I. Мужицька арихметика
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10 village stories by Vasylchenko for B2
Peasant Arithmetic and Other Stories Мужицька арихметика та інші оповідання
Stepan Vasylchenko, 1927
The complete original in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: ten stories by Stepan Vasylchenko, a village schoolteacher who became one of the finest Ukrainian short-story writers of the 1900s-1920s, from the years around 1910 and gathered here by MovaReader. They are about village children and their teachers, peasants who read a landowner’s acres into a school arithmetic book, families leaving their village for good, and a boy thief in a prison cell. It is for upper-intermediate learners: about 17,100 words in 10 stories, from about 1,000 to 2,600 words each.
- B2
- 17 139 words
- 3-5 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the short scenes of Дома and Волошки are within reach, but the 1927 spelling, the village speech and the long descriptive sentences of Божественна Галя and Над Россю make most pages slow going.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read a story in one sitting: start with Дома or Мужицька арихметика, where talk carries you, and the old spellings soon stop surprising you.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the stories read freely; only the prison slang of Пацанок, the Russian passages and a few village words will make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, and 9.4% of the words have 9 letters or more, under the line of about one word in ten where this catalogue puts a complete original at C1. That is close to Kotsiubynsky’s Харитя та інші оповідання (11 words, 9.2%, B2) and Franko’s Малий Мирон та інші оповідання (13 words, 9.6%, B2), and well below Khvylovy’s Іван Іванович та інші оповідання (12 words, 12.8%, C1). Talk carries much of it: 339 of the 748 paragraphs are spoken lines. What keeps it at B2 is the 1927 spelling and the village speech: particles joined with a hyphen (коли-б, що-ж, 178 times), од- where today’s spelling has від- (одмовив, одчинив, about 60), old genitives such as печи and осени for печі and осені (20), and pronouns such as до його and на йому for до нього and на ньому. Two arithmetic problems in Мужицька арихметика are read out in Russian, and the boy in Пацанок talks prison slang (шармач, грач, маруха). Божественна Галя is the hardest story (15 words a sentence, 11.5% long words), Дома the easiest (11 words, 7.6%). This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 17 139
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 3-5
- hours of reading
- 1927
- Державне видавництво України
Державне видавництво України, 1927. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
In Мужицька арихметика (Peasant Arithmetic), the keeper of the state vodka shop gives a carter an old Russian arithmetic book instead of a book “about freedom and land”, and the peasants read its problems about lamps and a landowner’s acres in their own way. In Басурмен (The Heathen), little Semen would rather eat than pray, and his mother threatens him with hell. In Волошки (Cornflowers), a poor schoolgirl picks cornflowers for the teacher she adores, on the night her older sister is chased home by village lads. In Дома (At Home), two motherless boys keep watch over the house on Easter night and call to their mother among the stars. In Божественна Галя (Divine Halia), a fifteen-year-old teacher takes charge of a rowdy village school and stages a play with her pupils. In На чужину (To Foreign Parts), half a village packs its carts to resettle far away, and an old man says goodbye to his ash tree. In Над Россю (On the Ros), a young teacher and his older colleague row across the river to visit Raiko, an old teacher threatened with trial over some twenty roubles. In Під школою (By the School Wall), boys sheltering from the rain start to sing. In Пацанок (The Kid), a political prisoner shares a punishment cell with a boy thief on the eve of Easter, and in Чарівний млин (The Enchanted Mill), a devil living in an old windmill sets his charms on the village teacher and the priest’s daughter on a winter holiday night. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Мужицька арихметика та інші оповідання
V. Божественна Галя
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Choose an underlined word.
Old units, village retelling
Десятина is the old land unit of the Russian Empire, about 1.1 hectares, so 857 десятин is a large estate next to a peasant’s strip. Поясняти is an older form of пояснювати (to explain), and громада is the village community that shared out common land. Notice how Antin retells the Russian problem in his own Ukrainian and slips in каже (it says), the way people quote a text out loud.
Village words for a chase
Отряха is a village word for a rascal, a boy the whole village knows for his tricks. Прожогом means headlong, at full speed, and навперейми means cutting across someone’s path to head them off. Мичка is a tuft of combed flax, the picture behind Hrytsko’s tousled forelock. In з його (out of it, the window) the 1927 edition writes його where today’s spelling has нього.
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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When the boy in Пацанок boasts “Масалку погнав в Христа та Паску, то старший і посадив на троє суток” (I swore at the guard by Christ and Easter, so the warden put me in here for three days), whole-sentence translation in Reader helps: масалка is prison slang for a soldier on guard, and суток is a Russian word for доби (days).
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
Yes, every story is complete and unabridged. The selection and the title are MovaReader’s: ten stories taken from volume I of Vasylchenko’s Повна збірка творів (Complete Works, Kharkiv: State Publishing House of Ukraine, 1927) via Wikisource. The spelling is that edition’s, so forms like коли-б, печи, одмовив or инший stay as printed, and so do the Russian passages: two arithmetic problems in Мужицька арихметика and a few lines of Russian songs in Під школою and Пацанок. The edition’s short footnotes glossing the prison slang of Пацанок are not reproduced. Vasylchenko began publishing these stories around 1910, and the edition dates eight of them 1910-1912; he had taught in village schools from 1898 to 1904 and spent two years in prison after 1906, and both experiences are in this book. Пацанок has some crude prison swearing, and in Басурмен a mother scolds her son with harsh period words.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: the stories are read on screen, and tapping a word shows its translation. You will want it for words such as рогач (the long oven fork a village woman handles at the stove) in Басурмен and прожогом (headlong) in Божественна Галя.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where village speech meets the old spelling, for example “Коли-б оце на всіх нас хоч один отой кусочок, то було-б і нам, і дітям нашим” (if all of us had even one of those little pieces, there would be enough for us and for our children) in Мужицька арихметика, where коли-б and було-б are коли б and було б today. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole collection takes about 3-5 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words. The stories run from about 1,000 words (VIII. Під школою) and 1,100 (IV. Дома) to about 2,600 (VII. Над Россю); most are about 1,500-2,000 words, so each fits into one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is fairly even, with no long climb, so you can start anywhere. The easiest are IV. Дома (10.9 words per sentence, 7.6% long words, more than half of it dialogue) and VI. На чужину (13.5 words but only 7.7% long words). The hardest is V. Божественна Галя, with the longest sentences (15.2 words) and the most long words (11.5%), followed by VIII. Під школою (11.0%) and VII. Над Россю (14.7 words), where an old teacher tells his life in long monologues. If the first story feels dense, try Дома or Волошки (10.3 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, so you can come back story by story. Each of the ten stories also opens from the contents on this page, for example IX. Пацанок, where a political prisoner shares a punishment cell with a twelve-year-old thief on Easter night.