The Best Books to Learn Russian, Level by Level

The best Russian book is the one matching your level. Start with one course book and graded stories, move to short stories written for Russian children and Chekhov, and leave Tolstoy and the long Dostoevsky novels until your Russian can carry them. We've measured the classics in our own library, so you can see which one to open first.

Beginner (A1 to A2)

Learn the alphabet first. It takes days rather than months, and every book below assumes it.

• The New Penguin Russian Course, Nicholas J. Brown. A full course in 30 lessons, with answers to the exercises and translations of the Russian texts, so it works well for self-study.
• Short Stories in Russian for Beginners, Olly Richards and Alex Rawlings. Eight stories written for learners. Despite the title, they suit you better after a few months of study than in your first week.

Intermediate (B1 to B2)

• Денискины рассказы (Deniskiny rasskazy), Viktor Dragunsky. Funny stories about a Moscow schoolboy, loved by generations of Russian children. Plenty of dialogue and everyday words.
• Chekhov's short stories. Start with something like Каштанка (Kashtanka), the story of a lost dog. Chekhov writes plainly, and a short story is something you can finish.
• A Comprehensive Russian Grammar, Terence Wade. A thorough reference for when a case ending or a verb form puzzles you. Look things up in it rather than reading it through.

Upper intermediate and beyond: the classics

Russian has no articles and no "to be" in the present, so its sentences use fewer words than English ones. Long sentences still wear learners out, though, so we measured the openings of the Russian classics in our library.

Book	Author	Words measured	Average words per sentence
The Shooting Party	Chekhov	1,700	10
The Captain's Daughter	Pushkin	2,300	13
Crime and Punishment	Dostoevsky	2,600	16
White Nights	Dostoevsky	3,500	16
Oblomov	Goncharov	1,900	17
The Brothers Karamazov	Dostoevsky	600	19
Anna Karenina	Tolstoy	700	21

Treat this as a rough guide. It covers only the openings, the count is automatic, and the Karamazov and Anna Karenina samples are short. Sentence length doesn't measure older words either: The Captain's Daughter was published in 1836, and it shows in places. We look at all seven in more detail in which Russian classic to read first.

Our suggestions:

• Start with The Shooting Party. It's a crime story, so you have a reason to keep going, and it had the shortest sentences we measured.
• Then read The Captain's Daughter. A historical adventure with a love story, short sentences and a famous first line. Our guide to the novel has the characters and their Russian names.
• Make White Nights your first Dostoevsky. It's short, it's a love story, and you can read the whole book free on our site.
• Save Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov for later. Both are long, and their openings had the longest sentences in our sample.

How to choose

Read the first page before you commit. If you can follow what's happening, the book is a good fit. Every book in the table links to its opening pages for free, with a translation under every line and no account needed. You can also learn more about how reading helps.

In real books the hard part is rarely a single word. It's the cases, verb aspect and the participles that 19th-century writers loved. Our free Russian grammar lessons cover all three, and how to read Dostoevsky in Russian has more on staying with a long novel.

Our Learn Russian app has these seven classics in full with a translation under every line, along with vocabulary, grammar and graded reading to get you there. It's free to download, though some books and extra content need diamonds you earn while learning, or Premium.