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1. Finally! I might not get excited over the presidential election, and I’m not a movie guy, but here I actually have an opinion.

   I’d suggest Fathers and Sons, the Red Cavalry stories, Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, and, yeah, War and Peace. It might help to alternate between the more humane authors like Tolstoy and Turgenev and folks like Babel and Bulgakov.

   James Meek, Guardian journalist and author of The People’s Act of Love once prepared a list of his favorite Russian works (it was conspicuous for its lack of War and Peace) but I can’t find it online right now.

   — Matt Frost · Dec 18, 06:14 PM · #

2. It appears that The People’s Act of Love is eligible under the terms of the Challenge, since it’s about Russia. I’ve been meaning to shill for this book at some point — it’s amazing. Do check it out.

   — Matt Frost · Dec 18, 06:23 PM · #

3. A list of Russian literature that doesn’t include Dusty? For shame. Why not read The Demons? Also, I’m assuming you’re picking The White Guard because you’ve already read The Master and Margarita, but if this is not the case do yourself a favor and read the latter pronto. Finally, if the stories leave you wanting more Gogol – and they will – read Dead Souls (but just part 1, he never finished the rest). It’s hilarious.

   — Kyle · Dec 18, 06:26 PM · #

4. I’ve read Brothers K, Crime & Punishment, Notes From Underground – never read The Idiot or Demons, but feel like I’m OK on Dostoevsky for now. For similar reasons, War & Peace isn’t at the very top of my list – I’ve read Anna and the novellas. But I’ve never read Pushkin. Or Turgenev.

   I have indeed already read Dead Souls – part 1 is very good, part 2, not very good – and M&M. White Guard was recommended by a Russian friend as Bulgakov’s most humane work.

   I shall certainly add The People’s Act of Love to the queue.

   — Noah Millman · Dec 18, 07:05 PM · #

5. I second the nomination of Fathers and Sons as the Turgenev. Also, I’d avoid the Nabokov translation of Eugene Onegin — it’s famously perverse. If you’re new to Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World might be more interesting, though neither that nor The Dialogic Imagination has much to say about Russian literature (his book on Dostoevsky would be the place to go for that). And finally, if you’re going to do any poetry, you should move Anna Akhamatova’s Requiem pretty near the top of your list. It’s astonishing.

   — Alan Jacobs · Dec 18, 07:19 PM · #

6. Pushkin, Pushkin, Pushkin. It’s crazy and sad to me that no one reads him anymore. He’s a giant. Really.

   — Freddie · Dec 18, 08:55 PM · #

7. Freddie: who’s the only author I mentioned twice? The rap on Pushkin is that he is a genius in Russian – the equivalent of Goethe if not Shakespeare – but doesn’t translate well. So: the Hofstadter translation of Onegin: masterpiece or travesty?

   — Noah Millman · Dec 18, 09:12 PM · #

8. I wasn’t scolding, just suggesting.

   And the translation, like most translations, is a necessary evil. I’m not one who thinks that it’s disqualifyingly bad. I read it in Russian, but to be honest the process was so laborious and difficult (it took me over a year and a half) I had a hard time evaluating it critically.

   — Freddie · Dec 18, 09:22 PM · #

9. These things are always tricky, since it’s difficult to know what you are likely to find most interesting; but the Russian work not on your list that the widest range of people ranging from literate to me all enjoy is surely The Master and Margarita.

   — Jim Manzi · Dec 18, 11:09 PM · #

10. He’s already read The Master and Margarita, so now it’s a cage match of White Guard vs. Heart of a Dog for the Bulgakov slot.

    But really, we’re getting ridiculous here, barking orders at Noah like this. Time for us to play along at home. Who’s in?

    — Matt Frost · Dec 19, 12:40 AM · #

11. “Time for us to play along at home. Who’s in?”

    I choose Iron Chef: Goncharov!

    — Freddie · Dec 19, 12:55 AM · #

12. Third endorsement—Fathers and Sons. Maybe I’ll haul Fathers and Sons out of the cupboard in my garage and have another read-thru. I have two Philip Rieff books from James’ suggested reading list, plus a box of books on autism and adolescence, but what’s life without piles of reading material?

