How to Read Anna Karenina in Russian

Anna Karenina is a hard book to read in Russian, but not for the reasons most learners expect. The plot is clear and the narrator explains almost everything. What wears you down is length, long sentences, French, and Levin's chapters on farming and hunting. Know that in advance, pace yourself, and you can finish it with intermediate Russian and a translation beside the text.

How long is it?

Very long. In our app the Russian text runs to about 281,000 words in eight parts and 239 chapters. That's more than one and a half times the length of Crime and Punishment.

Part	Words	Chapters
1	39,900	34
2	41,400	35
3	40,600	32
4	28,500	23
5	39,900	33
6	39,900	32
7	34,000	31
8	16,400	19

A native speaker reading for pleasure might get through it in twenty hours or so. A learner who reads the Russian first and checks a translation will be much slower. At around 50 words a minute, which is a realistic pace at intermediate level, the whole novel takes about 95 hours. Half an hour a day gets you there in roughly six months. If that sounds like a lot, remember that each part is a satisfying stretch of story on its own, and you'll speed up as the vocabulary repeats.

What makes Tolstoy's Russian hard

Long sentences

When we measured the openings of seven Russian classics, Anna Karenina had the longest sentences: an average of 21 words, with more than a third over 25. A sentence like this one, about how Stiva got his job, is typical:

Место это он получил чрез мужа сестры Анны, Алексея Александровича Каренина, занимавшего одно из важнейших мест в министерстве, к которому принадлежало присутствие; но если бы Каренин не назначил своего шурина на это место, то чрез сотню других лиц, братьев, сестер, родных, двоюродных, дядей, теток, Стива Облонский получил бы это место или другое подобное, тысяч в шесть жалованья, которые ему были нужны, так как дела его, несмотря на достаточное состояние жены, были расстроены.

He had got this post through his sister Anna's husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, who held one of the most important positions in the ministry; but if Karenin hadn't appointed his brother-in-law, Stiva Oblonsky would have got this post or another like it through a hundred other people, brothers, sisters, relatives, cousins, uncles and aunts, with the six thousand or so a year in salary that he needed, because his affairs were in disorder despite his wife's considerable fortune.

That's 72 words. The trick is the same as with any long Russian sentence: find the subject and the main verb first (он получил, "he got"), then hang the rest on them. The sentence is built from simple pieces: a participle (занимавшего, "who held"), a conditional with если бы, and a list.

French in the dialogue

Tolstoy's aristocrats switch into French whenever they like, and the Russian text prints it untranslated. Our text has around a hundred lines with whole phrases in French, plus some English and German. Vronsky's mother greets him at the station like this:

Ну, а ты, говорят... vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux.

And you, they tell me... you're madly in love. So much the better, my dear, so much the better.

You don't need French to read the book. Most phrases are short social clichés, and the context tells you what they mean. A translation under each line helps most here.

Aristocratic and old-fashioned vocabulary

Titles, ranks, servants and society manners come up on every page. Some spellings and endings are also older than modern Russian: чрез for через ("through"), and instrumental endings like одною рукой where today you'd write одной. They look odd at first and become invisible within a few chapters.

Levin's farming and hunting chapters

Levin's half of the book takes you into hay meadows, woods and estate accounts. This is where most learners slow down, because the vocabulary is specialised:

...Левин употребил свое средство успокоения — взял у мужика косу и стал косить.

...Levin turned to his usual remedy for calming down: he took a scythe from one of the peasants and started mowing.

Words like коса (scythe), покос (hay meadow) and вальдшнеп (woodcock) won't be in your textbook. They come back often, though, so learn them once.

What makes it easier than you'd expect

A clear narrator. Tolstoy tells you what people think, why they act and how they feel about it. You rarely have to guess. For a learner that's a gift: if you miss a line, the next paragraph usually explains it.

Ordinary scenes. Breakfast, a ball, a skating rink, a horse race, a dinner, a quarrel between husband and wife. The situations are familiar, so you can predict a lot of the vocabulary and follow the action even when a sentence escapes you.

Lots of dialogue. Conversation in Anna Karenina is usually much easier than the narration around it. Short lines, everyday verbs and plenty of ну, да and что же.

Repetition. Over 281,000 words, the same names, titles and turns of phrase come back again and again. By the end of Part 1 you'll know the core vocabulary of the whole book.

Tolstoy or Dostoevsky first?

Tolstoy's sentences tend to be longer and calmer; Dostoevsky's are feverish, full of people interrupting themselves. Many learners find Dostoevsky's shorter novels easier to start with, and Crime and Punishment had shorter sentences than Anna Karenina in our measurement. See how to read Dostoevsky in Russian for the other side.

Words you'll meet constantly

Russian	Meaning
барин / барыня	master / mistress (as servants say it)
мужик / баба	peasant man / peasant woman
князь / княгиня / княжна	prince / princess (wife) / princess (daughter)
граф / графиня	count / countess
свет	high society (also "light" and "world")
имение	estate
приказчик	steward, estate manager
лакей	footman
гувернантка	governess
земство, земский	local council, of the local council
развод	divorce
ревность	jealousy
покос, коса, косить	hay meadow, scythe, to mow
тяга	evening flight of woodcock (in hunting)
вдруг	suddenly

Свет deserves a special note. In this novel it almost always means society, as in Stiva's introduction: Стива, как его звали в свете, "Stiva, as he was known in society". When Anna loses her place в свете, she loses her world.

A part-by-part reading plan

Read the first line slowly, and keep our character guide open for the names. Then take it one part at a time.

Part 1 (about 4 weeks at half an hour a day). Moscow. Stiva's affair, Levin's proposal, the ball, Anna and Vronsky meet at the station. Mostly social scenes and dialogue: the best place to build your vocabulary.

Part 2 (4 weeks). Kitty falls ill, the affair begins, Levin goes woodcock shooting with Stiva, Vronsky rides in a steeplechase on his mare Frou-Frou. Expect your first hunting chapters.

Part 3 (4 weeks). The hardest part for vocabulary. Levin mows with his peasants and argues about farming. Push through: the mowing chapters are among the finest in the book.

Part 4 (3 weeks). The shortest of the big parts and the most dramatic. Things move fast, so this is where your reading speeds up.

Part 5 (4 weeks). A wedding, a death, Italy and a visit Anna isn't supposed to make. Some discussion of painting, but mostly strong emotional scenes.

Part 6 (4 weeks). Summer in the country and Levin's provincial elections. The election chapters have political and legal vocabulary; it's fine to read them more loosely.

Part 7 (3 weeks). Moscow again, and the long, broken inner monologue of Anna's last day. The sentences get shorter and stranger here. Read slowly.

Part 8 (2 weeks). Short and reflective: war volunteers and Levin's search for faith. A calm ending after Part 7.

That adds up to about six months. If a part drags, it's fine to read the narration more loosely and focus on the dialogue. Finishing matters more than catching every word.

Grammar to review first

Three topics will pay off on every page: participles and gerunds, verb aspects and the instrumental case, including the older -ою and -ею endings you'll see throughout.

Read it in Russian

The opening pages of Anna Karenina are free on our site, in Russian with an English translation under every line. Try a few pages and see how your Russian holds up. You can also browse all our Russian books.

A long book read slowly in Russian teaches more than a dozen short ones skimmed in translation. Our Learn Russian app has Anna Karenina in full, with a translation under every line, along with the vocabulary and grammar to get you there. It's free to download, though some books and extra content need diamonds you earn while learning, or Premium.