(estimates: 51 , average: 3,98 out of 5)

In Russia, literature has its own direction, different from any other. The Russian soul is mysterious and incomprehensible. The genre reflects both Europe and Asia, which is why the best classical Russian works are extraordinary, striking in their soulfulness and vitality.

The main character is the soul. For a person, his position in society, the amount of money is not important, it is important for him to find himself and his place in this life, to find the truth and peace of mind.

The books of Russian literature are united by the features of a writer who has the gift of the great Word, who has completely devoted himself to this art of literature. The best classics saw life not flatly, but multifacetedly. They wrote about life not of random destinies, but of those expressing existence in its most unique manifestations.

Russian classics are so different, with different destinies, but what unites them is that literature is recognized as a school of life, a way of studying and developing Russia.

Russian classical literature was created by the best writers from different parts of Russia. It is very important where the author was born, because this determines his formation as a person, his development, and it also affects his writing skills. Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky were born in Moscow, Chernyshevsky in Saratov, Shchedrin in Tver. Poltava region in Ukraine is the birthplace of Gogol, Podolsk province - Nekrasov, Taganrog - Chekhov.

The three great classics, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, were completely different people from each other, had different destinies, complex characters and great talents. They made a huge contribution to the development of literature, writing their best works, which still excite the hearts and souls of readers. Everyone should read these books.

Another important difference between the books of Russian classics is that they ridicule the shortcomings of a person and his way of life. Satire and humor are the main features of the works. However, many critics said that this was all slander. And only true connoisseurs saw how the characters are both comical and tragic at the same time. Such books always touch the soul.

Here you can find the best works of classical literature. You can download books of Russian classics for free or read them online, which is very convenient.

We present to your attention the 100 best books of Russian classics. The full list of books includes the best and most memorable works of Russian writers. This literature is known to everyone and is recognized by critics from all over the world.

Of course, our list of top 100 books is just a small part that brings together best works great classics. It can be continued for a very long time.

A hundred books that everyone should read in order to understand not only how they used to live, what were the values, traditions, priorities in life, what they were striving for, but to find out in general how our world works, how bright and pure the soul can be and how valuable it is for a person, for the development of his personality.

The top 100 list includes the best and most famous works of Russian classics. The plot of many of them is known from school. However, some books are difficult to understand at a young age and require wisdom that is acquired over the years.

Of course, the list is far from complete; it can be continued endlessly. Reading such literature is a pleasure. She doesn’t just teach something, she radically changes lives, helps us understand simple things that we sometimes don’t even notice.

We hope you liked our list of classic books of Russian literature. You may have already read some of it, and some not. A great reason to make your own personal list of books, your top ones that you would like to read.

A must-read classic. Part 1

Classics cannot always be relevant. Any text, as Eco wrote, can be interpreted and can be used. In the first case, you accept the game conditions set by the author. You interpret the text from the point of view of the conditions and time in which it was created. Explore it in order to understand its essence and nature. And when used, you are free to give your assessment of what is happening: criticize the characters, discuss their actions, etc. The use case is closer to me. Interpretation is more for literary monuments. That's why they are not relevant. But you can find benefits in them too - language, syllable: all this will help you speak and write better, formulate your thoughts more competently.

I need to grow up to many books. Not age-wise, but spiritually, and this is not the same thing. Even to many books from the school curriculum. Many books may be recommended to you, but any reading will be of no use until we study the classics. Our list contains only a small fraction of those classic works that are strictly required reading. But still we will try to offer you the best.

"Faust", Johann Goethe

Fools are content with
That they see meaning in every word.

The title of the book is so firmly connected with its author that many are sure that Goethe’s Faust is the name of the main character of the work, or even its title.

It is worth reading if only to know what one of the most quoted, respected, praised and referenced novels in human history is. Those who love motivation should like it, there’s more than enough of it here. This, my dear, is not just a story about how the charming Satan acquired the soul from the poor and hard-working Faust. This is a novel about people who rebelled against vegetation in reality in the name of freedom of action and thought. About people called to transform the world through joint free and reasonable work.

And this is also a treasure trove of quotes and wise sayings, in addition to the winged one: “Stop, just a moment, you’re wonderful!” And if you try to understand this not the simplest book, then in return it will give you the deep wisdom of the centuries, accumulated by Mr. Goethe and poured out in a stream of ink onto the white pages.

"The Divine Comedy", Dante Alighieri

There is that power that is called reason.
And you can weigh it on the scales
Good and evil.

It is an unthinkable crime against humanity to claim that The Divine Comedy is outdated, irrelevant and boring reading. It is boring for narrow-minded people, outdated for the ignorant, irrelevant for the stupid. Alighieri wrote an immortal opus named after the triumph of life not so that some idiot, seeing many letters, would begin to vilify his life’s work.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Christian or a Muslim, an atheist or a believer, everyone should read this work. And an atheist even more so. Not in order to figure out which circle of Hell you will end up in, but in order to learn to distinguish between bad and good, kind and evil, worthy from vile. The stories of students, real and not so real, make you think about life. Not to come to God, but to understand yourself.