    — Joules · Dec 19, 02:09 AM · #

13. If you haven’t already read it, the first and last 100 pages of Anna Karenina are the best that I’ve ever read. The middle 700 are good, but not breath takingly so.

    I would also second (fourth?) Fathers and Sons. Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita is excellent as well, as is Andrei Bely’s Petersburg.

    — TW Andrews · Dec 19, 12:48 PM · #

14. Another suggestion, if you can find them in English. These are works by Ivan Ilyin:

    About the Essence of Conscience of Law
    The Way of Spiritual Revival
    Foundations of Struggle for the National Russia
    About the Future Russia

    Any one of these would be useful in understanding Russia under Putin, and beyond.

    — JA · Dec 19, 01:17 PM · #

15. In the chapter on Eugene Onegin from his book “Le Ton beau de Marot,” Hofstadter himself thinks the recent translation by James Fallen, published by Oxford, is the best. Having read a number of Onegin translations (but not Russian, so this opinion isn’t worth much) I think it’s as least as good as the others. Nabokov’s translation always gets slighted, but at least it has the virtue of telling readers without Russian exactly what Pushkin wrote, and the commentary is fascinating (I especially like the digression on 19th-century dueling conventions).

    I’d vote for “War & Peace,” but as you want to avoid it for understandable reasons, then ….. the collection of Chekhov’s short novels.

    Other things you might want to consider: – the late 19th-century theologian & mystic, Vladimir Solovyov; – other good things by Turgenev: a novel, “The Home of the Gentry;” a famous story, “First Love;” – another famous short story about love: Dostoevsky’s early novella “White Nights” (made into a movie by Visconti), which is considerably different from his mature work; – Boris Pasternak’s poetry from the 1920s; – Vladmir Nabokov’s last Russian novel, “The Gift;” – Solzhenitsyn, “The First Circle.”

    About 20 pages of excerpts from “Two Hundred Years Together” were published in a collection titled “The Solzhenitsyn Reader” (ISI). I think the standard history of Russian literature is still considered to be the two-volume work by D.S. Mirsky, who was killed under Stalin.

    — Paul · Dec 20, 05:32 AM · #

16. Ditto Paul,
    If there is anything that can make Chekhov’s skills as a dramatist seem modest, it is his short stories.
    No one has mentioned Yury Olesha who, in my view, is the most under-rated Russian novelist. Call it Soviet Surrealist – in a voice and scope that must have influenced Nabokov (though the egoist would surely have denied it). Though that can really only truly be said of ‘Envy’ – his others come up wanting.

    — Peter · Dec 20, 06:28 AM · #

17. Somehow I forgot to mention Gogol’s play, “The Government Inspector” (aka “The Inspector General”), which is flawless, and, like alot of Gogol, actually funny. Overall that’s what I’d recommend most.

    Translated 19th-century Russian poetry outside Pushkin is hard to come by, but one decent selection is a slim anthology called “An Age Ago,” translated by Alan Myers.

    By the way, is anyone familiar with Russian history famous enough to count as literature? I’m totally ignorant (well, there’s Trotsky’s history of the revolution) and would like to learn.

    — Paul · Dec 20, 06:44 AM · #

18. If you haven’t read Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “We” you should add it to your list.

    — MoeLarryAndJesus · Dec 20, 04:15 PM · #

19. Pushkin’s one of my favorite authors but I read him in the original. ‘Eugene Onegin’ is a novel in verse—much better in Russian.

    Second Zamyatin’s ‘We’. While we’re on the subject of fantasy, how about ‘The Master and Margarita’?

    How about Ilf and Petrov’s ‘The Twelve Chairs’ or ‘The Little Golden Calf’. Early Soviet period satire. Short, light, easy reading.

    ‘Idiot’ is an essential. ‘Igrok’ not so much. ‘A Raw Youth’.

    Not too big a Turgenev fan. Not too big on ‘Oblomov’.

    Have you read Tolstoy’s ‘Autobiography’? Must reading.

    Karamzin’s ‘Letters of a Russian Traveler’. Reminiscent of Sterne or maybe Irving.

    — Dave Schuler · Dec 22, 10:36 PM · #

20. History as literature? How about Alexei Tolstoy’s ‘Peter the Great’?

    — Dave Schuler · Dec 22, 10:39 PM · #

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