Polka
A Russian project about the key books of Russian literature: each one gets a deep Q&A-style guide, alongside reading lists, courses and special features.
What it is
Polka ("The Shelf") is a Russian-language site devoted to the major books of Russian literature. The homepage is literally a shelf of covers — Eugene Onegin, The Foundation Pit, Poor Liza, the Life of Archpriest Avvakum, A School for Fools, The Time: Night and a couple of hundred more. Each book gets a long guide written as a series of questions and answers: what it's about, how it's built, how readers first took it and how we read it now.
Why we picked it
Plenty of people meet the Russian classics as homework and never come back. Polka is built to fix that. The question format is great for browsing: read the one answer that grabs you, or go through the whole guide. Beyond single books there are themed reading lists — one traces the birth of Russian postmodernism from Sinyavsky and Venedikt Yerofeyev to Sorokin and Kibirov — a big course on the history of Russian poetry, a feature on three centuries of women's writing, and a collection of what foreign writers said about Russia and the USSR. The project also publishes its pieces as printed books, but on the site they're open to read.
Where to start
- Pick a book you've read or always meant to read and go through its guide.
- Open the reading list on early Russian postmodernism for a map of where contemporary prose came from.
- Start the course on the history of Russian poetry.
- Browse the women's writing feature for names that rarely make it into English-language surveys.
Who it's for
Readers of Russian who want a smart companion to the classics, students of Russian literature, teachers looking for material and book clubs choosing their next title. Everything is in Russian, so you'll need to read it comfortably — or lean on a browser translator.
Quick answers
What books does it cover? Russian literature from medieval texts through the twentieth century and beyond — more than two hundred works on the homepage shelf.
Is it free? The guides are open on the site; the project separately sells printed books.
Is it only book guides? No, there are also reading lists, a poetry course and special projects.
