas (which are often collected together) and hundreds of short stories. He is probably the most accessible author from this period - a lot of his stories are just sketches of characters, interactions, or events, which do an excellent job at capturing the 'human element' of these things. He really has an eye for describing people, writing realistic dialogue, and finding the most poignant descriptions for everyday things. His writing is generally unpretentious but still has some depth to it. More than any other author he really transports the reader to the late 19th century. He also wrote several famous plays but I found simply reading them to be lacking.

A lot of people will recommend Dostoevsky but he's definitely polarizing. I thought 'Crime and Punishment' was okay, but found 'Notes from Underground' (for instance) to be pointless and sloppily written. In general, most of his characters are in a perpetual state of anguish, inhabit a cruel and ugly world, and the quality of the writing itself is likewise pretty melodramatic. This can definitely be entertaining, but unless you are really into themes of religion, suffering, morality, you probably won't get much in the way of deeper meaning.

Another figure worth mentioning is Nikolai Gogol. Perhaps his most famous novel is 'Dead Souls', which is a sort of political drama that satirizes the middle aristocracy. A lot of the humor is hard to translate, but nonetheless some of the comic absurdity is still apparent, and overall it's a decent work. That said, I much prefer Gogol's short stories, which still have a borderline silly picaresque absurdity but incorporate lots of magical realism that is not all that common among the Russian classics. I feel like this must have been a major influence on Mikhail Bulgakov, as 'Master and Margarita' (another excellent book) has a very similar style as some Gogol works like 'The Terrible Vengeance', 'The Nose', and 'The Overcoat'.

I've also read some Tolstoy and some Lermontov, but not enough to really comment on them.

I'm not exactly sure where you draw the line at 'classic', but there's a lot of Soviet-era literature that is pretty good. Bulgakov technically falls into that category, though for some reason he's often lumped in with unambiguously 'classic' pre-Soviet literature. I also like Solzhenitsyn, though he is very polemic - the politics of the Soviet state feature heavily in works of fiction like 'Cancer Ward' and 'Matryona's Place', and he also has non-fiction stuff like 'Gulag Archipelago'.

There's also Nabokov, who fits even less with the original question due to his expatriate status, though still wrote his early works in Russian. Indeed there's a lot of Gogol-ian influence on 'Invitation to a Beheading' (my favorite), so in some sense perhaps this could be considered Russian classic literature. His later works, however you feel about them, probably don't count the same way.

I like reading about it more than reading it is probably the best way to say it lol

From Dostoevsky I read Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and Crime and Punishment. I'd say Demons was the most interesting to me but all of them felt very long and very slow. What a lot of folks wrote about c&p is relatable to me and applies to the others - it's tough to keep track of people and it takes a while for small stuff to happen. Felt like I pretty quickly got the character's struggle and then I just...kept getting it, over and over and over. One thing I did think was funny about it was the protagonist's mom - I guess it just works because of the style/translation, that her character was meant to be wordy and annoying and I think the novel captures that as well as anything I've ever read. Demons moves a bit faster and the character it centers on is an awful dude so it kept my interest a lot better. I wouldn't put it up as a favorite overall though.

I've read some others, like The Master and Margarita and Anna Karenina, but if I'm honest I just don't remember much past "I wasn't completely repulsed". A guy gave me a copy of Master and kinda ruined it with hype. I'd never encountered someone else who hyped up an old Russian novel so I gave it a go. Turns out he'd spoiled pretty much all of it so my experience was similar to the Dostoyevsky works.

I like more modern things. Roadside Picnic is one of my favorites in general, can be gotten for free and read in an afternoon. The older literature is interesting when I read/listen to someone talk about its impact and how folks from there understand it. I think my main complaint is that they're just really, really slow. Feels like it takes forever for things to happen and when something finally does, takes forever to get through it and on to the next thing. That's when I'm not getting lost in names. I'd always assumed it's different in the native language, that there's elements of the writing that might make things more interesting, wordplay and clever choices and such. I can't read Russian so I'll never properly know. Translated, they're just kinda tough to chew, and a bit miserable.

