American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Russian Short Stories: XX Century by Nadejda Gorodetzky; Jessie CoulsonReview by: Carl R. ProfferThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1967), pp. 104-105Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/305517 .

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104 The Slavic and East European Journal

bubnit' are absent from the appended glossary). The word mantel' (p. 122), which has been glossed simply as coat, deserves a note of explanation, especially in view of its omission from the four-volume Academy dictionary, and it should have been indicated that the words belobrysen'kij (121, 158) and piton (122, 176) are colloquial, as is done in the Academy dictionary. The omission of a glossmark after s mol'boj (p. 138) is obviously a misprint, and the error was compounded by the absence of a marginal gloss for the marked pereprofilirovanie in the same line! The elucidation of words formed from abreviations was marred by inconsistencies in the footnotes: sel'xozvystavka (p. 92) is rendered quite appropriately as sel'skoxozjajstvennaja vystavka, but vystavkom (p. 90) unexplicably remains vystavkom (instead of vystavo- 6nyj komitet), and no hint is given concerning SMU (p. 92). Why not provide the student with Stroitel'no-montainoe upravlenie, especially since the hero is a mont&r. The meaning of Sergej's thoughts "Sposobnaja devo6ka..." (p. 136) would have been made clear to the student by identifying little Ol'ga's words "Daze raki . as a paraphrase of four lines from K. Cukovskij's popular children's poem, Tara- kanisce.

In view of the overall excellence of the reader, the criticisms cited above are minor. Any instructor seeking to teach contemporary Russian to second-year stu- dents should seriously consider using this anthology.

Alex M. Shane, University of California, Davis

Nadejda Gorodetzky and Jessie Coulson. Russian Short Stories: XX Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. xvi, 232 pp.

This new reader is "intended to facilitate the student's progress from the familiar nineteenth-century classics to more recent Soviet prose" and "to serve as an intro- duction to popular speech." It contains the accented texts of seven complete short stories (Kuprin, Kust sireni; Andreev, Gostinec; Bunin, Zolotoe dno; Gor'kij, Tovarici ; A. N. Tolstoj, Avantjurist; Jakovlev, Kitajskaja vaza; Zoisenko, Stradanie molodogo Vertera), plus short excerpts from Leonov's Zapiski Kovjakina and Soloxov's Tixij Don (the death of Aksin'ja)..

The format is like that of the Oxford readers in Cexov, Tolstoj, and nineteenth- century short stories. There is a sound and informative Introduction to the authors and their period. Besides a comprehensive glossary, the book contains separate sections of "Notes" and "Idioms and Difficult Constructions," and a list of verbs (with prefixes and in both aspects). With all these carefully prepared aids the stu- dent should not really need a teacher to help him read and understand the volume. The explanations are complete, clear, and accurate.

I would make only two minor criticisms of a technical nature. By dividing the grammatical explanations into two sections the editors condemn students to wasted time; since there are no footnote numbers or asterisks in the text, the reader will often look in the wrong section first. This has been a standard complaint from my students using the Cexov reader. The second time-waster is the glossary-it is over- inclusive. This twentieth-century reader is for advanced students only; the language of the stories is quite difficult, often full of colloquialisms. The book is unsuitable for anyone who has had less than two (or better, three) years of Russian, so it is superfluous to load the glossary with hundreds of words like zdravstvujte, russkij, ruka, xodit', stol, and ulica. The curious result is that while the text of the stories takes up ninety-three pages,_thelglossary fills one hundred.

The task of representinig a fruitful period of literature in some ninety pages is a

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Reviews 105

formidable one, and making selections for any such reader is inevitably a thankless chore. The list of stories speaks for itself. I think it would be generous to say that the selections are, on the whole, of modest esthetic value. But students will appre- ciate the humor in a number of the stories, and the volume will be useful as an aid in building vocabulary and increasing their knowledge of colloquial speech.

Carl R. Proffer, Indiana University

<<Pyccen14e HapoAHbIe necHHI I

necHH HramHX Hefi; BbInyI IInepBbIi.>? (Russian Study Series, 55.) Chicago: Russian Language Specialties, Arfa Records, 1965. 20 pp., $1.00 (ALP 1010, with Songbook, $3.95; 10 copies, $25.00).

There is a difference between producing a record for the pure enjoyment of the listener and one for the purpose of "using songs to teach Russian." Apparently this difference is not known to Russian Language Specialities and the Arfa Records Co. For aesthetic enjoyment of the Russian folk and popular song the record has high merit. The first side features such traditional songs as Evening Bells, Kalinka, Odno- zvucno gremit kolokol''ik, the more recent examples Po dolinam i po vzgor'jam and Raskinulos' more 8iroko, and the very recent Ural'skaja rjabinuska.

But for class use there are difficulties. Evening Bells, although clearly enunciated, changes keys about three times and is generally too high for group singing: it is sung in concert style by a high tenor. The same is true of Kalinka. The Ural Mountain Ash, though good for following, differs in the recorded version from the printed version in the Songbook. Also, the Ural girls singing the song feature a specific Ural pronunciation not especially suited for "teaching Russian."

On the second side of the record, again the choice of songs is excellent for just listening. The soloists Ivan Kozlovskij and G. Vinogradov, who sing V lesu pri- frontovom, Katjusa, and Daleko, daleko, are well-known high tenors, and to keep up with their renditions in a group would require years of training. The songs more suited for singing along and listening for clear pronunciation are Podmoskovnye vecera (sung by Tro'in), The Lonely Accordion (Ots), The Volga Flows (Mark Bernes), and A Song about a Friend (E. Hill).

One might argue about the classification of the songs on the record. If one side supposedly features "Russian Folk Songs" and the other "Songs of Our Days," then what are a tendentious partisan song and a Ural factory song doing on side one among the old traditional folksongs? It is not sufficient to reproduce at random a group of songs (even if they be as beautiful as some of these), arranged in different styles, print their words, and claim that they may be used to teach Russian. Much more methodology, care, discrimination, and knowledge of music are needed.

However, if one wants a record of Russian songs to give as a present to someone who likes to listen to Russian music, this record is a good buy, for it is well pro- duced from the Soviet originals and is moderate in price.

Noah Marcell, University of Illinois

M. Beresford. Complete Russian Course for Scientists. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. xviii, 227 pp.

At first glance this book appears to be just another addition to what Steven Hill, in his review of Dewey and Mersereau (SEEJ, VIII [1964], 219-221), calls "the rash of new textbooks of 'scientific' (reading) Russian." We meet the predictable lists of cognates, surnames, and place-names that are supposed to numb the initial shock

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