I. Момент
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Love and revolution after 1905 (B2)
The Moment and Other Stories Момент та інші оповідання
Volodymyr Vynnychenko, 1929
Five complete stories by Volodymyr Vynnychenko in the original Ukrainian, not an adaptation; the selection is MovaReader’s own, taken from volume III of his 1929 Works. It suits B2 learners who like brisk, talk-driven prose about young revolutionaries, prisons and love in the years after 1905. About 24,700 words in five stories, 9 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 24 665 words
- 4-7 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the dialogue moves fast, but one word in ten is long, and the 1929 spelling (одповів, радости, реаґує) adds a second layer of unfamiliar forms.
B1B2
This text
At B2 it reads well: short sentences and plenty of dialogue, with the rarer words and the old spellings handled by tapping single words.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 it reads freely; only the 1929 spelling, village words like люшня and the Russian-tinged speech of the guards still make you stop.
Start readingSentences are short, 9 words on average, because so much of the book is dialogue: 477 of about 1,290 paragraphs are spoken lines. The vocabulary is what makes it B2: 9.8% of words have 9 letters or more, about one in ten, close to Ivan Franko’s Boa constrictor (10.0%, C1) and well above Kotsiubynsky’s Fata Morgana (6.4%), whose sentences are just as short. The 1929 Kharkiv edition also keeps the spelling of its time: the prefix од- for від- (одповів, одвернулась, оддай) 104 times against 17 for від-, genitives such as радости, свідомости, любови (23 words in -ости alone), ґ in loanwords (реаґує, енерґічно, леґенду), плян, шклянка, проклямація, and зідхання for зітхання. Prison guards and peasants also speak a mixed Russian-Ukrainian (должни понімать). The stories differ: Zina and Mockery reach 11.2% long words, The Purchase has 8.5%. Long words just under the 10% line and no dense dialect keep it at B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 24 665
- words
- 9
- words in an average sentence
- 4-7
- hours of reading
- 1929
- Рух
Рух, 1929. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Five stories written in 1907-1909, after the defeated revolution of 1905, when Vynnychenko himself had been through prison and exile. In The Moment, a prisoner nicknamed Scheherazade tells his cellmates how he once had to cross the border in broad daylight with a taciturn smuggler, Semen Pustun, and found a laughing young woman hiding in the same barn, bound for the same forest full of border guards. A Funny Thing with Kost follows a barefoot herd boy, the landowner’s unacknowledged son, mocked by the other boys and burning with a strange fever. In Zina, a slow young man from the steppe is dragged around town by a girl who laughs at everything, from the governor’s doorman to a hall full of striking railway workers. Mockery is a letter from a prison cell about a cellmate who waits for his sentence and his beloved Klara in the women’s wing. In The Purchase, a student in love with a girl named Ira volunteers to set fire to his own father’s estate, and on his way across the night steppe he overhears a bargain he did not expect. The Moment is still read in Ukrainian schools today. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Момент та інші оповідання
III. Зіна
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Choose an underlined word.
Older forms: кільки раз, одірвав
Кільки раз is the older form of кілька разів (“a few times”). The prefix од- stands where today’s Ukrainian writes від-: одірвав = відірвав (“tore off”); the book has 104 such од- words against 17 with від-. Верст is the genitive plural of верста, an old measure of about a kilometre.
ґ in loanwords and the narrative present
The 1929 spelling writes ґ in borrowed words: реаґує is today’s реагує, and you will also meet енерґічно and леґенду. Швайцар is the older spelling of швейцар (“doorman”). Note the tense: the narrator tells a past scene in the present (хитає, збігає, розчиняє) to make it lively.
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
Whole-sentence translation helps with the narrators’ long musings, such as «В житті кожної людини десь, певно, бувають такі моменти, коли в ній з якихсь невідомих закутків виникає зовсім чужа душа» (“In every person’s life there are surely moments when a completely alien soul rises in them from some unknown corners”).
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Ukrainian books B1 Earlier Beauty and Strength and Other Stories Краса і сила 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: five complete stories by Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Момент (1907), Глум (1908), and Зіна, Кумедія з Костем and Купля (all 1909). The selection and its order are MovaReader’s own: the five were never published together under this title. The latest of them first appeared in 1909. The text comes from Wikisource, from volume III (Оповідання) of Vynnychenko’s Works (Твори), published by Rukh in Kharkiv in 1929, and keeps that edition’s spelling: одповів for відповів, радости for радості, реаґує for реагує, плян for план.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: the stories are read on screen. Tap a word to see its translation; you will need it for words like зідхання (an older form of зітхання, “sighs”) and вмент (“in an instant”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps in the lyrical passages, for example «Це було в ту добу, коли в грудях так співу багато, що хочеться сліз» (“It was in those days when there is so much song in your chest that you want to cry”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 4-7 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. Four of the stories run from about 3,100 to 4,800 words, an evening each; The Purchase is the longest, about 8,000 words.
Where does the text get easier?
It depends on the story, not on the place in the book. A Funny Thing with Kost (8.9% long words) and The Purchase (8.5%, 7.7 words per sentence, the most dialogue) are the lightest. Zina and Mockery are the densest, with 11.2% long words each; Mockery is mostly a prisoner’s lyrical letter with little dialogue. The Moment sits in between (9.8% long words, 9.3 words per sentence).
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 story also opens from the contents on this page, for example III. Зіна, if you want to start with the girl who laughs at governors.