Seryozha: A Few Histories from the Life of a Very Small Boy

"Seryozha" is the story of a 5 or 6 year old boy in the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s. He lives in a small, backwater town near a State Collective Farm. He lives with his mother, Auntie Pasha and an Uncle, (his father died in the war). The gist of the story is Seryozha's interactions with the other kids in the village and his new stepfather, Korostelyov, the manager of the State Collective Farm. Before you make assumptions about this book based on the prior sentences, it is NOT Socialist Realism, nor a propaganda story (though there are some short scenes having to do with Korostelyov's work on the collective farm), but a really sweet view of a 5 year-olds understanding of the world and people around him. While it is told in the 3rd show more person, the author manages to present the story from Seryozha's perspective in a convincing and touching way.
This was the first long "story" (about 100 pages) that I read entirely in Russian when I transferred to UCLA as a junior. I was woefully unprepared for that 3rd year Russian course, because the Russian classes I had taken in the prior 2 years barely covered what a 1 year course at UCLA would have done. Anyway, this was a "Russian Reader" from Russian Language Publishers in Moscow. What was wonderful about these readers is that firstly they published real Russian stories without simplifying them. Secondly, the vocabulary at the back of the book actually contained the words used in the book! I found that many readers and even textbooks seem to leave out either words that the authors assume you should know already, or give the most common meaning of a word, even if the context in that particular text uses the word in one of its less common meanings--leaving the student baffled. It also didn't force you, as many textbooks of Russian do, to look up a word that happens to be in either imperfective or perfective aspect (grammar classification) and direct you to the other form of the word -- wasting your time to look up 2 words to find the meaning. Lastly, it puts asterisks by highly idiomatic sentences and constructions which you can look up in a separate section at the back of the book. All very helpful for the beginning reader of Russian literature.
I had to reread this book with an eraser in hand. It was obvious how small a vocabulary I had back then, as every sentence had more words looked up and written in pencil above it, than words I understood. As I read I erased the marks I had made.
The story is touching and satisfying. There is also a movie based on the book by the same name made in the 60s. Highly recommended. show less