Philologists from Faculty of Humanities Bring Gogol and Dostoevsky to Life for Live Pages App

Exhibition stand and screenshots from the Live Pages app

© HSE University

New interactive editions of Russian classics—Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol and Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky—have been released in the Live Pages mobile app. They were prepared by students and graduates of the School of Philological Studies at the HSE Faculty of Humanities. The project, which has been developing for more than ten years in collaboration with experts from the School of Linguistics, offers readers not just text but digital books enriched with maps, timelines, and commentary for deeper immersion in the works.

In mid-December, two new books appeared in the Live Pages app for reading Russian literature: Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol and Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Both projects involved students, graduates, and faculty members of the School of Philological Studies.

Third-year undergraduate student of the Bachelor’s in Contemporary Literary Studies Viktoria Frolova took part in preparing Gogol’s text, while 2025 graduate Polina Karavaeva and first-year master’s student in Philological Studies Ekaterina Gureeva worked on Dostoevsky’s novel. The work on Demons was supervised by Associate Professor of the HSE School of Philological Studies Anastasia Pershkina. The classical texts have thus acquired a new digital, scholarly yet accessible edition, featuring not only commentary on archaic words and historical realia, but also a wide range of interactive materials: maps, chronological timelines, and character biographies that can be compared to identify points of intersection.

Screenshots from the Live Pages app

© HSE University

‘I worked on many different sections—‘Fates’, ‘Routes,’ and ‘Places’, the quizzes on the book, and I helped with the character cards. It turned into a very thorough study of the work,’ says Viktoria Frolova. ‘In some cases, I was simply selecting quotations, while in others I spent hours searching for the necessary information about specific locations. It was very interesting and useful, because this kind of structuring of the text is extremely helpful for future readers: it encourages them to start paying attention to the features of the narrative and to notice details that are not immediately apparent.’

Ekaterina Gureeva

‘As part of the project, I worked on sections related to the characters’ fates and speech, and also prepared brief summaries for each chapter of the novel,’ said Ekaterina Gureeva. ‘For the “Fates” section, I had to list all the events from the lives of the selected characters and correlate them with actual dates and with other events in the lives of this and other characters. The difficulty lay in the fact that Demons is narrated in a highly non-linear way: one constantly had to go back or, conversely, jump ahead. This required a great deal of attentiveness, patience, and perseverance. Ultimately, this work provided a much clearer understanding not only of each character individually, but also of how, when, and under what circumstances they intersected with one another. Moreover, it highlighted aspects that can easily go unnoticed during an initial reading of Demons.’

The Live Pages project is now more than ten years old. The app was developed jointly by Samsung, experts from the Tolstoy Digital Group, and the HSE School of Linguistics. Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Boris Orekhov, and Daniil Skorinkin took part in its creation. The team continues to work on the project today, maintaining and further developing the app. For example, Senior Lecturer Daria Tyuryakova-Matveeva worked on Demons.