Russian classics · free
Russian literature, free to read online
The great Russian novels
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol and Turgenev — the canon, in full.
Why start here
No other tradition asks bigger questions in plainer rooms. Dostoevsky puts a murder on page one and spends four hundred pages on the conscience behind it. Tolstoy sets five families against Napoleon and somehow makes a ballroom feel as vast as a battlefield. Gogol laughs at a whole empire; Turgenev quietly breaks your heart over a generation gap.
They’re long, they’re famously intimidating — and they’re free. That’s the best possible excuse to finally begin.
Made for the long ones
Continuous scroll
Turn the whole book into one unbroken column — ideal for a novel that runs to a thousand pages.
Your place, kept
Close the tab mid-chapter and reopen exactly where you stopped, on any device.
Calm, readable type
Five themes and adjustable size and spacing, so a dense Russian page never feels like a wall.
Questions, answered
Which translations are these?
The classic public-domain English translations — Constance Garnett's Dostoevsky and Turgenev, the Maude translations of Tolstoy, and their contemporaries. These are the versions that carried the Russian greats into English, free to read in full.
Is War and Peace really readable on a phone?
It is. goread keeps your exact place across sessions and devices, and an optional continuous-scroll mode lets the whole book flow as one unbroken column. Long novels are where a good reader earns its keep.
Do I need an account to read?
No. Start reading as a guest. A free account is only there if you want your place and bookmarks to follow you to another device.
Keep exploring
Begin a Russian classic tonight
Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov — pick the one that has intimidated you longest, and start tonight.
Read War and Peace free