Russian Typing Test

Switch your keyboard to Russian and type the story; е stands for ё throughout.

Type each word and press space after it. The clock starts on your first key. Голодная волчиха встала, чтобы идти на охоту. Ее волчата, все трое, крепко спали, сбившись в кучу, и грели друг друга. Она облизала их и пошла. Был уже весенний месяц март, но по ночам деревья трещали от холода, как в декабре, и едва высунешь язык, как его начинало сильно щипать. Волчиха была слабого здоровья, мнительная; она вздрагивала от малейшего шума и все думала о том, как бы дома без нее кто не обидел волчат. Запах человеческих и лошадиных следов, пни, сложенные дрова и темная унавоженная дорога пугали ее; ей казалось, будто за деревьями в потемках стоят люди и где-то за лесом воют собаки. Она была уже не молода и чутье у нее ослабело, так что, случалось, лисий след она принимала за собачий и иногда даже, обманутая чутьем, сбивалась с дороги, чего с нею никогда не бывало в молодости. По слабости здоровья она уже не охотилась на телят и крупных баранов, как прежде, и уже далеко обходила лошадей с жеребятами, а питалась одною падалью; свежее мясо ей приходилось кушать очень редко, только весной, когда она, набредя на зайчиху, отнимала у нее детей или забиралась к мужикам в хлев, где были ягнята.

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Passage

Test length

–This run

–Your best

–Last run

1 minute of typing. Words per minute is correct characters divided by five; accuracy is correct keystrokes out of all keystrokes.

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Next step Lost a letter? Drill the layout row by row Another language: Don Quijote in Spanish

How it works

This Russian typing test is a short story by Chekhov, Белолобый (Whitebrow, 1895), in twelve passages that follow one another. Run 1, 3 or 5 minutes on continuous prose, then read your WPM and accuracy.

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What the text asks of you

The passages follow a print edition that writes е where a dictionary has ё, so the letter ё is never typed. Speech opens with a long dash, and a plain hyphen is accepted in its place. Quotation marks are the straight ones: Shift and 2 on the standard Russian layout. Each ellipsis is three full stops.

How a word is counted

Every five correct characters count as one word, per minute, as in English. This text averages 6.0 characters a word with its space, so a WPM here is not a count of Russian words.

Unsure where a letter sits? Russian typing practice drills the ЙЦУКЕН layout a row at a time.

Questions and answers

Which keyboard layout does this Russian typing test need?

Any that types Cyrillic: the test reads the characters that arrive, not the keys pressed. The standard one is ЙЦУКЕН, named after the first six letters of its top row.

How is a typing speed test in Russian scored?

By correct characters, with accuracy as a percentage beside the WPM. A wrong letter turns its word wrong at the space bar, and a Latin letter that looks like a Cyrillic one is still a wrong letter.

Is the story in the public domain?

Yes. It was first published in November 1895 in a children's magazine, and Chekhov died in 1904, so it is in the public domain in the United States. The list under the test names the edition and its pages.

All 12 passages

Белолобый (Whitebrow), 1895 12

Голодная волчиха встала Part 1 of 12. The hungry she-wolf leaves her three cubs to hunt on a frosty March night. Long sentences held together by commas and semicolons, and no speech.
В верстах четырех от ее логовища Part 2 of 12. The winter hut by the post road, the old watchman Ignat and his black dog Arapka. Ignat's four shouts stand in quotation marks, each with an exclamation mark.
Волчиха помнила Part 3 of 12. She remembers the ram and two ewes by the hut and reckons that by March there must be lambs.
По сугробу волчиха взобралась на хлев Part 4 of 12. Through the rotten thatch into the sheep shed, and out again with the first thing her teeth find. The first line of speech opened by a long dash.
Когда мало-помалу все это затихло Part 5 of 12. The catch is no lamb but a black puppy with a white patch across its forehead, and it runs after her, barking.
Уже светало Part 6 of 12. Dawn in the aspen wood, then the pit under an uprooted pine where the cubs wait. One thought in quotation marks, broken by two long dashes.

Show all 12 passages (6 more)

Белолобый (Whitebrow), 1895, continued

Уже рассвело и взошло солнце Part 7 of 12. The puppy barks at the cubs until it is hoarse, then creeps up to play. The passage ends on its puppy talk, hyphens and all.
Волчата ничего не поняли Part 8 of 12. Puppy and cubs wrestle on the snow crust while the crows watch from a pine. Two words of the she-wolf's thought are in quotation marks.
Весь день и вечером Part 9 of 12. She decides to eat the puppy and cannot bear its smell. Two sentences trail off in three full stops, and by night the puppy goes home.
Когда волчата крепко уснули Part 10 of 12. The second night: a dark spot on the road ahead turns out to be the puppy walking home. One question of three words.
Но зимовье было уже близко Part 11 of 12. Back on the shed roof, and the puppy's glad barking gives her away again. Ignat's whistle is spelled out twice.
Он спустил курок Part 12 of 12. The gun misfires twice and fires the third time, then Ignat explains the hole in the roof to a wanderer staying the night. Twelve long dashes, three of them in the one sentence about the gun; the story's last two short paragraphs are left out.

How this list was compiled: Twelve consecutive passages of the short story Белолобый (Whitebrow) by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), first published in the children's magazine Detskoye Chteniye in November 1895 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitebrow). The text is that of the academic edition: А. П. Чехов, Полное собрание сочинений и писем в 30 томах, Сочинения в 18 томах, том 9, Москва: Наука, 1977, pages 100 to 106, in the modern spelling; that edition prints е for ё, so no passage holds the letter ё. Two digital copies of the edition were compared word for word, and three slips in one of them were set right from the other (и иногда, блеяли, полезая). A work by an author who died in 1904, first published in 1895, is in the public domain in the United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States). Changes to the text: paragraphs were joined with single spaces and grouped into passages in reading order, so a finished passage rolls into the next; the angle quotation marks were set as straight double quotes, each ellipsis as three full stops, and the long dash is kept as printed (a hyphen is accepted for it). The passages stop before the story's last two short paragraphs. Key positions named on the page are from the Unicode CLDR keyboard file for the Russian layout (https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/release-43/keyboards/windows/ru-t-k0-windows.xml) and the layout's name from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCUKEN. Characters divided by five give standard words (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute). The titles of the parts are their opening words; the notes are own work. All checked 2026-10-07. Licence: Public domain in the United States: a short story first published in 1895 by an author who died in 1904 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States). Notes are own work.