What Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich observed, upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, could as easily be ascribed to the Russian novelists: "Suffering is our capital, our national resource. . . Not oil or gas—but suffering." What is it about Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Chekhov and Turgenev that so keenly wrestles with suffering and the human soul?

Dr. Gary Saul Morson, a scholar of Russian literature at Northwestern University, joins me in exploring the depths of suffering in Russian literature.

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