You can even describe this masterpiece as a review of a computer game. “The plot is interesting, the world is carefully thought out to the smallest detail.” And at the same time you can study the history of Italy during its most interesting period. How I love this work!

“If you want to throw yourself out of the window,” said Schweik. - So go into the room, I opened the window. I would not advise you to jump from the kitchen, because you will fall into the garden right on the roses, break all the bushes, and you will have to pay for it. And from that window you will fall perfectly onto the sidewalk and, if you are lucky, break your neck. If you're unlucky, you'll only break your ribs, arms and legs, and you'll have to pay for hospital treatment.

Josef Schweik is a separate layer of literary heroes who left the pages of books and took on a life of their own. He doesn't need literary history - he is a walking joke himself. There are few such heroes, except maybe him, Don Quixote, and... And, perhaps, that’s all. No one has such anecdotal significance. Therefore, some perceive “Schweik” as an easy, simple story. Yes, it is written in a masterpiece of satirical language, sometimes rude, sometimes ridiculous. And yet, this is an incredibly accurate and sometimes even offensive satire denouncing the war, military leadership and, of course, idiots from society.

Hasek, a personality as epic as he is crazy, created the same hero. And despite the title of “idiot”, thanks to his merciless mockery of the nonsense reigning around him, Josef Schweik, smoking a pipe, drinking beer and telling one story more beautiful than the other, begins to seem like a completely normal person. So if suddenly you are considered an idiot, read this masterpiece, maybe you are really out of your mind? And what are the exact quotes here: from the topical: “The spirit of a power alien to the people was wafting from the walls of the police department,” to the vital: “The trouble is, when a person suddenly starts philosophizing, it always smells like delirium tremens.” They can be collected, inserted as a commentary on any news, and they will always be, as they say, on point.

"Childhood", Maxim Gorky

Dying is not great wisdom, if only you knew how to live!

Tolstoy's "Childhood" could be here, but this is not his main work, there are others, more important and sensitive, which characterize the count and life better. You can read them anyway. But with Gorky it’s completely the opposite: without reading childhood, you won’t understand either the author himself or life. The sad autobiographical narrative of the first years of Gorky's life, which you successfully skipped in high school, explains many things much better. It’s even strange: the book’s actions take place at the end of the 19th century, but life, people and human bastardism have not changed. It is these things that Gorky, from the position of a wise, gray-haired man, writes about. And it’s impossible to tear yourself away, and you can’t argue with the author’s opinion.

Unfortunately, the image of the Bolshevik writer alienates modern readers from him, but in vain. “Old Woman Izergil” is one of the best folklore works in history, “At the Lower Depths” is social, “Makar Chudra” sounds funny, and, of course, the wonderful “Childhood”, which you need to read for yourself, and not out of respect for the school program and the man after whom streets and airplanes were named.

"Crime and Punishment", Fyodor Dostoevsky

Poverty is not a vice, it is the truth. I know that drunkenness is not a virtue, and this is even more so. But poverty, dear sir, poverty is a vice, sir. In poverty you still retain your nobility of innate feelings, but in poverty, no one ever does.

An absolutely expected piece on this list, isn't it? And it is precisely because of this “expectation”, because of his fame, because of the awe that the author’s name evokes, that it is worth reading. Because Dostoevsky became fashionable. And it’s disgusting that many people try to love and read him, although what they read does not evoke any emotions in them. Therefore, you must independently study the most iconic work of the master and form your attitude towards it without regard to fashion and universal veneration.

Well, of course, not only for this. The book is really interesting and good. The author plunges into the psychological process of a crime, like Jacques-If Cousteau into the bosom of another sea, and fishes out pictures from there that make one understand the criminal rather than condemn him. And what colorful and unfortunate heroes are everywhere, it’s hard to even call them minor.

But from the standpoint of personal opinion, many aspects can be argued, and this is right, this is good: when a book gives rise to controversy, it means that it is obligatory.

"The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha", Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

All women are like that,” said Don Quixote. - A distinctive feature of their nature is to despise those who love them and love those who despise them.

Pay attention to the quote. It was written 200 years before the same idea was expressed in poetic form by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin for his “Eugene Onegin”. In the novel of wisdom itself, even with a spoon, the main thing is to discern it in time.

Cervantes wrote a unique work that has everything: laugh, write out aphorisms, and think. Not everyone will be impressed by the noticeably outdated style, not everyone will be pleased by the scale of the work, but those who are eager to find out why the name of the main character has become a household name, and why the name of Cervantes is woven into world culture with golden threads, may begin to look at some things from a different angle.

A novel about the adventures of a completely sick man, written by a writer going crazy, is considered by many as a parody of chivalric novels that had gone out of fashion by that time. But in fact, the great genius laughs at a society that has completely lost its nobility, and the last worthy person turned out to be the crazy old man Alonso Quijano, who had read these same novels and set off on a journey on a decrepit nag, taking with him the peasant Sancho Panzo - the only “voice of reason” in their well-coordinated team.

Every name is a common noun, every phrase is an aphorism. Over the 400 years of its existence, the novel has not lost its popularity, spawning a bunch of imitators and proudly bearing the title of the best novel in the history of literature. Yes, we all came out of Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” but first we came out of Cervantes’s Rocinante.

"Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov

We are not sex fiends! We do not rape, as brave soldiers do. We are unfortunate, meek, well-bred people with dog eyes, who have adapted enough to restrain our impulses in the presence of adults, but are ready to give many, many years of our lives for one opportunity to touch a nymphet.

A novel that revolutionized world literature and made Nabokov a favorite author of both the intelligentsia and poorly educated degenerates who have not read the book, but they really like the idea itself: a sexual relationship between a man and a little girl.

But in fact, Nabokov wrote about great love, which due to certain circumstances, namely the minority of the object of love, was condemned by society. When an adult guy starts cohabiting with a non-grown girl, it doesn’t end well. The child grows up, she becomes bored, and the damned Lolya ceases to value “love at first sight, at last sight, at eternal sight” in anything.

And, of course, some compliments to Bunin’s former heir. Nabokov writes about a taboo topic frankly, but without obvious vulgarity. The beautiful, rich language of the classical Russian writer describes even the most slippery fragments of an erotic nature as if we are talking about the unrequited love of two adults.

Read a novel that greatly influenced the American literary school and slightly opened the doors of what was prohibited in popular literature.

"Night in Lisbon", Erich Maria Remarque

The world never seems so beautiful as in the moment when you say goodbye to it, when you are deprived of freedom.

"On western front without change,” “Three Comrades” are, of course, legendary novels and incredibly classic, but this story touches no less, to the very heart. It’s about war, even if it’s not written from the perspective of a soldier. It’s about loss, even if it’s not combat. It is about the loss of the most precious thing, it is about powerlessness in the face of tragedy.

You need to grow up to it, you need to be prepared for it, because behind the easy title, which is more suitable for a love story, lies a drama the likes of which the world has never seen. It's about love, but this love was crushed and swallowed up by the war, which burned everything out human soul. The desperate confession of a man who has lost everything discourages even the most fierce cynic. You don’t even want to think about how you would live if, God forbid, you were in the narrator’s place.

The novel itself is structured as a story within a story, where the unfortunate man, against the backdrop of the turmoil of calm Lisbon, tells his story to Ludwig Kern (whoever has read “Love Thy Neighbor” knows this hero). This confession was supposed to be payment for tickets on a boat with refugees, but it became something more. With his style, Remarque is able to turn even a fairy tale about a kolobok into a bestseller about tired people and a lost generation. But here he outdid himself.

"The Golden Calf", Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov

Women love: young, politically literate, long-legged...

Some will be indignant: they say, why the hell did we include the imperishable Ilf and Petrov in the lists of classics, and not Gogol or Chekhov? After all, against the backdrop of, say, “The Cherry Orchard,” on which even Americans stage plays like “The Golden Calf” and “12 Chairs,” seem like easy reading.

Well, you can argue with the latter, because if the novel is not known abroad as well as The Inspector General, this does not mean that it is worse. It’s just that the realities of the NEP are difficult to explain to the Palestinians. A story that is disseminated with quotes (such as “A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation”) - is it really not a classic? This is a classic squared, cubed! Ideal, easy, understandable to everyone, even a 12-year-old child (at this age your humble servant first became acquainted with this reading), where every phrase is an aphorism, where even serious moments are presented as ironically as possible. In some sense, this is the history of the country, and in some sense it is a diagnosis of society, and, as often happens, the types and characters described in abundance have not disappeared in our time.

Ilf and Petrov, talented journalists, communicate with the reader extremely ironically and intelligently, choosing such turns of speech that one gets the impression that you are at the performance of a stand-up comedian, in a cozy conversation making fun of the Kareikas, Benders, Panikovskys and Shura Balaganovs.

"The Decameron", Giovanni Boccaccio

Who is talking about what, but we are talking about our beloved Renaissance. Well, where would we be without him, if such masterpieces were written in the 14th century! And, surprisingly, this epoch-making work is very easy to read. It is clear that the ornate style that was fashionable at that time is fully present (sorry, this is not the laconic Dovlatov), ​​but the book is still very easy to read. And most importantly, it is interesting even after all this time.

For some reason, many people think that the word “decameron” sounds somehow dramatic and carries a negative connotation, but in fact the name is translated from Greek as “ten days,” that is, ten days. And all these ten days, beautiful young people who fled out of town from the plague tell each other delightful stories, and, as usual, one story is more beautiful than the other.

While reading, you begin to enjoy the freedom and relaxedness of the heroes of Boccaccio’s short stories. There are no limits, they live and enjoy life. And that's great!

For some reason, it’s even difficult to explain why, I want to return to the Decameron again and again. The impressions from reading it are as wonderful as the memory of first love, the first glass of beer, the first time in prison. And the stories that these beautiful young people tell, collected from the urban folklore of Florence, mythology and popular fairy tales of the time, are truly interesting. And when, almost 700 years after the writing of these short stories, you read “50 Shades of Gray,” you wonder where humanity took a wrong turn?

Below is a personal list of a certain GretchenM., which she posted on the Internet, some of this certainly deserves attention.
So, 27 books you need to read before you turn 27.