I'm not a great example, I've only read crime and punishment. I read it because my mother loves it and I wanted to give it a try. It was certainly punishment. Reading his thoughts and plans for not getting caught for pages and pages drove me mad. All to in the end

ending spoiler.

give himself in.

Many times I had problems following which character they were referring to because they use plenty of nicknames associated to a first name, but I had no idea which name it came from. One part I remember really enjoying though, I don't remember if it was a full chapter or just a few pages, was a time the main character goes into a pub and starts talking to a stranger. That stranger's life story was fascinating, and so well written. Hope this helps!

Death of Ivan Illych was an amazing book for me.

I enjoyed Master and Margarita.

Crime and Punishment I strongly disliked when I was forced to read it.

I have avoided other Russian novels because of the length and because of the confusing names.

I haven't read much of the great capital-L Literature like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, but when I was in undergrad I took a class offered by the Slavic Language & Literature department at my university called "Science Fiction East vs. West" that compared science fiction in the 20th century from Western Europe and the US with counterparts (and often predecessors) from the then-Soviet Union (though of course we read it in translation). It was one of my favorite classes I took outside my major (in large part because the professor, Dr. Helena Goscilo, was phenomenal and passionate about the subject) and it introduced me to some real classics.

The one that stuck with me most was definitely Roadside Picnic (Пикник на обочине) by the Strugatskys. The professor showed us a scene from the Tarkovsky film adaptation as well, though due to its being a very loose adaptation and us not being in her Russian film class, we didn't watch much of it. For anyone here who hasn't heard of it, this book and film are what the videogame S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is based on. It's really good, as evidenced by the fact that the title came to mind immediately when I saw this thread despite my reading it six or seven years ago.

Another big work of Russian sci-fi we read in this class was Zamyatin's We (Мы), a dystopian novel that influenced the rise in dystopian fiction as a genre and at least partially inspired the very famous Western dystopian classics 1984 and (arguably) Brave New World. And while it's not Russian, I'd be remiss not to mention the other stand-out from the class, Stanisław Lem's Solaris, which was also great and thought-provoking.

I'm fairly far out of my depths here, having only read two.

Dostoevsky's The Idiot ( Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshki ) and The Brothers Karamazov.

I loved both, and they're quite high on my re-read list. Thoughts: they're a strange mix of "page turner" and "impenetrable".

Take The Idiot, the example.

I guess I'll spoiler tag

the Birthday Party. It was fascinating and I couldn't wait to find out what Nastasya was going to do at all, and it was as fascinating to observe as the slo-mo fall of a Ming case. But being a poor reader, I didn't understand her circumstances at all until her speech at the end.....I had no idea that Totsky had been grooming and sexually abusing her since childhood. I don't know what I thought, that it wasn't a healthy relationship and that the inciting incidence was about Totsky wanting to take a wife, but I somehow I guess, thought it was "only" some kind of codependent toxic relationship.

I'm drawn to the emotional landscape of the characters, the depths and the clarity of Dostoevsky, and the sheer range of his understanding towards so many types of people. But at the same time I find it difficult to understand the basic motivations of the characters.... Why was Nastasya so tortured about being with Prince Myshkin?

And I love Aloysha Karamazov's talks with Father Zozima. All the philosophical and psychologicalans religious bits of both novels. I guess being an Orthodox Christian convert myself there's a lot of really fascinating stuff here that I didn't grow up with, that had a big impact.

I adore Prince Myshkin and Aloysha, but I cannot understand their motivations behind what they do before they do them, if that makes any sense?

Sadly, the character I most identify with myself is poor old wretched Fyodor. I was more able to understand Fyodor Karamazov' tortured soul, how sincere and heartfelt his repentance, which aren't worth the air they're breathed on before he's evil and foolish and awful again.

