FAQ:

• What are the requirements for optimal viewing?
• How do I listen to the audio files?
• How do I view the Cyrillic text?

Site Map

Optimal Viewing

This website is best viewed with the latest version of Internet Explorer. I.E. seems better at handling the various encodings and graphical formats used in this site, particular for the Macintosh platform.

These pages were designed to be read with your borrower's font setting at either 12 or 14 points, which translates roughly into the "Medium" setting in Internet Explorer (View/ Text Size/ Medium). Other sizes may affect the poem's line breaks. If you have changed your Windows display setting to large fonts, you will need to set your browser font setting to 10 points in order to make the line breaks display correctly.

Set your browser to enable Java Script.

The entire site is encoded in KOI-8, which is the most widely used and supported encoding for Russian web pages currently on the Web (well, for UNIX and DOS platforms, in any case). However, links may lead you off-site to other pages using different encodings. Set your browser to choose encoding automatically (View/ Encoding/ Auto-Select). I've noticed that many older sites are incorrectly set up and the end user must guess and manually change the encodings.

Text Problems

Question: Why don't the Cyrillic characters display correctly?

Answer: Click here for Mac instructions, or continue reading below for PC directions.

For P.C. Users: Read the following, and if you still have questions, consult Paul Gorodyansky's excellent and thorough discussion of Cyrillic in Windows and the Internet. (Vy mozhete naiti informatsiiu po-russki zdes' v kodirovke KOI-8.)

Here are step-by-step directions for cyrillicizing Windows:

  1. Do not close this page, leave it open in your Web browser so you can refer to it later.

  2. Go to Control Panel: Start / Settings / Control Panel.

  3. Double-click on an icon called "Add/Remove Programs".

  4. Click on a tab called "Windows Setup".

  5. Inside the "Components" window go to a line called "Multilanguage Support".

  6. Click on a check box near it to select this feature.

  7. Click on "Details" button in the "Description" pane at the bottom.

  8. Click on a check box of a line "Cyrillic language support" to select it. Click on "OK".

  9. Now you back to the "Windows Setup" window. Click on "OK" button to start the installation of Cyrillic support.

If the above does not work, it means you have an older version of Windows 95/98/ME. Follow these directions:

  1. Older versions will pop-up an "Install from disk" dialog asking you to point to a folder or CD-ROM containing needed files: if you have your Windows 95/98/ME CD-ROM, put it into the drive and point to it in the dialog window.

  2. If you don't have CD-ROM, you need to download needed MS files and only then continue the installation.

  3. Download Microsoft's self-extracting archive Lang.exe by clicking on the underlined file name:
    from Microsoft site - Lang.exe.

  4. Put this file into some temporary directory (folder). Lang.exe is a self-extracting archive, so use your Windows Explorer, go to the folder where you put this file and double-click on it.
    The files of "Multilanguage Support" will appear in this folder.

  5. Go back to Control Panel. If you don't see the "Install from disk" dialog where you were before going to your browser, just double-click again on an icon "Add/Remove Programs" and you will be there.

  6. Use the "Browse" button to point to a folder where you downloaded Lang.exe and have now the files of "Multilanguage Support" package.

  7. Then click "OK' and the installation starts.

With the above, you can read Cyrillic documents in Windows. If you want to type in Russian, you need to activate the Cyrillic keyboard.

  1. Click on Start menu.

  2. Open Settings - Control Panel.

  3. Double click Keyboard.

  4. Single click Language tab.

  5. Check "Enable indicator on taskbar".

  6. Single click Add.

  7. Pick Russian language.

  8. Single click OK.

  9. Single click OK on the "Keyboard Properties" screen.

If all has gone well, you can switch between your default layout and the Russian layout by simultaneously pressing left ALT and SHIFT.

Tip: An indicator on the taskbar shows what keyboard you are in at the moment. You may assign different keys to switch between layouts.

Once you've done the above, it's time to change the keyboard layout to a simple to learn phonetic variant of your QWERTY keyboard and instructions. The following directions for changing your keyboard layout holds true for 95, 98, and ME versions of Window. Windows NT users, please consult SovInformBureau.

    1. First, download this file. Save it somewhere convenient, like the desktop. You'll have an icon with the Windows logo on it and it will read Kbdru1.kbd.

    2. Now, rename the existing Cyrillic keyboard, which is c:\windows\system\kbdru.kbd. You rename the file so that if you ever want to go back to a Russian typewriter setup, you may. Open up Windows Explorer, go to c:\windows\system\ and find the file "kbdru.kbd" (or whatever). Click on it once (or right-click and choose rename), and change its filename to something new, like kbdru-old.kbd.

    3. Now, go find the file that you've downloaded -- I mean Kbdru1.kbd (on the desktop) -- and move the file to the c:\windows\system\ folder. You can do this either by dragging it between two Explorer windows, or copying the file (ctrl-c) and pasting it (ctrl-v) into the c:\windows\system\folder. Or you can use the DOS window. Now, rename Kbdru1.kbd to kbdru.kbd. You have now replaced the old, Russian typewriter keyboard setup (which is now kbdru-old.kb) with the new homophonic keyboard. Close all applications and reboot your machine. After rebooting your standard Russian keyboard will become a homophonic keyboard.

If you follow these directions, you will have a keyboard like this:

ñ û å ò ô ù õ é ï ð à ý
á ó ä æ ç þ ê ë ì ø ö
ú è ã ÷ â î í

Notice the E is where the E is on your keyboard, the K where the K is, etc. The letter û is where the "w" is, and ã is where the "c" is. The only tricky ones are really those on the far right of the keyboard (À, Ý, Ü, Ø, Ö). Generally, good typists can learn to type quickly on the homophonic keyboard within a few hours.

For Mac users: For Mac users, anyone with Mac OS9 should find all drivers already installed in their system. For many users this is all that will be necessary. If you do not have Mac OS 9 or still want to "Russify" your system, some free software is available: Ultimate Cyrillic Script from the Macintosh Club of St. Petersburg and Crussify from Apple in Russia. We have had reports that the Ultimate Cyrillic Script played havoc with some users' computers, although we've also used it on dozens of computers with no problems. Finally, beta testers have had a persistent difficulty viewing this site on older versions of Netscape on the Macintosh platform. The easiest solution to this problem is to use Internet Explorer.

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From the Ends to the Beginning (reverse-chronological order)
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