1. Life on Borrow - Erich Maria Remarque
A man, his car, a fragile girl dying of tuberculosis. The heroine spends all her money on Balenciaga dresses, but the hero really wants to believe in the best. The ironic and absurd ending turns this sentimental story on its head. If you believe in the dubious thesis that every girl at the age of 17 should read Remarque, then let it be “Life on Borrow”.

2. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The beautiful and capricious young man Dorian does not want to grow old. The talented artist Basil paints his portrait and, without knowing it, literally conveys his soul on canvas. Now Dorian is forever young, and the portrait ages in his place. A wonderful mystical novel about the naive selfishness of the young, about the immorality of beauty and how scary it really is to never change.

3. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
A creepy book about the entertainment of English schoolchildren on a desert island. Little boys experience evolution in reverse, turning from civilized children into evil, wild animals, cultivating fear and strength, capable of murder. A story about freedom, which implies responsibility, and about the fact that youth and innocence are not synonymous at all.

4. Tender is the Night - Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Expensive cars, villas on the Cote d'Azur, silk dresses - but there is no happiness. A love triangle involving a doctor named Dick, his young neurotic wife Nicole and a young frivolous actress Rosemary - the main novel is about love, strength and weakness.

5. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The subtitle of the novel is “The Children's Crusade” - the most correct definition of the Second World War. This is a war that children - 17-year-old boys with no brains - went to fight. Main character makes endless movements in time, remembering his senseless and completely unheroic campaign against the World Evil. There is not a single battle scene in this book about the war. Only the stupidity and absurdity of the whole idea through the eyes of a living young man.

6. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
One can argue endlessly about what it was - dirty perversion or pure feeling, provocation or confession. Everything doesn't matter. It’s worth reading this book about the relationship between forty-year-old Humbert and his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, if only to understand why we all sometimes behave so strangely when communicating with older men.

7. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Rebellious, iconic, violent and very much a teenage book. IT'S worth reading when you're 16, or not at all. The main character is a young man named Alex, a bully, a sadist and a terrible monster who rapes, kills, speaks strange slang and unexpectedly transforms into a respectable citizen, an employee of a music archive. There is no logic, there is only a miracle, but it is quite understandable - Burgess began writing the novel, thinking that he would die, and finished, already knowing that the fatal diagnosis was a mistake.

8. Easy breathing - Ivan Buni n
An important story about high school student Olya Meshcherskaya, femininity and first sex, an officer in love and a shot at the station. “Easy breathing” is that important quality of girls that makes men go crazy with love, and the young ladies themselves - unforgivably frivolous about their own lives.

9. Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Kafka is a complex, dark writer. It is not easy for a young girl to love him. But you have to try. The short story “Metamorphosis” is an absurdist pamphlet on the theme of human loneliness. A young traveling salesman Gregor wakes up one fine morning with a disgusting centipede, a cockroach, a beetle, a vile thing that his family is afraid to even look at. If you leave aside the modernist pranks of the author, you understand that this is all about life, about the illusory nature of love, about the ugliness and loneliness of everyone.

10. The French Lieutenant's Mistress - John Fowles
Every day a young woman dressed in black stands on the seashore and looks at the horizon. The woman's name is Sarah and there is a rumor that she is waiting for the sailor lover who dishonored her. A young man is going to marry a young charming girl. But one day he sees a woman in black, and everything goes wrong. Will he get married or give vent to his feelings? It's up to you. The brilliant Fowles wrote two versions of the ending to show that conscience is an individual choice.

11. Dear friend - Guy De Maupassant
A classic French novel with an “anti-hero” in the title role. Young journalist Georges Duroy is trying to make his way in Paris. He is mediocre, greedy, cowardly and illiterate. But he is very handsome. Scary tale about how smart and talented women become victims of their own blindness. This novel is a lifelong vaccination against stories with gigolos.

12. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
A great fairy tale dedicated to a little girl, a friend of the author. “Lolita” without signs of sex. It is useful to reread “Alice” as an adult in order to develop imagination, an unexpected view of things and a sense of humor.

13. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
The poor, ugly governess with an iron will is the most unexpected character for a novel of the era of Victorian England. Jane Eyre is the first to tell a man about her love, but refuses to submit to the whims of her lover, chooses independence and insists on equal rights with a man. Contemporaries were horrified by such debauchery, and young girls still relish the story of strong and uncompromising love.

14. Scarlet Sails - Alexander Green
A wonderful, romantic fairy tale, familiar to everyone from childhood, about Assol, Gray and unshakable faith in a dream with a simple and clear moral - any miracle can happen if you accomplish it yourself. For yourself or for the one you love. However, it is important to understand how different reality is from a beautiful fairy tale. Realize this fundamental difference and experience it in a book, so as not to suffer and get rid of the “scarlet sails” syndrome in life.

15. Baby - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
A poignant story of the cosmic Mowgli, abandoned by his parents on an uninhabited planet. As you might guess, we are the wild kids abandoned by the hippie generation to their fate. “They went on a dangerous free flight, but never found anything” - many Moscow boys and girls, raised on Beatles records and stories about Che Guevara, will say the same about their parents.

