III. Сварка на Подолі
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Cossack love and a rigged council, for B1
The Black Council Чорна рада
Panteleimon Kulish
This is a retelling of Panteleimon Kulish’s historical novel in simple modern Ukrainian, not the original: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who handle everyday Ukrainian and want a Cossack adventure with real history behind it. In the catalogue it is B1: about 5,800 words in 12 chapters, with 11 words per sentence on average and about a third of the text in dialogue. Kulish’s Black Council (1857) is the first Ukrainian historical novel: a love story, a night abduction and a duel, set against the council of 1663 at Nizhyn, where a crowd chose a hetman and the Cossack state began to fall apart.
- B1
- 5 765 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 you will be stopped often: the story moves between farm, city and battlefield, sentences join two or three clauses, and the politics bring words such as булава, бунчук, старшина and полковник that you will tap again and again.
A2B1
This text
You can read it at B1 if you are at home with the past tense and verbs of movement: each chapter is one clear episode, a third of the text is lively dialogue, and the history is explained in a sentence or two where it is needed.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 it reads almost without translation, a light way into the Cossack past before the complete Ukrainian classics in the catalogue, such as Nechuy-Levytsky’s Mykola Dzheria.
Start readingThe average sentence has 11 words, the same as the catalogue’s other B1 adaptations Kaidash’s Family, Eneida and The Forest Song, one fewer than The Witch of Konotop (12) and one more than the A2 adaptation of Zakhar Berkut (10). Words of 9 letters or more make up 5.6% of the text, between Eneida (5.1%) and Kaidash’s Family (5.8%), and most of them are names and ranks: Брюховецького, Переяслава, полковником, січовиків, старшиною. Kulish’s 19th-century spelling, his Church Slavonic quotations and long historical digressions are replaced by standard modern Ukrainian; a few speech habits stay as character marks: Cherevan’s бгатіку (his lisped братіку, “little brother”), the Montenegrin бре and побро, the Zaporozhian greeting Пугу! About a third of the words (32%) are the characters’ lines. What makes it a full B1 rather than A2 is the subject: Cossack ranks and politics (булава, бунчук, пірнач, осавул, старшина) and sentences that join two or three clauses. The difficulty is even: the 12 chapters run between 10 and 12.5 words per sentence. At about 5,800 words it is one of the longest of the catalogue’s B1 adaptations. Hence B1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 5 765
- words
- 11
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Spring 1663. Ukraine is split along the Dnieper, and old Shram, a scarred colonel who is also a priest, rides east with his son Petro to win the left-bank hetman Yakym Somko for a war that would reunite the country. On the way they stop at the farm of his jolly friend Cherevan, and Petro falls for Cherevan’s daughter Lesia. A match is agreed over a cup and stopped by her mother, who has a dream, and a grander groom, in mind. In Kyiv the travellers meet that groom, Somko himself, and the huge Zaporozhian Kyrylo Tur, who jokes at the hetman’s table that he will carry the bride off to Montenegro. That night he does, and Petro rides after him alone. Meanwhile townspeople and peasants talk of a “black council” where the poor will choose the hetman, and the Zaporozhians’ candidate, the meek-looking Ivan Briukhovetsky, is gathering a crowd near Nizhyn. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Чорна рада
VII. Двобій над яром
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Choose an underlined word.
Named after their clothes
Кармазин is fine crimson cloth, worn by Cossack officers, so the townspeople call them кармазини, “crimsons”. The Cossacks answer with личаки, from bast shoes, the footwear of the poor. And чорна рада, “black council”, is a council where the common people, not only the Cossacks, shout for the hetman.
The apostrophe and the perfective future
Поб’юся is “I will fight” (from побитися): the apostrophe keeps б and ю apart, so you hear “b-yu”, as in п’ю (“I drink”). Перескоч is the perfective imperative of перескочити, “jump over (once)”, the dare of the whole scene. Іродова душа, “soul of Herod”, is an old curse: -ов-/-ова makes a possessive adjective from a name.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
With the Reader plan, MovaReader translates the whole sentence where an idiom carries the meaning, as in Отож підхоплю я цю кралю на сідло, і шукай вітру в полі!, “So I’ll sweep this beauty onto my saddle, and go look for the wind in the field!”, Kyrylo Tur’s way of saying that nobody will catch them.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling in simple modern Ukrainian of Panteleimon Kulish’s novel Чорна рада. Хроніка 1663 року (The Black Council: A Chronicle of the Year 1663), first published in 1857 and counted as the first Ukrainian historical novel. The plot follows the text of the 1943 Kraków-Lviv edition (Українське видавництво) on Wikisource. What changed: some 54,000 words in 18 chapters shrink to about 5,800 in 12; Kulish’s 19th-century spelling, his Church Slavonic quotations, songs and long historical digressions are replaced by standard modern Ukrainian or cut, and the politics are told briefly. The characters and the main events stay in order, from the visit to Cherevan’s farm to the council at Nizhyn and after. The original is not in the catalogue.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of this book on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will often be words of Cossack life such as ридван (a grand coach, taken from Polish lords in the war) or пірнач (a short mace, the sign of a colonel’s power).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Most sentences can be read word by word, so you will need it mostly for sayings, such as Є сало, та не для кота!, literally “There is lard, but not for the cat!”, one Zaporozhian’s warning to the other that the girl is out of his reach. Without the plan you can translate single words until the daily limit runs out.
How many hours does it take?
One to two hours for the whole book, at a learner’s pace with translation of new words, not a native speaker’s. The 12 chapters run from about 360 words (chapter VII, the duel) to about 720 (chapter XII), so each one fits into a short sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: every chapter averages 10-12.5 words per sentence. Chapter I, which sets out the history, has the longest sentences at about 12.5; chapter XII, with much short dialogue, is the lightest at about 10. Chapters VIII and IX, where colonels change sides, have the most long words (about 7.5% against 5.6% overall).
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers where you stopped and which words you opened. The contents on this page also open any of the 12 chapters directly, for example chapter VII, “Двобій над яром” (The duel over the ravine).