The Great Russian Readthrough

Hello, readers!

I realize it has been a few months since I have posted here, so I wanted to give you an update on what I've been reading.

For the next semester, I am doing an independent study of Russian Literature, which I have designed to cover everything from the 19th century Golden Age (think Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and the other greats) to the 21st. The purpose of this span is not only to give me the chance to read more Russian lit (which, I confess, while incredibly strange, is something that I've wanted to do for ages), but to see how Russian history has affected what Russian authors write about. Specifically, I'm interested to see whether Soviet control of propaganda and other information which was released to the public caused authors to cloak their critiques of the government in historical events.

In order to get through everything that I will be reading this semester in a timely manner, I've set up a reading schedule over the summer so that I can read each book and take notes before the school year starts.

Here's a taste of what I'm going to be reading:

1. Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin
2. Notes from Underground - Fydor Dostoevsky
3. Demons: A Novel in Three Parts - Fydor Dostoevsky
4. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
5. The Cherry Orchard - Anton Chekov
6. And Quiet Flows the Don - Mikhail Sholokhov
7. Life and Fate - Vassily Grossman
8. Siberia - Nikolai Maslov
9. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
10. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
11. The Funeral Party - Lyudmila Ulitskaya
12. Selected Poems - Marina Tsvetayeva
13. The Day of the Oprichnik - Vladimir Sorokin

I've already finished the first three, and I'm almost done with Anna Karenina, so I feel like I'm doing well. The only one that I'm worried about getting stuck in is Life and Fate, because it's almost as long as War and Peace (you can see that it is noticeably absent from this list - there's a reason for that). I'm really excited for discussion with these works, though.

Of the three that I've finished, I surprisingly most enjoyed Eugene Onegin. I don't usually like poetry, especially extended poems, but I couldn't put the work down. I understood the characters so well, and felt like they were human and fleshed out. By comparison, I felt like Dostoevsky's characters were too bogged down in philosophizing and passing on religion to be fully formed. And at least one of the characters in each novel has to be insane, apparently (this is a running theme I'm noticing, having found it in The Brothers Karamazov and in Crime and Punishment as well). 

Anna Karenina is interesting, in that so far (at least) it does not have nearly the level of political commentary that its companions have had. It is solely a social commentary. If anything, what it does the most is reveal the position of women in Russian society in the 19th century, through four different female characters. As I finish reading, I might keep pondering this viewpoint (maybe it could be a good paper topic!).

That's it for now - I look forward to updating you all with more about the Great Russian Readthrough! 

Happy summer reading, everyone!