16. Nastenka - Vladimir Sorokin
First and main story the collection “The Feast” about a young girl who was eaten by her parents on her sixteenth birthday - should be read immediately after graduating from school, when the heart is still languishing with Turgenev’s bliss and Bunin’s sadness. The story “Nastenka” differs from “Dark Alleys” in the same way as adult life from childhood. And if you start your adult life, then with the story “Nastenka”. Then it won't be scary anymore.

17. What to do - Nikolai Chernyshevsky
The first socialist story in Russian is dedicated, oddly enough, not to the fight against the tsarist regime, but to the relationship between men and women. Young heroes struggle with jealousy and possessiveness, learning to respect each other.

18. Drachma Tramps - Jack Kerouac
Twenty-year-old veterans returning from the war found neither truth nor dignity in America in the mid-40s - and began to wander. To the sounds of jazz in smoky clubs, to the whistle of the wind through the cracks of freight cars, to the aching bones after spending the night on the bare ground and, of course, to the endless conversations about Christianity, Buddhism, communism, anarchism - conversations in which gradually, bit by bit, they discovered for yourself the meaning of the universe and the meaning of human life.

19. April Witchcraft - Ray Bradbury
This is a very simple and short story about unhappy love. On several pages, one of the most sincere and lyrical writers of the 20th century clearly explains to all young girls that unhappy love is the most magical thing that can happen to a person.

20. Notes of a revolutionary - Peter Kropotkin
Revolutionary and anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin talks about his life in the Corps of Pages, a military educational institution for the children of the Russian elite. This book is about how a person can defend himself in the fight against an alien environment that does not understand him. And also about true friendship and mutual assistance.

21. Refuge. Diary in Letters - Anne Frank
The diary of a 15-year-old girl, Anna, who, together with her family, is hiding in Amsterdam from the Nazis, who have already sent other Dutch Jews to concentration camps. Anna writes wittily and aptly about herself, about her peers, about adults, about the world and about her first sexual dreams, and this diary is an amazing document illustrating what happens in the head of a young lady when the world is collapsing around her. Anna did not live to see the victory over fascism for two months - she was still found and sent to a concentration camp, but her diary lives on in translations into many languages ​​of the world.

22. Carrie - Stephen King
The first novel by the great writer King about the unfortunate girl Carrie White, endowed with the gift of telekinesis. A detailed chronicle of cruel, beautiful and completely justified revenge for the bullying of classmates chills to the bone and, most importantly, looks much more adequate, truthful and realistic than, say, the film “Dogville” by Lars Von Trier.

23. Foam days - Boris Vian
It is thanks to this short novel by the fabulous French mystifier Vian that we know that girls have lilies blooming in their chests, and musical instruments can mix cocktails. In a world full of cruel, ironic, but always impeccably beautiful metaphors, you want to live your whole life. We live.

24. Neuromancer - William Gibson
One of the inventors of the cyberpunk style, the popular American science fiction writer created a gloomy, cruel and magnificent world of the future, entangled in the networks of megacorporations, flooded with neon light and drowning in endless loneliness. The most romantic book of our chrome-plated days about eternal wanderings.

25. The Catcher in the Rye - Jerome David Salinger
The coming-of-age story of the young egoist, maximalist and idealist Holden Caulfield will remain the most famous and most instructive book about young people for many years. This is exactly what we all are: touchy, unkind, confused, wild and infinitely beautiful, because we are sincere, naive and vulnerable.

26. While girlfriend is in a coma - Douglas Copeland
The author of the popular book “Generation X”, as you know, counted us all. However, Copeland is not only and not so much a social writer, he is first and foremost a brilliant lyricist with a touch of pure madness. “When Your Girlfriend Is in a Coma” is a semi-fantastic drama about love and friendship, full of subtle, vivid observations. It is after “Girlfriends...” that it seems as if Copeland is the only writer in the world who loves us seriously.

27. Cinderella's Trap - Sebastian Japrizo
A light, wonderful detective story about young French devils who love white outfits and open cars. One of the most magnificent works about a girl’s amazing mischief, meanness, and nastiness, written with endless admiration.

(c) Material taken from the site

The Ministry of Education and Science is completing work on creating a list of books required for extracurricular reading by Russian schoolchildren. The idea of ​​such a list was proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the article “Russia: the national question,” which was published in January of this year. St. Petersburg State University, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Science, compiled a recommended list, which included more than two hundred works. As a result of online voting, one hundred books on the history, culture and literature of peoples were selected. Russian Federation, familiarity with which, according to the project coordinators, should contribute to the national self-identification of the younger generation and the preservation of the national cultural canon.

“In some leading American universities in the 20s of the last century, a movement for the study of the Western cultural canon developed. Every self-respecting student had to read one hundred books according to a specially compiled list. In some US universities this tradition continues today. Our nation has always been a reading nation. Let's conduct a survey of our cultural authorities and create a list of one hundred books that every graduate of a Russian school should read. Don’t memorize it at school, but read it yourself. And let's make the final exam an essay on the topics we read. Or, at least, we will give young people the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and their worldview at Olympiads and competitions.”

