PagineFrom Pushkin’s verse to Dostoevsky’s murder mystery of the soul and Tolstoy’s epic of war and peace, Russian classics are some of the most powerful books ever written. Here are 72 essential Russian novels, stories, plays and poems in roughly the order they appeared — with short guides to the great Russian authors, where to start, and dozens you can read free online in English translation right now.
New to Russian literature? Begin with one of these — or follow our step-by-step guide, What to Read for Russian Classics →
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Short biographies, what to read first, and every book of theirs on this list.
Alexander Pushkin is often called the father of modern Russian literature. Born into an aristocratic Moscow family — his great-grandfather Abram Gannibal was an African-born general raised at the court of Peter the Great — he made everyday spoken Russian into a literary language. His novel in verse Eugene Onegin (1833) created the “superfluous man” that later writers kept returning to, and his prose tales, from The Queen of Spades to The Captain’s Daughter, are models of clarity. He died at 37 after a duel defending his wife’s honour.
Where to start: The Captain’s Daughter
On this list: Eugene Onegin · Boris Godunov · The Queen of Spades · The Captain’s Daughter
Nikolai Gogol was a Ukrainian-born writer whose grotesque, hilarious and strangely sad stories shaped everything that followed — Dostoevsky is said to have remarked that “we all came out from Gogol’s Overcoat.” His comedy The Inspector General (1836) skewers small-town corruption, The Nose follows a nose that runs off on its own, and the comic road novel Dead Souls (1842) follows a swindler buying up dead serfs. Tormented by religious doubt, he burned the manuscript of its second part shortly before his death.
Where to start: The Overcoat
On this list: Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka · Taras Bulba · The Inspector General · The Nose · The Overcoat · Dead Souls
Mikhail Lermontov was Russia’s great Romantic poet after Pushkin — and, with A Hero of Our Time (1840), the author of the first major Russian psychological novel. Its anti-hero Pechorin, a bored, brilliant officer in the Caucasus, became a type for a whole generation. Exiled to the Caucasus for a furious poem on Pushkin’s death, Lermontov wrote landscape and freedom poems such as Mtsyri, and, like Pushkin, was killed in a duel — at just 26.
Where to start: A Hero of Our Time
On this list: A Hero of Our Time
Ivan Turgenev was the most European of the great Russian novelists and the first to win a wide readership in the West. His A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852), quiet portraits of peasants and landowners, are often credited with stirring public feeling against serfdom. Fathers and Sons (1862) introduced the young “nihilist” Bazarov and the generation gap that still defines families. Elegant, melancholy and precise, Turgenev spent much of his life in France, where he befriended Flaubert and Zola.
Where to start: Fathers and Sons
On this list: A Sportsman’s Sketches · Rudin · A House of Gentlefolk · On the Eve · First Love · Fathers and Sons · Smoke
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote novels that feel like thrillers about the human soul. After his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), made him famous, he was arrested for joining a political discussion circle, faced a mock execution by firing squad, and spent four years in a Siberian prison camp — an experience at the heart of The House of the Dead. He returned to write Notes from Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and his final masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) — books about guilt, freedom, faith and doubt that shaped modern psychology, existentialism and the crime novel. He wrote many under crushing gambling debts and deadlines.
Reading order: New to Dostoevsky? Start with Crime and Punishment or the short White Nights; then Notes from Underground, The Idiot and finally The Brothers Karamazov.
On this list: Poor Folk · White Nights · The House of the Dead · Notes from Underground · Crime and Punishment · The Gambler · The Idiot · Demons
Leo Tolstoy is, for many readers, the greatest novelist who ever lived. Born a count on the Yasnaya Polyana estate, he served as an artillery officer in the Crimean War (Sevastopol Sketches) and then wrote the two giants of the form: War and Peace (1869), five families caught up in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and Anna Karenina (1878), with its famous first line about happy and unhappy families. In later life he turned to a radical Christian pacifism that influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., gave away his copyrights, and wrote short masterpieces such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886). He died at a remote railway station after leaving home at 82.
