I. Розділ 1
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Farmhands in an estate kitchen (B2)
The Poor Голота
Volodymyr Vynnychenko, 1930
Holota (Голота) is Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s complete novella of 1905 in the original Ukrainian, not an adaptation. The title is a collective word for the poor, the people who own nothing: here the landless farmhands, cooks and seasonal workers of a landowner’s estate, whom a rich peasant’s son calls голодрабці (“ragged beggars”). It suits B2 learners who enjoy lively, quarrelsome dialogue and village life around 1900. About 34,900 words in six numbered chapters, 10 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 34 945 words
- 6-10 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 you can follow the quarrels in the kitchen, but the long descriptions, the 1930 spellings and the farmhands’ half-Russian words (одмовив, понімаєш, харашо) will stop you on almost every line.
B1B2
This text
At B2 it reads well: three paragraphs in four are dialogue, and the old spellings, the estate words and the Russian-tinged speech are handled by tapping single words.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 it reads freely; only the 1930 spelling, the estate vocabulary (кандьор, калаталка, мисник) and the masters’ Russian in chapter IV still make you pause.
Start readingSentences are short, 10 words on average, because about three paragraphs in four are dialogue lines. The vocabulary sets the level: 9.3% of words have 9 letters or more, a little above Vynnychenko’s own Beauty and Strength and Other Stories (9.0%, B2) and below the 10% line where Ivan Franko’s Boa constrictor (10.0%) becomes C1. In size and subject it is close to Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky’s Mykola Dzheria (about 36,600 words, B2), another story of hired hands, but its sentences are much shorter (10 words against 15). Two layers of older forms add work. The 1930 edition keeps the spelling of its time: more than 160 words with the prefix од- where today’s Ukrainian has від- (одмовив, одвернувся, одповіла), зідхнув for зітхнув (20 times in its forms), genitives such as злости and милости, and ґ in ґанок and енерґійно. The farmhands speak a loose, Russian-tinged Ukrainian (понімаєш and its forms 21 times, харашо, вєрно, удівітельно), and in chapter IV the masters and the steward talk in Russian or a half-Russian mix. Estate words such as кандьор (millet gruel), калаталка (a watchman’s rattle) and піл (the plank bed) come back again and again. Long words under the 10% line and no regional dialect keep it at B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 34 945
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 6-10
- hours of reading
- 1930
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1930. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A rainy Sunday evening at the start of spring, in the “black kitchen” of a landowner’s estate: the smoky, damp hut where the hired hands eat and sleep. Kylyna, the proud young cook, stirs the gruel; Marynka, an orphan servant girl, flinches at every voice; old Yukhym, the night watchman, who has sat in prison and wandered as far as Odesa, fills his pipe and philosophises; Trokhym, a pockmarked, bitter seasonal worker who has lost count of the estates he has served, mocks everyone. His favourite target is Andrii, the son of a peasant with land, who works for wages beside the landless and wants to be one of them. Merry Sofiika bursts in from the village, where Khvedir, a rich farmer’s son, called the estate hands голодрабці and struck her. Andrii pays for vodka for the whole kitchen to prove himself, and the steward Khalabuda drops in to offer Kylyna a better-paid place as laundress at the masters’ “white kitchen”, an offer everyone understands. Between the vodka, the songs and Yukhym’s talk about truth, God and looking after yourself, Kylyna goes out into the rain, where first Trokhym and then Andrii are waiting. The next morning a guest’s medal disappears from the manor house, and the masters come down to the black kitchen to find the thief. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Голота
IV. Розділ 4
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Choose an underlined word.
Очі йому: whose eyes?
Vynnychenko often shows whose body part it is with a dative pronoun instead of a possessive: Очі йому… дивились убік means “his eyes were looking aside”. The pattern returns all through the book, as in Кров ударила йому в лице (“the blood rushed to his face”). Note also злости, the 1930 spelling of today’s злості, and the long portrait sentence: find the subject (нетерплячка) at its very end.
One step after another: пошарувала, випросталась
The narrator shows Kylyna’s calm through a row of perfective past verbs, each action finished before the next begins: пошарувала (“scrubbed a little more”), випросталась (“straightened up”), одвела (“pushed back”), обдивилась (“looked around”), попрямувала (“headed for”). Read them as single steps in a sequence. одвела and одкинула are the 1930 spellings of відвела and відкинула.
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
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Whole-sentence translation helps with Kylyna’s outburst in the rain, such as «Я вперед себе люблю, а потім того, хто мене любить, хто мене любить для мене, а не для себе, для своєї потіхи…» (“First I love myself, and then the one who loves me, who loves me for my sake and not for his own, for his own amusement…”).
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Ukrainian books B1 Earlier The Moment and Other Stories Момент та інші оповідання Another book by the same author B2
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: the complete novella Голота by Volodymyr Vynnychenko, first published in 1905 in the Kyiv journal Kievskaya Starina and included the next year in his first book of stories (1906). The text comes from Wikisource, from volume I (Оповідання) of Vynnychenko’s Works (Твори), published by Knyhospilka in 1930, and keeps that edition’s spelling: одмовив for відмовив, злости for злості, зідхнув for зітхнув, ґанок with ґ. The characters use the coarse words of their time, including insults for women and an old word for Jews; the text is given unchanged.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: the novella is read on screen. Tap a word to see its translation; you will need it for estate words like кандьор (a thin millet gruel cooked for farmhands) and калаталка (the night watchman’s wooden rattle).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps with old Yukhym’s sayings, for example «Так воно на світі вже з давніх давен ведеться: що одному погано, то другому добре» (“That is how the world has gone since olden times: what is bad for one is good for another”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 6-10 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The six numbered chapters differ in size: III is the shortest (about 3,100 words), then I (about 3,500), IV (about 4,900), V (about 6,300), II (about 8,400) and VI, the longest (about 8,800).
Where does the text get easier?
The opening is the steepest part: chapter I describes the black kitchen and its people at length and has the most long words (10.9%). Chapter III, the rainy night of the watchman’s rounds, is the lightest (9.4 words per sentence, 8.0% long words). Chapter IV has the longest sentences (12.4 words) and 10.0% long words, with the masters’ Russian. The other chapters stay near the book’s average: 9.8-10.1 words per sentence and 8.6-9.5% long words.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened. Any chapter also opens from the contents on this page, for example III. Розділ 3, the rainy night when old Yukhym makes his rounds with his rattle.