June
6 weekly readings
–27. The Darling
Dushechka
Part I: Anton Chekhov; Part II (Afterword): Leo Tolstoy
Chekhov's celebrated story (1899) presents Olenka—a woman who completely absorbs the thoughts of whoever she loves. Tolstoy's famous afterword argues that Chekhov, like the biblical Balaam, intended t
Must It Be So?
Neuzheli tak nado?
Leo Tolstoy
This powerful social sketch contrasts the brutal labor of factory workers, miners, stone-breakers, and peasant plowmen with the idle luxury of the wealthy who ride past them. The rhetorical question o
First Grief
Pervoe gore
L. Avilova (Lydia Alekseevna Avilova)
This story depicts a young boy's first encounter with social injustice through the arrest and imprisonment of his friend, the family coachman. The coachman Ignat, who had been held in virtual bondage
Voluntary Slavery
Dobrovol'noe rabstvo
La Boétie (Étienne de La Boétie)
This is an excerpt from La Boétie's famous sixteenth-century essay *Discours de la servitude volontaire* (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude), which asks the fundamental question: why do people submit t
The Eagle
Oryol
F. M. Dostoevsky (from *Notes from the House of the Dead*)
Tolstoy selected this passage from Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical account of Siberian prison life. The wounded eagle serves as a powerful symbol of unconquerable freedom and dignity—themes central
Berries
Yagody
Leo Tolstoy
This story brilliantly contrasts two worlds connected by a simple commodity: wild strawberries. In one world, wealthy liberal intellectuals debate political reform at a summer dacha while their spoile