A Russian Journey, Part III: Among Gogol, Gorky and Dostoevsky

Inside My Honours Years, the Books That Shaped Me, and the Road to Self-belief

In Part I of this series, I discussed the Russian literature I studied during my first two years as a student of Russian language and literature at the University of St Andrews.

In Part II, I reflected on the year-abroad component of my degree, which I spent in Odesa, Ukraine, from 1995 to 1996.

In this third and final part, I turn to the literature I studied during my two honours years.

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Door leading to the Russian department. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how many times I went through these doors!

Arriving back in St Andrews

I began my junior honours year in September 1996. My Russian had improved enormously after my year abroad — mission accomplished!

At St Andrews, the honours years are when students decide which subjects to take to degree level. Unlike most UK universities, St Andrews awarded an undergraduate MA, something unique to just a handful of Scottish institutions.

I was the only student in my year group to take single honours Russian; everyone else combined Russian with another language or subject, such as International Relations. The Russian faculty had just enough modules to make single honours possible, but I had to take every one of them: language, translation, linguistics, and literature.

Alongside Russian, I also studied Ukrainian and Old Church Slavonic — that year in Ukraine was going to come in handy! We were fortunate to have two brilliant linguists on staff: Dr Stefan Pugh¹and Professor Ian Press. I took classes in morphology and phonology, and together with the Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian modules, these gave me a solid grounding in the history and structure of the language.

Smaller Classes, Bigger Challenges

By this stage, the classes were far smaller than in first and second year. In some, I was the only student—something I don’t think I fully appreciated at the time.

I still vividly remember sitting across the desk from Dr Anthony Hippisley, discussing my dissertation—perhaps the achievement of which I’m most proud. I wrote 20,000 words in Russian, comparing the screenplay of Sergei Bondarchuk’s magnificent film adaptation of War and Peace with the original novel.

Both remain firm favourites of mine, and I’ve recently reread and rewatched them, thanks in part to the wonderful slow-read by Simon Haisell here on Substack.

Diving Deeper into Literature

The honours years were fascinating from a literary perspective. While the reading list was shorter than in first and second year, I went much deeper into the authors and texts I studied. I read War and Peace in Russian, completed an entire module on Nikolai Gogol, tackled Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov (in translation), and explored the short stories of Leonid Andreyev and Maxim Gorky.

In first and second year, we mostly wrote essays and sat exams; in the honours years, we added seminars — presentations delivered TED Talk–style to our classmates. If essay deadlines triggered anxiety, these seminars ramped it up to 11. They were nerve-racking, and I’m sure they contributed to the mental health struggles I faced during my junior honours year.

I eventually completed three presentations across the two years (extensions might have been involved!):

• German Romantic Influence in Gogol

• The Functions of Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov

• In what ways can aspects of Andreyev’s work be regarded as “expressionist” in nature?

Leonid Andreyev and an Unexpected Epiphany

Of the three seminars, the one I remember most vividly was on Leonid Andreyev, often described as the father of Russian Expressionism. Two stories stand out: The Red Laugh (1904) and The Seven Who Were Hanged (1908).

In the run-up to the seminar, I panicked. I went home to my parents’ house and spent days preparing in the local library. On the morning of the presentation, I caught the early bus back to St Andrews. As the sun rose over a small copse of trees in a Fife village, I had what I can only describe as an epiphany:

The Seven Who Were Hanged wasn’t about despair at all — it was about hope.

My tutor disagreed, but marked me generously for presenting such a well-reasoned argument.

Anthony Briggs translation in the Penguin Little Black Classics edition

Rediscovering Dostoevsky

I don’t recall much about how my Brothers Karamazov seminar went, but as I’m rereading the novel now, it’s been fascinating to revisit my old notes.

Back then, I didn’t enjoy the book at all; I simply wasn’t ready for a novel of such depth and complexity. Now, however, I’m having an entirely different experience — and loving it. It’s remarkable how our tastes evolve over time.

Gogol, Twice Over

Gogol featured heavily in my junior honours year. Not only did I study him in depth as part of a specialist module, but I also read his novel Dead Souls for a class on the nineteenth-century Russian novel.

I remember writing an essay titled:

Examine the significance of the title “Dead Souls”

I scored 58 — a lower-second grade. My literature marks tended to hover around that level, though I occasionally did better (usually when graded by Dr Keys rather than Dr Hippisley!).

I also read Gogol’s short stories and novellas, and although I haven’t returned to his work since, he’s high on my list for a reread. My old copy of Dead Souls remains one of my most treasured books.

Dead Souls | Мертвые душы

Maxim Gorky and the Silver Age

I also studied several of Maxim Gorky’s short stories, alongside Andreyev’s, for a class on Russian Fiction 1880–1917. This, combined with a second-year class on Mikhail Zoshchenko and his Stories from the 1920s, plus poetry by Anna Akhmatova and Valery Bryusov, gave me a solid grounding in Russia’s Silver Age of literature — the turbulent period leading up to and beyond the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Strangely, at no point in my degree did we formally study Soviet literature. That feels like a gap now, especially given my later interest in Soviet history and art. I see from St Andrews’ current Russian curriculum that there are plenty of courses on the subject these days — but I have the rest of my life to explore it, as well as a shelf full of Soviet histories and biographies in my library!