Fyodor at the elders, fairly early on in the novel and minimal spoilers:

He remembered his own words at the elder's: "I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I." He longed to revenge himself on everyone for his own unseemliness. He suddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, "Why do you hate so and so, so much?" And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, "I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him."

Remembering that now, he smiled quietly and malignantly, hesitating for a moment. His eyes gleamed, and his lips positively quivered.

"Well, since I have begun, I may as well go on," he decided. His predominant sensation at that moment might be expressed in the following words, "Well, there is no rehabilitating myself now. So let me shame them for all I am worth. I will show them I don't care what they think- that's all!"

His motivation I understand all too well. He's super terrible but I cannot bring myself to thoroughly hate him because I love myself too much.

Here's an old Reddit post on a passage that I also love -- it's just such a beautiful attitude on love and hope.

I took a Russian literature class at university. I'm not super well read outside of what I read for class. But I will say that I really appreciate the absurdism of stuff like Gogol's short stories, like The Nose and The Overcoat, or Bulgakov. Not at all what I expected going in. I had this picture of Russian literature as very serious and depressing, which to be fair is definitely true of some classics like Crime and Punishment. I think this absurdist streak is a clever way of avoiding censorship.

One of the weirdest novels I've ever read wasn't a classic, and not something I read for class. It's called The Queue, by Vladimir Sorokin, written in the 1980s. The novel is told entirely in unattributed dialogue. It takes place in a days-long queue to buy a new product in a store, although nobody actually knows what they're queuing for. You have to guess who's speaking by context. At one point, a couple leave the queue for the night and end up having sex, and there's just multiple pages of uninterrupted sex noises. Really fucking weird book, but also a really interesting experiment in form. And like Gogol or Bulgakov, the absurdity of it is a commentary on social conditions at the time.

I heard that many Ukrainians avoid all Russian culture, for obvious reasons. Is this correct? Do many people avoid classic Russian literature for this reason?

I'm curious about your feelings. I have read some Dostoevsky (The Double, Crime & Punishment, Brothers Karamasov), Tolstoy (War and Peace, Anna Karenina), Solzhenitsyn (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a little bit of Gulag Archipelago), and Nabokov (Lolita, Pale Fire). In both Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's works, there is a tiny bit of patriotism. Both authors spend a couple of paragraphs exulting the Russian soul and spirit. But if I remember right, they never say "Russia is superior to all other countries" (or if they do, they do it in the same way a person would say "My mother is the best mother," without meaning that all other mothers are inferior).

Do Ukrainians feel that Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's works are jingoistic? If so, I'm curious about how they were taught in Ukrainian schools, because as an outsider, I didn't have that impression at all.

My feelings about the authors:

Tolstoy: he's like a scientist, the way he studies personalities and how to depict them. I feel like my internal library of "personality types" expanded by reading his works.

Dostoevsky: "Brothers Karamazov" was my favorite book when I was in university. I love how it depicts three different ways of finding salvation (even though I'm not religious, I understand what it means to feel spiritual). And the plot that bound everything together was also gripping. One thing I loved about both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky was how easy they were to read, both in terms of how interesting they were, and how clearly the plot and characters were described.

Solzhenitsyn: He shares so many stylistic similarities with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky--they way characters are described, the length and detail, the way he goes off on philosophical tangents.

Nabokov: Quite different from the other writers I mentioned above. I enjoyed Lolita--it was colorful, his use of the English language was outstanding, and he managed to throw in many thoughtful ideas into his crazy plot. Pale Fire was less interesting to me. I liked the opening poem section, but after that it felt like a crossword puzzle, both in terms of how much brain power I needed to understand it, and in terms of the amount of emotional weight it held (almost none).

I've read Anna Karienina and enjoyed, but it could be shorter. There were parts of it that I barely made it.

I made a promise that if I was called for a particular government job, I would read War and Peace.

Luckily I wasn't called by that job, but ended up in better one. War and Peace remains unread.