Prviet daragi druzya Hi everyone!
In this video, I will give you a brief history of Russian literature
by talking about the top 10 novels of Russian literature that spans a period of 130 years,
from 1830s to 1960s. These are a combination of my favorite Russian novels and also those that
are considered the best of Russian literature. So if you are interested in Russian literature
or want to read a few novels from the cold country but don't know where to begin,
this video is for you. It's also for those who are curious what these big novels are
generally about. So let’s begin by asking why Russian literature in the first place?
The golden age of Russian literature between 1830s and 1880s, a 50 year period produced some of the
best known Russian novelists, such Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Gogol and my favourite,
Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’m absolutely in love with Russian literature. There are a few reasons.
First, I love the raw honesty in Russian novels. There’s no sugar-coating or dilly-dallying about
life or the human condition. I often describe Russian literature like a good punch in the face.
It brings me to my senses from my cosy slumbers from time to time. Another reason I love Russian
novels is they’re mostly novels of ideas. They go deep, philosophically, psychologically and
sociologically. The Russians learnt novel writings from the French. Instead of just copying them,
they decided to take it much deeper, farther into the recess of socio-political entanglements
and human psyche. They capture the modern condition beautifully. A godless world,
free from traditions, yet terrifying at the same time. Tolstoy captured the nightmares of groups,
armies, governments and nations. Dostoevsky captured the nightmares of the individuals.
Turgenev captured the moody, angry young men. Goncharov and Gogol made beautiful dark
comedies out of Russian class system. Chekhov depicted every day life.
So Let’s begin with the national poet and father of Russian literature.
1833 “Eugene Onegin," by Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837): Pushkin for the Russians is
like Shakespeare is to the English. Even today, his poems are memorised and recited by Russians.
He was also the grandson of an African prince who made his way to Russia via Turkey in 18th
century. Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse, and the first major literary work of Russian
literature which inspired future writers such as Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev and many more.
The theme of the book is very similar to Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s idea that it’s society
he means city that turns humans into selfish monsters. People are much nicer in the
countryside, but once they are exposed to the city life they can never unsee what they have
seen. There is a great deal of drama, romance and even a duel in this novel. Pushkin himself
died in a duel at the age of 37 which made him a romantic hero as well as a literary sensation.
1839 A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. This is the first important Russian novel
written in prose which inspired the golden age writers that came after. It’s a very short novel
about being a man, the trial and tribulations of masculinity and the terrifying ordeal of playing
the masculine role in society. Pechorin is a hero but also anti-hero, heroic but also deeply
flawed at the same time. Any man can resonate with this novel. Lermontov too died in a duel
like his hero Pushkin at the age of 26. Now he’s the second Russian writer who wrote about a duel
and died in one. Is it coincidence? There might be a corelations between imagination and reality. If
you imagine something, there is a chance it might happen. I actually visited the site in Pyatigorsk,
the foot of Mount Mashuk in the south of Russia where Lermontov died. In Russia
he’s best-known for his poetry and A Hero of Our Time is his only novel in prose.
1842 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol: Gogol was a fantastic and funny storyteller. His short story
the Nose has inspired many writers around the world, including Chinese, Japanese and western
authors. His masterpiece Dead Souls is about a ruthless businessman who buys dead serfs from
the landowners in order to accumulate enough in his book to take a large bank loan. Basically
a quick scheme to get rich by defrauding a bank. It’s very funny and also revealing of
the dying landed gentry in Russia, foretelling of the socio-political turmoil that came afterwards.
It’s probably the only novel in which people think you can make money from dead people.
Gogol died at the age of 42 after refusing to eat for 9 days. He also burnt the manuscript
for the second volume of Dead Souls. Okay, no more suicides. Gogol was the
last of the Russian romantics. Now we enter the age of dead serious realism. Not quite.
1859 ”Oblomov," Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891): Perhaps the laziest character in literature
is Mr Oblomov, an aristocrat who can barely manage to get out of bed,
thinking that being inactive is the ultimate human achievement. It’s hilarious and profound
at the same time as it revealed how lethargic and stagnant the Russian aristocracy had become
suffering from something called Oblomovitis, a state of perpetual sleep. He lived like a panda,
leaving others to feed him and make babies for him. Laziness is as universal as love, but there
are very few novels written about it. I say it's time we should write more about it. I think every
culture has some folktales about lazy boys or girls. There is one in the Philippines called
Juan Tamad. Oblomov unfortunately doesn't have the same fame and fortune as some other novels,
perhaps party due to its theme. In capitalism laziness is the biggest sin of all.
Now we enter the world of the big guns of Russian literature.
Like Klashnikov. I mean just as lethal.
1862 Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883). Turgenev was perhaps the
most western of all Russian writers in 19th century and had a massive brain twice as big
as average person. His novels are written in a more objective and journalistic style,
letting his characters do and talk as they wish, similar to Gustave Flaubert, who incidentally was
also his friend. Fathers and Sons is about an angry young man Bazarov, educated in Europe who
returns to Russia and clashes with his father over their different outlook on the world
and life. Conflict between generations and the theme of nihilism dominate the novel.
Quote: “Death's an old story, but new for each person.” End quote. It’s a very short novel by
Russian standard. In my other video on Russian literature I discussed his short story called
First Love which is also worth reading. It’s brilliant but dark tale of a young man’s first
experience of love, which is more like a first punch in the face.
