I. В житах
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Village stories of the civil war for C1
In the Rye and Other Stories В житах та інші оповідання
Hryhorii Kosynka, 1928
Twenty-one complete stories by Hryhorii Kosynka in the original Ukrainian, not an adaptation: the whole of his book «Вибрані оповідання» (Selected Stories, Kyiv, 1928), in the book’s own order. For advanced learners (C1) who want to see the Ukrainian village of 1917-1923 from inside: a deserter hiding in the rye, insurgents and party organisers, a peasant cart pressed into service by the Polish army, a hungry teacher in a year of drought, Kyiv changing hands under shellfire. Kosynka, a peasant’s son from a village south of Kyiv, was one of the finest prose writers of the 1920s; he was shot in December 1934 together with other writers of the Executed Renaissance. About 45,500 words in twenty-one chapters, one per story, about 8 to 13 hours of reading.
- C1
- 45 538 words
- 8-13 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the plain village tales such as «На буряки», «В хаті Штурми» or «Темна ніч» are within reach, but the long, image-laden sentences of «Мати» and «Циркуль», the Russified speech of officers and agents and the village forms (оддай, сказать, салдат) will slow you on most pages.
B2C1
This text
At C1 it reads over two or three weeks, a story per sitting; the stories are independent. Start with «На буряки» or «Політика», go on to the war stories, and leave «Троєкутний бій» for later.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the language sets no obstacles; what remains is Kosynka’s art: lyrical landscape cut by gunfire, irony that refuses to pass judgement, and the village of the 1920s seen without its slogans.
Start readingOne word in ten has 9 letters or more (10.1%), the share at which the catalogue moves an original to C1: level with Khvylovy’s Blue November and Other Stories (10.2%) and Vasylchenko’s Talent and Other Stories (10.4%), two C1 collections from the same decade. Sentences average 16 words, one of the longest averages among the catalogue’s Ukrainian originals, because Kosynka strings images and clauses together with dashes and ellipses; «Циркуль», «Зелена ряса», «Мати» and «Товариш Гавриш» run to about 21 words per sentence. The vocabulary adds the second weight. Villagers speak the vernacular of the Middle Dnieper: the particle -ж written with a hyphen (це-ж, що-ж: 115 times), од for від (53 times as a preposition, plus verbs such as одказав, одчинено, оддай), салдат for солдат (59 times), short infinitives such as сказать, співать, побалакать. Officers, agents and townspeople speak Russified Ukrainian or plain Russian (совєтской, вєрующі, сдєлать), Polish soldiers speak Polish (Co to jest?), and the 1920s bring their own words: комнезам (committee of poor peasants), продрозверстка, продналог, куркуль, дізік (slang for a deserter). The 1928 spelling has иноді and инший (16 times), -ости in the genitive (ніжности, радости) and Київа for Києва. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 45 538
- words
- 16
- words in an average sentence
- 8-13
- hours of reading
- 1928
- Державне видавництво України
Державне видавництво України, 1928. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Twenty-one stories of the revolution, the civil war and the hungry years after it, most of them set in the villages south of Kyiv. In «В житах» (“In the Rye”) a young deserter spends a Sunday morning hiding in the rye outside his village, watching the road and remembering friends who were led away. «Постріл» (“The Shot”) begins with the narrator’s childhood at a landowner’s threshing machine with his friend Matvii Kyianchuk and follows them into the insurgent band of otaman Hostryi. «Сорочка» (“The Shirt”) tells the history of a green shirt with “for gentlemen” buttons that belongs to staff captain Horvat-Bozhechko, from a Kyiv cabaret in the autumn of 1918 to a punitive expedition against the villages. In «На золотих богів» (“Against the Golden Gods”) a village near Medvyn fights for three days against an invading army, and the machine-gunner Senka leads the charge. In «Голова ході» Vasyl and his son Pavlo plough the steppe in spring and turn up the skull of a Chinese Red Army soldier, which brings back a shooting from the civil war. In «Десять» (“Ten”) Rubel, a party member sent to organise committees of poor peasants, is caught by insurgents in the rye. In «Товариш Гавриш» (“Comrade Havrysh”) old Kondrat Osyka tells how the village of Dolyna got its cooperative shop. «Вечірні тіні» (“Evening Shadows”) is a conversation on a Dnieper steamer at sunset, and «На буряки» (“To the Beet Fields”) a childhood memory of a boy going out with the village women to weed a landowner’s sugar beet. In «Мати» (“Mother”), the longest story, a young man has to haul ammunition for the Polish army in 1920 with his horse and cart. «За ворітьми» (“Outside the Gate”) follows Marta, a poor widow whom her neighbours call a witch, in the sandy village of Lemkivka; «Анкета» (“The Questionnaire”) follows Anton Radionovych Sobachka, a secret agent who