Fun stuff

LISTS

Nothing can prepare you one hundred percent for the experience of living in a foreign country, especially in a place as different and mysterious as Russia.  However, whether this is your first or tenth trip abroad, it is always possible and helpful to learn something new about the local culture.  Our staff and volunteers came up with a few lists of our favorite authors, books, music, and art that we think will show you an interesting side of Russia and Russians - now and in the past. 

LITERATURE

Classics (pre-20^th century):

• Bunin, Gentleman From San Francisco and other short stories

• Chekhov: plays and short stories, especially Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, Seagull

• Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Letters From the Underground

• Gogol: Dead Souls, The Government Inspector, and short stories (especially Overcoat and The Nose)

• Pushkin: poetry, Eugene Onegin, The Captain’s Daughter

• Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace, Anna Karenina

• Turgenev: Fathers and Sons, Sketches from a Hunter’s Album

Contemporary (20^th and 21^st centuries):

• Andrei Bely: Peterburg

• Yuri Bondarev: The Hot Snow

• Mikhail Bulgakov: Master and Margarita, Heart of a Dog, White Guard

• S. Dovlatov: short stories (The Compromise)

• V. Erofeev: Moscow to the End of the Line

• Ilf & Petrov: The Twelve Chairs

• Pelevin: Omon Ra, The Life of Insects, Buddha’s Little Finger

• Pasternac: Doctor Zhivago

• Platonov: The Foundation Pit

• Sholohov: And Quiet Flows the Don, Fate of a Man

• Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

• Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic

• Zamyatin: We

 Poets:

Anna Akhmatova, Ivan Bunin, Sergei Esenin, Osip Mandestam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Pushkin, Marina Tsvetaeva

 FILM

• Andrei Rublev. A gorgeous film by Tarkovsky about Russia’s most famous icon painter, set in the turbulent medieval times when Christianity was taking over pagan Russia.

• Brother.  A recent hit about a young kid turning into a professional killer.

• Ballad of a Soldier, The Cranes Are Flying. Both are great WWII movies with touching human stories.

• The Diamond Arm.  A silly comedy from the 60s, still popular and widely quoted in daily conversation.

• The Dawns Here Are Quiet. A heartbreaking film about an all-female army unit in WWII.

• Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. Great depiction of everyday life in the 1980s.

• Night Watch. A Russian “answer to Hollywood’s supernatural action movies” that became a huge hit.

• Siberiade.  An epic tale of three generations of two rival families in a small Siberian village in the 20^th century.

• Stalker. A dark apocalyptic tale from one of Russia’s most famous directors, Tarkovsky, based on a popular science fiction novel Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky.

• White Sun of the Desert.  A Russian western from the 60s, a classic that most Russians can – and do - quote at length.

  MUSIC

 Classical:

Composers: Borodin, A. Eshpai, Glazunov, Glinka, Mussogorsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky.

Chaliapin (one of Russia’s most famous opera singers).

 Rock:

• Aquarium (a rock group formed in 1972 by Boris Grebenshchikov, then a student of mathematics, and the playwright/absurdist poet Gunitsky. Before 1987, the group performed in private apartments and recorded in an underground studio.  Boris Grebenshchikov later became Russia’s only celebrity Buddhist.  He continues to perform today, both solo and with the group)

• Bravo (modern pop-rock group)

• Chaif (popular rock group formed in the Urals)

• DDT (rock group that started in the early 80s)

• Anna German (popular Russian-Polish singer from the 60s)

• Kino (an underground cult group formed in 1981.  The lead singer Tsoi – of Russian-Korean descent - died in 1990 in a tragic car accident.  He became a legend, and graffiti with his name can still be found in many cities.  The group’s poetic songs are still loved by most Russians.  The song “We’re Waiting for Changes” became a perestroika anthem)

• Leningrad (a punk ska group formed in 1990s that became famous for its vulgar lyrics, despite official censorship. It is still quite popular, both with new Russians and the intelligentsia)

• Lubeh (a pro-slavic pop group that blends rock-n-roll and Russian folk music)

• Mashina Vremeni (one of the “patriarchs” of Russian rock music (the other one is Aquarium).  Over the course of their career, the band recorded music in very different genres, experimenting with blues, rock of different decades, and Asian influences)

• 5’Nizza (acoustic Ukrainian group formed in 1998, combining reggae, rock, hip hop and Latin genres.  They’re not Russian, but they do often sing in Russian and are fun to listen to.)

• Alla Pugacheva (the best known and probably most commercially successful Soviet & Russian singer)

• Vladimir Vysotsky (singer-songwriter, actor, and poet who achieved iconic status in Russia in the 60s and 70s, often compared to that of Bob Dylan in the US. His music belongs to the bard genre: songs written outside of the Soviet establishment, with lyrics often in the narrative style, performed to a simple guitar melody)

 Art

•  Aivazovsky (late 19^th century painter famous for his seascapes)

• Brullov (early 19^th century portraiture)

• Kandinsky (early 20^th century abstraction)

• Levitan (late 19^th century, Russian landscapes)

• Malevich (first half of 20^th century abstraction; the famous “Black Square”)

• Petrov-Vodkin (early 20^th century ‘revolutionary’ art)

• Nikolas Roerich (or Nikolai Rerich) (late 19^th-early 20^th century scenic designer, archeologist, and mystical landscape painter who traveled extensively through India, the Gobi desert and Tibet mountains, becoming known as a seer and a guru)

• Andrei Rublev (14^th century; Russia’s most famous icon painter)

• Ivan Shishkin (19^th century; famous for his forest scenes.  His painting of three bear cubs in the forest is on the wrapper of one of the most popular Russian chocolates)

• Valentin Serov (late 19^th century realism; portraits and landscapes)

• Vrubel (19^th century symbolism)