V.V. Putin, “Russia: the national question”

Authoritative opinion

The idea of ​​​​creating a list of books recommended for independent reading was instantly picked up not only by cultural officials - the possible composition of the list was widely discussed by writers, film directors, film and theater actors. Most cultural figures turned their gaze towards the classics - the names of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov, Gogol, Chekhov, Bulgakov, and poets were most often heard Silver Age. Of the 2000-year-old writers, we remembered Dmitry Bykov, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Zakhar Prilepin, and Alexey Ivanov.

Contemporaries themselves also actively joined the discussion. Perm writer and screenwriter Alexey Ivanov recommended adding books by Vladislav Krapivin, Denis Dragunsky, “The Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger, adventure novels by Dumas, and science fiction by Orhan Pamuk to the list. Dmitry Bykov would certainly include Emile Zola on his list. “It needs to be read - especially for us, especially now, because the picture of life in the second empire is extremely similar to post-Soviet Russia,” the writer emphasized.

List and anti-list

Despite the fact that the majority of representatives of the writing community reacted positively to the idea of ​​​​creating a single mandatory list of literature, there were also those who did not find this idea successful. “Supernatsbest” laureate Zakhar Prilepin noted that it would be more interesting for him to talk about the literature that modern schoolchildren should not read: “With all due respect to Solzhenitsyn, I believe that “The Gulag Archipelago” should be excluded from the list of school curriculum and the list of recommended literature, like any other literature, that unambiguously negatively illuminates the mythology of the country and unambiguously interprets the history of the 20th century, as well as any other century. Books that positively highlight the activities of the party and government of our time should not be on the list. But, thank God, they haven’t written anything like this yet.”

The widow of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who heads his foundation, called the idea of ​​​​creating a common list of recommended literature absurd for everyone. From her point of view, the volume of compulsory literature must be provided by the school curriculum, and everything beyond this should be provided by the family. And the musician Andrei Makarevich cited the example of his school literature teacher, who believed that any person of average intellectual development should know by heart a hundred poems, no matter which ones - from “A Christmas tree was born in the forest...” to the works of Mayakovsky or Brodsky. “The important thing is that a person knows these hundred verses, which means that he already has a fairly developed head and has some kind of aesthetic consciousness,” argues Makarevich. “And if a person reads a hundred books, then not everything will be trash - something will turn out to be important.”

New concept

After the formation of the list began, many questions arose. How can epic and short story be considered on equal terms? Is it possible to list several works by the same author, or should each writer be represented by just one text? Should we include only works of fiction in the list or make room for historical and popular science publications? And, perhaps, the main question: how will these hundred books for additional reading correlate with the list of literature that is mandatory included in the school curriculum?

Representatives of government agencies, the scientific and library communities had to look for answers to these and many other questions: each of the regions of the country proposed its own version of the list, and the formation of a single list was entrusted to experts from the St. Petersburg state university. They excluded works that were included in the list of required literature and eliminated foreign and regional authors. The rest will be decided by online voting. At the same time, in the final list it is necessary to maintain a balance between modern literature and classical, domestic and foreign, to ensure a variety of aesthetic and life experiences that readers will draw from these books, as well as genre and stylistic diversity, which is necessary for the development of linguistic flair.

During the implementation of the project, the concept of the list itself underwent changes: the Ministry of Education decided not to limit itself to 100 books - in each region they will be supplemented by 30 regional titles, and for high school students they will include another 20 additional books chosen by schoolchildren independently. As a result, the final list can be expanded to 150 works.

"Golden Shelf"

The idea of ​​creating a mandatory book list itself is not new: Leo Tolstoy even compiled a “Circle of Reading” - books that every person living in Russia should read. And Joseph Brodsky, during his teaching career at the American college Mount Holyoke, prepared for his students a “List of books that everyone should read.”

Today, compiling lists of required literature can be considered a tradition: they regularly appear on various websites dedicated to books and reading. Many media outlets, both domestic and foreign, also consider it necessary to present to the public their version of the “golden hundred”. There are dozens of versions of these lists for every genre and age category. And each of them inevitably bears the imprint of the personal assessment of the compilers, who have not only the necessary literary taste for this, but also their own predilections. In this sense, the creation of an absolutely universal list, even for a limited category of readers, seems to be as exciting as it is utopian.

We will be able to find out exactly what the compilers selected from the millions of literary heritage created by humanity over many centuries: the project should be implemented before the end of 2012.

1. Francois Rabelais. "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (1532-1553).

2. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. “The cunning hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha” (1605-1615).