comes to question the village teachers. «Місячний сміх» (“Moonlit Laughter”) is a tale told between two students, «Темна ніч» (“Dark Night”) brings insurgents at night to the barn where a communist speaker is staying, «Зелена ряса» (“The Green Cassock”) is about a village priest, «Перед світом» (“Before Dawn”) about a teacher’s winter memories, and «В хаті Штурми» (“In Shturma’s House”) about a poor family under a leaking roof. «Троєкутний бій» (“The Three-Cornered Battle”) shows Kyiv under shellfire as one army leaves and others enter. In «Політика» (“Politics”) Musii Shvachka, the village head who let the poor peasants’ committee take his father’s land, goes carolling to his rich in-laws at Christmas. In «Циркуль» (“The Compass”) the starving teacher Korop walks forty versts to town in a year of drought with nothing but a pair of compasses. «Оповідання без морали» (“A Story Without a Moral”) closes the book in Kyiv in 1919, with two soldiers of General Bredov’s White army at the Norway hotel. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
В житах та інші оповідання
XIX. Політика
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A deserter’s pun
The narrator hears the bees buzz «дізік, дізік» and then explains the joke: in the revolutionary jargon of 1919-1920 «дізік» meant «дезертир», a deserter, which is exactly what he is. Kosynka often lets nature speak in such sound words; read them aloud and the scene opens up. Note also «забрьохану колошу»: the trouser leg is caked with mud because he has been sleeping rough.
Village politics at the family table
«Старостування» is Shvachka’s term as village head (староста), and «комнезами» are the committees of poor peasants (комітети незаможних селян) that shared out land in the 1920s. Watch the village forms: «три годи» for «три роки», «да» for «та», the particle written with a hyphen in «хоч-би» and «вік-же».
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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Kosynka’s villagers argue in sayings and half-sentences, and whole-sentence translation in Reader helps with lines such as Musii Shvachka’s boast in «Політика»: “Пропало вже навіки, Мар’яно, шість десятин; взяли ту землю мої комнезамщики як зубами!” (“Those six desiatins are gone for good, Mariana: my poor peasants’ committee seized that land as if with their teeth!”).
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s version: all twenty-one stories of Hryhorii Kosynka’s book «Вибрані оповідання» (Selected Stories, Державне видавництво України, Kyiv, 1928), in the book’s order, from «В житах» to «Оповідання без морали». The catalogue titles it after the first story, In the Rye and Other Stories; the book itself is called Selected Stories. Every story was first published in 1928 or earlier, in this book or in the magazines and collections of the 1920s. The text follows the Wikisource transcription of that edition, so the spelling is the book’s: иноді and инший for today’s іноді and інший, ніжности for ніжності, Київа for Києва, це-ж with a hyphen. A few OCR slips of the transcription (Latin letters and the digit 3 in place of Cyrillic letters) were corrected against the scans of the book. Officers, agents and soldiers speak Russian or Polish in places, and some characters use crude curses and offensive words of the period about Jews, Russians and the Chinese; the text is left as the author wrote it.
Is there an audiobook?
In the Rye and Other Stories has no audiobook on MovaReader: the stories are read on screen. Tap a word to see its translation; you will need it from the first page, for words such as дізік (1920s slang for a deserter, which is what the narrator of «В житах» is) or комнезамщики (members of a committee of poor peasants, in «Політика»).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps where Kosynka packs an image and a verdict into one line, for example the ploughman Vasyl in «Голова ході», wishing the field a good harvest after the war: “Хай родить тепер… ми кров’ю сполоскали степ…” (“Let it bear grain now… we have rinsed the steppe with blood…”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole book takes about 8 to 13 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The stories differ a lot in size: «Мати» has about 6,200 words, «Циркуль» about 4,700, «За ворітьми» about 4,400, «Оповідання без морали», «Політика» and «Анкета» about 3,400 to 3,600 each, while «Вечірні тіні» and «В хаті Штурми» have only about 400. Most stories make one sitting; the longest take two or three.
Where does the text get easier?
It changes from story to story rather than from start to end. The longest sentences are in «Циркуль», «Зелена ряса», «Мати» and «Товариш Гавриш» (about 21 words); the shortest in «Темна ніч», «На буряки» and «В хаті Штурми» (about 9), which are also among the shortest stories. Long words range from 6.7% in «Голова ході» to 16% in «Троєкутний бій», the densest page for vocabulary. The stories are independent, so you can start with chapter IX, «На буряки».
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 «Політика» (XIX. Політика).