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A recent favourite novel of mine is a historical fiction novel set during the Silver Age, a two-volume set by Janet Fitch that begins with The Revolution of Marina M. It follows a young poet as she comes of age and features such literary figures as Maxim Gorky, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev and Marina Tsvetaeva.

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My essay on Gorky’s short stories, written during my final year, was one of my better efforts. I earned 64 marks — an upper-second grade — and the feedback from Dr Keys still makes me smile:

For those who don’t read Dr Keys-ian: “A well-written piece of work which covers much of the ground implied in the question from Scherr. Your argument at the beginning and end would have benefited from a clearer exposition of the fundamental dichotomies ‘truth’ v ‘lies’ / ‘good/evil’ v ‘good/bad’ / ‘realism’ v ‘romanticism’. Also, some discussion of Gor’kii’s reinterpretation of Nietzsche’s individualistic social philosophy would have been welcome.”

Looking Back, Thirty Years Later

And so there you have it: four years of studying Russian language and literature in Scotland, plus a year in Ukraine.

Looking back now, some thirty years later, I see what an achievement it was. To have gone from leaving school with little more than a woodwork qualification, to nearly losing my life in an army accident, to eventually earning an upper-second-class degree with distinction in spoken Russian from one of the UK’s most prestigious universities, it feels nothing short of miraculous.

I used to admire my school friends who went on to university, never imagining for a moment that I’d earn a degree myself, let alone a postgraduate one.

Graduation day with my family: my mum, brother and sister-in-law. My dad took the photo.

After graduating, I completed a Master’s in Interpreting and Translation at the University of Bradford, where I also met the woman who’s now been my wife for twenty-three years. I spent years working as a translator, first as a staff translator for Ernst & Young in Almaty, Kazakhstan, then later as a freelancer in Luxembourg.

In 2008, we moved back to Scotland and bought a post office, and for a long time I stepped away from translation. But in recent years—having sold the business— I’ve been able to return to my passion: exploring Russian literature, history and culture, and sharing it with others through essays and read-alongs here on Substack.

Russian has a way of working its way into your soul and never letting go.

A Final Reflection

This series of essays has reminded me just how much I learned and achieved during those years, despite the struggles.

A good friend from my army days often reminds me: “You’re a survivor, not a victim.” Looking back at these experiences has helped me internalise that mindset, and inspired me to keep going and to believe in myself.

Thank you for reading.

Cams / Кемзчик 🫡

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For the sake of completeness, here's a list of the honours classes I took from 1996–1998.

Junior and Senior Honours Class List

Junior, Semester 1

• RU3005, Advanced Russian Translation

• RU3007, Development of Russian: Phonology

• RU3011, Old Church Slavonic

• RU3020, Directed Readings in Central & E. Euro. Langs (Ukrainian)

Junior, Semester 2

• RU3006, Advanced Communication Skills

• RU3009, Development of Russian: Morphology

• RU3022², The Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel

  • Dead Souls / Мёртвые души, Nikolai Gogol (1842)

  • The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880)

• RU3024³, Special Nineteenth-Century Russian Author: Gogol

  • The Overcoat / Шинель

  • The Nose / Нос

  • Nevsky Prospect / Невский проспект

  • A Terrible Vengeance / Страшная месть

  • The Mysterious Portrait / Портрет

Senior, Semester 1

• RU3003, Advanced Russian Language II

• RU3025⁴, Russian Fiction 1880–1917

  • Short Stories of Maxim Gorky

    • Chelkash / Челкаш

    • About the Siskin Who Lied, and the Woodpecker, a Lover of Truth / О чиже, который лгал, и о дятле—любителе истины

    • Song of the Falcon / Песня о Соколе

    • Makar Chudra / Макар Чудра

    • Old Izergil / Старуха Изергиль

    • Konovalov / Коновалов

  • Short Stories of Leonid Andreyev

    • The Seven Who Were Hanged / Рассказ о семи повешенных;

    • The Red Laugh / Красный смех

Senior, Semester 2

• RU3004, Advanced Russian Translation III

• RU3012, Recensions of Church Slavonic

• RU3099, Dissertation

  • War and Peace / Война и мир, Leo Tolstoy (1867)

  • War and Peace / Война и мир, Sergei Bondarchuk (1967) (YouTube)

1. In researching this essay I learned that Stefan Pugh died of pancreatic cancer in 2013 and it came as a bit of a shock. Вечная память, Stefan. My thanks for all your wisdom and friendship; I couldn’t have done it without you!

2. The module is designed to build on the knowledge of Russian literature acquired at sub-honours level, and in particular to examine the genre of the novel as it developed in the nineteenth century. The most important writers of the period are studied, including works by Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Historical and literary context is provided through consideration of the Slavophile / Westerniser debate and literary realism.

3. The module is designed to build on the knowledge of nineteenth-century Russian literature acquired at sub-honours level, with particular concentration on one major author. Authors offered may include: Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or Chekhov, examining especially those works that are not covered in sub-honours modules. Independent study will form a major element of the module.

4. The module is designed to build on the knowledge of modern Russian literature acquired at sub-honours level, concentrating on the genre of short prose from the 1890's to the Bolshevik Revolution. It focuses on the fiction of leading realist and neo-realist writers, including Chekhov, Gorkii, Sologub, Andreev and Bunin. All works are studied in Russian.