Classics of Russian Literature
Overview
Dive into the soul-searching depths of Russia’s greatest novels, plays, and poems in this 36-lecture journey through two centuries of literary genius.
Course No. 2830
From Pushkin’s poetic brilliance to Solzhenitsyn’s dissident courage, explore over 40 masterpieces with a professor who brings the original Russian texts to life through dramatic readings.
Course Content
Golden Age Titans
- Pushkin: Russia’s Shakespeare (30 min)
- Eugene Onegin and the birth of modern Russian literature
- Gogol’s Grotesque Vision (31 min)
- Dead Souls and The Overcoat’s absurdist satire
- Dostoevsky’s Tormented Genius (30 min)
- Crime and Punishment’s psychological depths
- Tolstoy’s Epic Canvas (30 min)
- War and Peace and Anna Karenina’s timeless drama
Realists & Revolutionaries
- Turgenev’s Generational Clash (30 min)
- Fathers and Sons and Russia’s social upheaval
- Chekhov’s Subtle Tragedies (30 min)
- The Seagull and the art of subtext
- Gorky’s Revolutionary Voice (30 min)
- Autobiographical sketches of pre-Soviet life
Soviet Era Voices
- Pasternak’s Forbidden Masterpiece (30 min)
- Doctor Zhivago and poetic resistance
- Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Truth (30 min)
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
- Zoshchenko’s Biting Satire (30 min)
- Laughing through Soviet absurdities