3. Daniel Defoe. "The Life and Wonderful Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1719).

4. Jonathan Swift. "The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships" (1726).

5. Abbot Prevost. "The History of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut" (1731).

6. Johann Wolfgang Goethe. “The Sorrows of Young Werther” (1774).

7. Laurence Stern. "The Life and Beliefs of Tristram Shandy" (1759-1767).

8. Choderlos de Laclos. "Dangerous Liaisons" (1782).

9. Marquis de Sade. "120 days of Sodom" (1785).

10. Jan Potocki. "Manuscript Found at Zaragoza" (1804).

11. Mary Shelley. "Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus"(1818).

12. Charles Maturin. "Melmoth the Wanderer" (1820).

13. Honore de Balzac. "Shagreen Skin" (1831).

14. Victor Hugo. "Notre Dame Cathedral" (1831).

15. Stendhal. "Red and Black" (1830-1831).

16. Alexander Pushkin. "Eugene Onegin" (1823-1833).

17. Alfred de Musset. “Confession of the Son of the Century” (1836).

18. Charles Dickens. "Posthumous Notes of the Pickwick Club" (1837).

19. Mikhail Lermontov. "Hero of Our Time" (1840).

20. Nikolai Gogol. “Dead Souls” (1842).

21. Alexandre Dumas. "The Three Musketeers" (1844).

22. William Thackeray. "Vanity Fair" (1846).

23. Herman Melville. "Moby Dick" (1851).

24. Gustave Flaubert. "Madame Bovary" (1856).

25. Ivan Goncharov. "Oblomov" (1859).

26. Ivan Turgenev. "Fathers and Sons" (1862).

28. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Crime and Punishment" (1866).

29. Leo Tolstoy. "War and Peace" (1867-1869).

30. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "The Idiot" (1868-1869).

31. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. "Venus in Furs" (1870).

32. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Demons" (1871-1872).

33. Mark Twain. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876)/"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884).

34. Leo Tolstoy. "Anna Karenina" (1878).

35. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "The Brothers Karamazov" (1879-1880)

36. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. “Gentlemen Golovlevs” (1880-1883).

37. Oscar Wilde. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891)

38. Herbert Wells. "The Time Machine" (1895).

39. Bram Stoker. "Dracula" (1897).

40. Jack London. "The Sea Wolf" (1904)

41. Fedor Sologub. "The Little Demon" (1905).

42. Andrey Bely. "Petersburg" (1913-1914).

43. Gustav Meyrink. "Golem" (1914).

44. Evgeny Zamyatin. "We" (1921).

45. James Joyce. "Ulysses" (1922).

46. ​​Ilya Ehrenburg. "The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito" (1922).

47. Jaroslav Hasek. “The adventures of the good soldier Schweik during the World War” (1921-1923).

48. Mikhail Bulgakov. "The White Guard" (1924).

49. Thomas Mann. "The Magic Mountain" (1924).

50. Franz Kafka. "The Trial" (1925).

51. Francis Scott Fitzgerald. "The Great Gatsby" (1925).

52. Alexander Green. "Running on the Waves" (1928).

53. Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov. "Twelve Chairs" (1928).

54. Andrey Platonov. "Chevengur" (1927-1929).

55. William Faulkner. "The Sound and the Fury" (1929).

56. Ernest Hemingway. "A Farewell to Arms!" (1929).

57. Louis Ferdinand Celine. "Journey to the End of Night" (1932).

58. Aldous Huxley. "Brave New World" (1932).

59. Lao She. “Notes about Cat City” (1933).

60. Henry Miller. "Tropic of Cancer" (1934).

61. Maxim Gorky. “The Life of Klim Samgin” (1925-1936).

62. Margaret Mitchell. "Gone with the Wind" (1936).

63. Erich Maria Remarque. "Three Comrades" (1936-1937).

64. Vladimir Nabokov. "The Gift" (1938-1939).

65. Mikhail Bulgakov. "The Master and Margarita" (1929-1940).

66. Mikhail Sholokhov. " Quiet Don"(1927-1940).

67. Robert Musil. "Man without properties" (1930-1943).

68. Hermann Hesse. "The Glass Bead Game" (1943).

69. Veniamin Kaverin. "Two Captains" (1938-1944).

70. Boris Vian. "Foam of Days" (1946).

71. Thomas Mann. "Doctor Faustus" (1947).

72. Albert Camus. "The Plague" (1947).

73. George Orwell. "1984" (1949).

74. Jerome D. Salinger. "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951).

75. Ray Bradbury. "Fahrenheit 451" (1953).

76. John R. R. Tolkien. "The Lord of the Rings" (1954-1955).

77. Vladimir Nabokov. "Lolita" (1955; 1967, Russian version).

78. Boris Pasternak. "Doctor Zhivago" (1945-1955).

79. Jack Kerouac. "On the Road" (1957).

80. William Burroughs. "Naked Lunch" (1959).

81. Witold Gombrowicz. "Pornography" (1960).

82. Kobo Abe. "Woman in the Sands" (1962).

83. Julio Cortazar. "Hopscotch" (1963).

84. Nikolay Nosov. "Dunno on the Moon" (1964-1965).

85. John Fowles. "The Magus" (1965).

86. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967)

87. Philip K. Dick. “Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep” (1968).

88. Yuri Mamleev. "Connecting Rods" (1968).

89. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “In the First Circle” (1968).

