On December 1, 2016, the Russian Center under Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies hosted literary readings dedicated to a famous work by A. Pushkin named The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda in which students of the Russian language department took part.
The students learned how the fairy tale was written, went on a virtual tour of Pushkin’s mansion houses located in the villages of Mikhailovskoe and Boldino and read the fairy tale.
The students were interested to know that Pushkin’s teacher and friend V.A. Zhukovsky, preparing the release of the fairy tale yet after the poet’s death, changed its main character for merchant Kuzma Ostolop for reasons of censorship. It was only in 1882, when the fairy tale included into the collection of works by A. Pushkin under the editorship of P.E. Efremov was published in its original version.
Reading the fairy tale, the students learned a lot of new Russian words the author used. They answered questions of the trivia game prepared by a resource teacher of the Russian Center N.V. Belkina, shared their ideas of the fairy tales and tried to explain what lesson the fairy tale taught them.