1866 Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). Dostoevsky’s magnus opus is Brothers
Karamazov which he completed just before he died in 1882. Dostoevsky articulates different views
and voices beautifully. Nowhere he’s more precise and articulate than Crime and Punishment. I made
a whole video about it and you can watch it here. It’s the first Russian novel to confront western
philosophies head on which had a great impact on Nietzsche the fiercest critique of western
philosophy. It’s a crime novel written by three Russians, a philosopher, a psychologist and a
novelist. Dostoevsky was all three in one. So you get to read and learn about dominant philosophies,
and inner human psyche and a great crime story. It’s a novel that makes you beg a murderer not
to confess his gruesome crime. Raskolnikov is one of the most influential protagonists
in world literature. That’s the magical power of Mr Dostoevsky. His other novels, Notes from the
Underground and Idiot are also highly recommended. If you have time, then read his magnus opus,
Brothers Karamazov. Also November 11 this year, 2021 will be Dostoevsky’s 200th birthday.
1878 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy’s most famous novel is War and Peace,
often called the greatest novel of all time. But very few people have the time to read it. I
haven’t read it either. So my choice is his other novel, Anna Karenina, which is somewhat similar
to Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary. Tolstoy himself called Anna Karenina his only true novel.
Russians use the French word, roman or romance for novel, so it’s a true romance in that sense.
It has one of the most quoted first line ever. “Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The novel is about Anna a married
woman who has an affair with a rich man. The consequences are disastrous for both.
If I’m being perfectly honest, it is about 500 pages longer than it should be.
Currently about 1000 pages long. It also deals with the politics, something Tolstoy loved to
write about. If you like something shorter from the grandpa of Russian literature, his short story
How Much Land Does A Man Needs is wonderful choice, which I summarised in my other video.
1906 Mother by Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). Gorky was a socialist and supported the
USSR’s attempt to level the highly unjust and unequal Russian society. As I discussed earlier
the rich Russians were pretty lazy so Russia was a terrible place for the poor. So the socialist
revolution had a massive support among the peasants. Maxim Gorky grew up poor and lived
a nomadic life traveling throughout Russia so he witnessed a lot of poverty among the dispossessed.
His most famous novel, Mother, is about a revolutionary factory worker whose husband
is a drunkard and son a revolutionary. It celebrates the role a mother plays
in supporting her son to become a force for good in society. Gorky, like Dickens,
and unlike most Russian novelists wrote about the bitter, harsh lives of the less privileged.
Gorky in Russian means bitter and it's a pen name. His real name was Alexei Maximovich
Peshkov. His reputation is somewhat tarnished just like the USSR, but he was a great writer.
1930s The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940). Bulgakov was a doctor
just like Chekhov. What is up with doctors? I see a lot of doctors who turn to fiction. Perhaps
seeing the gruesome side of life can be a bit too much and fiction is a good escape I suppose
or perhaps practicing medicine gives them a deeper insight that we common folks don't have. Bulgakov
was injured and ill so he gave up medicine to write. He had a love-hate relations with
Stalin. He was banned, then saved by the man with the moustache and banned again. The Master and
Margarita was written in 1930s but only published in 1960s. The story is about Satan visiting
Moscow, targeting a group of writers. Master is an embittered and gloomy author, just like most
Russians. Only kidding. He burns his manuscript after being refused publication, but his mistress
Margarita is very optimistic. She joins Satan in his game and by the end they all vanish. Satan
and his entourage are like a tornado that brings chaos to Moscow for a few days and then vanishes,
taking away both Master and Margarita with them. There might be an allusion to those defecting
to the west. Maxim Gorky wrote a book called, The City of Yellow Devil, he was referring to New York
and the west as a whole that has fallen in love with money too much. In Master and Margarita,
there is a character called Ponyryov who is based of Maxim Gorky. The novel is considered
the first critique of Stalin, and a precursor to South American tradition of magic realism,
the novel has a talking cat, and many bizarre events, akin to a Murakami novel these days.
1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008). Solzhenitsyn
whose name is impossible to spell, lived a hard life, including 8 years in gulag, not because his
name was too difficult to spell. But because he was deemed dangerous for Stalin. He also won the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1970. No pain no gain people say. I’m not saying he deserved it.
I mean the gulag experience. He’s a controversial writer because some accuse him of writing for a
western audience, as he focused on the ugly side of USSR. I guess if you can't write for a Russian
audience, a writer needs to eat. The novel is about Ivan accused of spying and sentenced to
8 years of hard labour in Siberia. He tries to adjust to his new life and finds meaning in his
work instead complaining too much. It’s based on the author’s own experience at the camp. One
of the horror of reading this novel is lack of any female characters. Although Soviet Union liberated
women from their traditional roles in Russia and Central Asia, only 10% of gulag inmates were women
and 90% men. Either women didn't cause trouble or the soviet leaders just ignored them. These
people were used as free labour to develop the wild west of Siberia, in the same way 2 millions
American inmates are used as cheap labour for the US capitalism to compete with nations like China
and Mexico. Freedom is a precious thing we have. And that’s what the novel is trying to tell us.
I hope you enjoyed the video, despite the sobering note at the end.
Now, if you want to win a book of your choice from my Russian shelf
just leave a comment down below. Any comment is fine. I will select one person randomly
and later will ask you to choose the book you would like to receive and send the book to you
anywhere in the world. I mean anywhere in the world. unless you are a penguin or a polar bear.
Sposibo bloshoi! Thank you for watching.
Please take a moment to share this among your friends on social media. I’m on a
journey to read books and stories from every country on earth. It helps me
a lot if you liked and shared among your friends. Thank you.