Reading order: Short on time? Read The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man. Ready for more: Anna Karenina, then War and Peace.
On this list: Childhood · Sevastopol Sketches · The Cossacks · War and Peace · Anna Karenina · The Death of Ivan Ilych · How Much Land Does a Man Need? · The Kreutzer Sonata
Ivan Goncharov spent his career as a government official and censor — and wrote one of the funniest, gentlest Russian novels. Oblomov (1859) is the story of a kind nobleman so lazy he takes most of the first part to get out of bed; “Oblomovism” became a Russian word for apathy. Goncharov also wrote A Common Story and The Precipice, and a travel book from a voyage to Japan.
Where to start: Oblomov
On this list: Oblomov
Anton Chekhov was a doctor who changed both the short story and the theatre. The grandson of a serf, he paid his way through medical school writing comic sketches, then developed a quiet, open-ended style — no villains, no neat morals — in stories such as Ward No. 6, The Bet, Gooseberries and The Lady with the Dog. His four great plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, are still performed constantly. He died of tuberculosis at 44. Writers from Hemingway to Alice Munro learned from him.
Where to start: The Lady with the Dog
On this list: Ward No. 6 · The Seagull · Uncle Vanya · The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories · Three Sisters · The Cherry Orchard
Maxim Gorky (the pen name of Alexei Peshkov — “gorky” means “bitter”) grew up poor, worked from childhood and wandered Russia on foot before becoming famous for stories of tramps and outcasts. His play The Lower Depths (1902) and novel Mother (1906) made him a hero of the left, and his autobiographical trilogy, beginning with My Childhood, is among the best memoirs in Russian. Later he became the leading literary figure of the early Soviet Union.
Where to start: My Childhood
On this list: The Lower Depths · Mother · My Childhood
Mikhail Bulgakov, a doctor turned writer, satirised Soviet life so sharply that much of his work went unpublished in his lifetime. The Master and Margarita — the Devil visits Stalin-era Moscow, alongside the story of Pontius Pilate — was written over twelve years and only published in the 1960s, decades after his death; it is now one of the most loved Russian novels of the 20th century. Heart of a Dog and The White Guard are also essential.
Where to start: The Master and Margarita
On this list: The White Guard · Heart of a Dog · The Master and Margarita
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in Soviet labour camps for criticising Stalin in a private letter. His short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), one ordinary day in a camp, was a sensation, and The Gulag Archipelago (1973) documented the whole prison-camp system. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, was expelled from the USSR in 1974, and returned to Russia twenty years later.
Where to start: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
On this list: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich · Cancer Ward · The Gulag Archipelago
28 of these are free to read in Pagine right now (📖 Read free). The rest link to a free public-domain edition or to Open Library, where many can be borrowed free.
Print it, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself or share it with a friend, book club or class. Every copy links back to pagineapp.com, and the free Pagine app tracks every book you finish.
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AndroidEvery title on the list links to the free sources that may have it. Public-domain books are free to read and download; newer books can often be borrowed free.
Start with Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, a Chekhov short story collection, and Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. They are gripping, not too long, and give you a feel for the great Russian writers.
Both. Russian names are written in Cyrillic, so English spellings vary: Dostoevsky, Dostoyevsky and Dostoevski all refer to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881). Likewise Tolstoy is sometimes spelled Tolstoi, and Chekhov as Tchekhov.
Yes. Most 19th-century Russian classics are in the public domain in older English translations (many by Constance Garnett). In Pagine you can read Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Dead Souls, Oblomov and dozens more free online.
Roughly the 19th century — from Pushkin in the 1820s to Chekhov around 1900 — when Russia produced Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov. The early 20th century is often called the Silver Age.
Most readers find Anna Karenina easier to start: it is shorter, with a tighter story. Take War and Peace slowly, a few chapters a day — a character list helps.
Many are taught in high school — Crime and Punishment, Fathers and Sons, Chekhov’s stories, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Some books deal with violence, despair or adult relationships, so they are marked for older readers in Pagine.
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