Russian Classic Literature

There are a few names you may know even if you’re new to Russian literature. А. С. Пушкин (A.S. Pushkin) is one of them. He was known for his epic narrative poetry and a distinct style, and his works left a lasting mark on Russian literature, influencing authors to this day.

This website hosts Pushkin’s book “Evgeny Onegin,” a beloved classic love story whose main character has been used as a model for many protagonists since.

Not into love stories? You can also find a number of other classic literary works, including stories by М. Ю. Лермонтов (M. Y. Lermontov), Н. В. Гоголь (N. V. Gogol) and even Ф. М. Достоевский (F. M. Dostoyevsky)—that’s right, of “Crime and Punishment.”

Text is provided in-browser (just click the links on the left to get started) while the audio is available within the browser or as a download.

The authors presented on this website are an integral part of Russian culture and its rich literary history. That said, the language is dated and can be difficult to follow. If you’d like to tackle one of these, we recommend you read an English version first to familiarize yourself with the text before taking on the audiobook/text combo.

Short Stories and Myths on Duotales

This wonderful collection of short works is specifically intended for language learning and provides parallel text and audio for Russian learners.

The tales here are short and include stories you may know, including works from Greek myths, the Brothers Grimm, Rudyard Kipling, and even classic children’s fairy tales.

For a more cultural experience, check out the stories by (of course) Pushkin and “Telephone” by К. И. Чуковский (K. I. Chukovsky), a wonderfully Seussian rhyming short story that’s recited by Russian children to this day.

(Check out an impressively old cartoon depicting this story and starring the author himself on YouTube—and just try not to smile!)

The audio for each tale can be downloaded, as can the accompanying text.

Learners, rejoice: texts on this site are presented in both English and Russian, with each Russian sentence followed by its translation. But be aware that the translations aren’t word-for-word and at times take serious liberties (in “Telephone,” for instance, an elephant is somehow transformed into a polar bear in the translation).

Use this resource to familiarize yourself with the basic idea of each story, then challenge yourself to translate the Russian audiobooks and see how different they are from the English versions presented by the site.

Old Recordings by Shalamov

In the deep recesses of the internet, you occasionally come across a time machine. Travel into the past with this website, which contains works by В. Т. Шаламов (V. T. Shalamov), recorded by the author himself.

Shalamov was a Russian writer and journalist who’s perhaps better known for surviving an ordeal in one of the notorious gulags of Siberia. This collection of stories and poems is understandably dark and often depressing looks at human nature.

The recordings here are very old but Shalamov’s pronunciation is clear and deeply lyrical, so this is a good resource to use when you want to hear a more theatrical, exaggerated style of Russian.

Not every recording has a text to match it—one that does is “Squirrel,” which has both the audio and the text available on the site. Luckily, most of Shalomov’s written works are available for very low prices on Amazon’s Kindle store.

Or, if you’re interested in reading his first-person account of spending 17 years in a terrible gulag, you can find the Penguin-published “Kolyma Tales” on Amazon (in English).