Russian literature famously probes the depths of the human soul, and in this series of 36 insightful lectures prepared by a frequently honored teacher legendary among educators in both the United States and Russia - you probe just as deeply into the extraordinary legacy that is Russian Literature itself. Professor Weil introduces you to masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Chekhov's The Seagull, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and many other great novels, stories, plays, and poems. In all, you plunge into more than 40 works by a dozen writers, from Aleksandr Pushkin in the 19th century to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the 20th century. You also investigate the origin of Russian literature itself, which traces its lineage back to powerful epic poetry and beautiful renderings of the Bible into Slavic during the Middle Ages. All of these works are treated in translation, but Professor Weil does something very unusual in the literature-in-translation arena. For almost every passage that he quotes in English, he reads an extract in the original Russian, with a fluent accent and an actor's sense of drama. All Lectures: 1. Origins of Russian Literature 2. The Church and the Folk in Old Kiev 3. Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, 1799-1837 4. Exile, Rustic Seclusion, and Onegin 5. December's Uprising and Two Poets Meet 6. A Poet Contrasts Talent versus Mediocrity 7. St. Petersburg Glorified and Death Embraced 8. Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol', 1809 - 1852 9. Russian Grotesque - Overcoats to Dead Souls 10. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, 1821 - 1881 11. Near Mortality, Prison, and an Underground 12. Second Wife and a Great Crime Novel Begins 13. Inside the Troubled Mind of a Criminal 14. The Generation of the Karamazovs 15. The Novelistic Presence of Christ and Satan 16. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, 1828 - 1910 17. Tale of Two Cities and a Country Home 18. Family Life Meets Military Life 19. Vengeance Is Mine, Saith the Lord 20. Family Life Makes a Comeback 21. Tolstoy the Preacher 22. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, 1818 - 1883 23. The Stresses between Two Generations 24. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, 1860 - 1904 25. M. Gorky (Aleksei M. Peshkov), 1868 - 1936 26. Literature and Revolution 27. The Tribune - Vladimir Maiakovsky, 1893 - 1930 28. The Revolution Makes a U-Turn 29. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, 1905 - 1984 30. Revolutions and Civil War 31. Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko, 1895 - 1958 32. Among the Godless - Religion and Family Life 33. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, 1890 - 1960 34. The Poet In and Beyond Society 35. Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Born 1918 36. The Many Colors of Russian Literature