90. Kurt Vonnegut. "Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade" (1969).

91. Venedikt Erofeev. "Moscow - Petushki" (1970).

92. Sasha Sokolov. "School for Fools" (1976).

93. Andrey Bitov. "Pushkin House" (1971).

94. Eduard Limonov. “It’s me, Eddie” (1979).

95. Vasily Aksenov. "Island of Crimea" (1979).

96. Milan Kundera. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1984).

97. Vladimir Voinovich. "Moscow 2042" (1987).

98. Vladimir Sorokin. "Roman" (1994).

99. Victor Pelevin. "Chapaev and Emptiness" (1996).

100. Vladimir Sorokin. "Blue Lard" (1999).

In the article Vladimir Putin about the national question, in which, of course, everyone is free to look for various delights, there is at least one specific proposal - to create a list of 100 books that are required reading for any educated Russian.

We have taken the liberty of offering a version of such a list. Of course, voluntarism is inevitable here, and besides, Russian literature is richer than any list. The difficulty is not in forming it, but rather in carrying out the act of choice itself: after all, we are talking about true love. We love books, and we wish the same for you.

Nevertheless, we took a risk, taking as a basis a certain unformulated idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe “cultural code”, and tried to highlight the books that, as of today, form the field of Russian consciousness, whose heroes, it seems, have become and remain our contemporaries, which are torn apart for quotes , often even unidentifiable, which have become something like proverbs. Books, which for a Russian person are an inevitable intellectual background, a basis for understanding any processes.

This approach forces one to hold back and cross off truly great books from the list. At the same time, it was necessary to include works of a lower level, but which had an objective influence on the formation of the identity of the Russian educated class. We did not include the magnificent, for example, Bunin’s “The Life of Arsenev” and Dobychin’s texts in the list, but “The Master and Margarita” or “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” are present there.

By the way, we did not focus on the number “100”, sparing educated Russian youth.

So here's our list. Clarifications, additions, disputes, constructive criticism and even angry swearing are welcome. For a Russian person, literature is, as usual, more than just words. This is love, this is life.

1. The Tale of Bygone Years.
2. Kiev-Pechersk Patericon.
3. Vladimir Monomakh's teaching to children.
4. Metropolitan Hilarion's word on law and grace.
5. Life of Boris and Gleb.
6. A word about Igor's regiment.
7. Life of Peter and Fevronia of Murom by Ermolai-Erasmus.
8. A word about the Mamaev massacre.
9. Correspondence of Ivan the Terrible with Andrei Kurbsky.
10. The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, written by him.
11. Derzhavin G.R. Poems.
12. Fonvizin D.I. Minor.
13. Shcherbatov M.M. About the damage to morals in Russia.
14. Radishchev A.N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow.
15. Karamzin N.M. Poor Lisa. Martha the Posadnitsa. History of Russian Goverment.
16. Zhukovsky V.A. Poems.
17. Pushkin A.S. Essays.
18. Baratynsky E.A. Poems.
19. Griboyedov A.S. Woe from the mind.
20. Lermontov M.Yu. Poems. Hero of our time.
21. Gogol N.V. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Taras Bulba. Dead Souls. Inspector.
22. Chaadaev P.Ya. The first philosophical letter.
23. Herzen A.I. Past and thoughts.
24. Tolstoy L.N. War and Peace. Anna Karenina. Cossacks. Hadji Murat.
25. Nekrasov N.A. Who can live well in Rus'? Poems.
26. Leskov N.S. Lefty. The Enchanted Wanderer. Stupid artist. Sealed angel. Pechersk antiques. Robbery. Soboryans.
27. Dostoevsky F.M. Demons. Crime and Punishment. Brothers Karamazov.
28. Bakunin M.A. Statehood and anarchy.
29. Sukhovo-Kobylin A.V. Krechinsky's wedding. Case. Death of Tarelkin.
30. Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. A modern idyll. The story of one city. Fairy tales.
31. Ostrovsky A.N. Comedy. Storm. Snow Maiden.
32. Turgenev I.S. Fathers and Sons.
33. Tolstoy A.K. Dramatic trilogy.
34. Kozma Prutkov. Essays.
35. Tyutchev F.I. Poems.
36. Uspensky G.I. Morals of Rasteryaeva Street.
37. Ershov P.P. The Little Humpbacked Horse.
38. Russian folk tales collected by A.N. Afanasiev.
39. Soloviev V.S. Three conversations about war, progress and the end of world history. Including a short story about the Antichrist and with appendices.
40. Chekhov A.P. Stories. Theater.
41. Gorky A.M. Essays. At the bottom.
42. Blok A.A. Poems. Twelve.
43. Mandelstam O.E. Poems.
44. Mayakovsky V.V. Poems. Poems.
45. Rozanov V.V. Apocalypse of our time.
46. Milestones.
47. Zoshchenko M.M. Stories.
48. Yesenin S.A. Poems.
49. Platonov A.P. Chevengur. Pit.
50. Bulgakov M.A. Master and Margarita. White Guard.
51. Ilf I. Petrov E. Golden Calf.
52. Nekrasov V.P. In the trenches of Stalingrad.
53. Tvardovsky A.T. Vasily Terkin.
54. Shalamov V.T. Kolyma stories.
55. Schwartz E.L. Plays.
56. Solzhenitsyn A.I. One day of Ivan Denisovich. GULAG Archipelago.
57. Erofeev V.V. Moscow-Petushki.
58. Shukshin V.M. Stories.
59. Brodsky I.A. Poems.