Learn Hardcore Russian: Мне нравится жить в обществе, где каждый свободен честно говорить и выбирать, кого любить. - I like living in a society where everyone is free to speak honestly and to choose whom to love.

Logical structure: Жить в обществе… (subject) нравится (verb) мне (indirect experiencer).
Word order is flipped: Мне нравится жить в обществе…, but meaning is the same.

So it’s parallel to English “To live in a society… is pleasing to me → I like living in a society…”.

Russian infinitives often play the role of a noun in such constructions.

What case is в обществе, and why обществе instead of общество?

В обществе is in the prepositional case (also traditionally called “locative”), used after many prepositions when talking about location or context.

Declension of общество (neuter):

Nom. (dictionary form): общество – “society”
Prep. (location, “in/about society”): в обществе / об обществе

You use:

в обществе = “in (a) society” – place/context.
общество without a preposition for things like “Society does X” (subject or object in nominative/accusative).

So жить в обществе = “to live in (a) society”.

Why is there a comma before где in …в обществе, где каждый свободен…?

Because где каждый свободен… is a relative clause describing общество:

Core: жить в обществе – “to live in a society”
Added description: где каждый свободен честно говорить и выбирать… – “where everyone is free to speak honestly and choose…”

In Russian, attributive/relative clauses introduced by где, который, что etc. are separated from the noun they describe by a comma:

дом, где я живу – “the house where I live”
общество, где каждый свободен… – “the society where everyone is free…”

Why is it каждый свободен and not каждый свободный?

Свободен here is a short-form adjective used as a predicate (“is free”).

каждый свободен… ≈ “each person is free…”
свободен / свободна / свободно / свободны – short forms.

Compare:

каждый свободный человек – “each free person” (long-form adjective before a noun, just a description)
каждый человек свободен – “each person is free” (predicate, a statement about their state)

In your sentence, we’re making a statement about people’s condition in that society, so the short form свободен is natural.

What does честно modify in каждый свободен честно говорить? Could it be говорить честно instead?

Честно is an adverb modifying говорить (“to speak”):

честно говорить = “to speak honestly”.

Word order:

честно говорить and говорить честно are both correct.
The nuance is small; честно говорить can feel a bit more like a fixed phrase “to speak honestly”, while говорить честно may more strongly highlight the manner (“to speak, honestly”).

In practice, both are fine here, and the meaning is the same: people are free to speak honestly.

Why is говорить used and not сказать?

Говорить and сказать are an imperfective/perfective pair:

говорить – imperfective, process, repeated/general action: “to speak, to talk, to say (in general)”
сказать – perfective, single, completed act: “to say (once), to tell”

In где каждый свободен честно говорить…, we’re talking about:

a general freedom/ability
a repeated or ongoing kind of action (“to speak whenever you want, in general”)

That calls for the imperfective: говорить.

Using сказать here (свободен честно сказать) would sound like “free to say (it) honestly (once)” — much more specific, usually about a single utterance.

Why is выбирать also imperfective? Why not выбрать, кого любить?

Again, aspect:

выбирать – imperfective: “to choose, to be choosing, to have the ability/opportunity to choose (in general)”
выбрать – perfective: “to choose once, to make a single choice”

In где каждый свободен … выбирать, кого любить, the meaning is:

People have the freedom to choose whom to love (as a right/ability), not just to make one particular choice.

So the imperfective выбирать matches the idea of general freedom and repeated or potential action, just like говорить.

Why is it выбирать, кого любить and not выбирать, кого любишь?

Russian often uses an infinitive to express “what” you do with the freedom/ability:

свободен делать что? → свободен выбирать, кого любить.
- “free to do what?” → “free to choose whom to love.”

Кого любить is a small clause built on the infinitive любить (“to love”) with its object кого (“whom”). Together, “whom to love”.

If you said кого любишь (“whom you love”), that would describe a current fact about whom you (already) love, not the freedom to choose.

Compare:

Я не знаю, кого любить. – “I don’t know whom to love.”
Я не знаю, кого ты любишь. – “I don’t know whom you love.” (statement about reality)

Why is кого in the accusative case in кого любить?

Любить (“to love”) takes a direct object in the accusative:

любить кого? что?

So:

кого любить – “whom to love” (accusative of the person you love).

Even though кого любить is separated by a comma and looks a bit like a separate clause, it still functions as:

an object of the infinitive выбирать (“to choose what?” → “whom to love”)
inside that, кого is the accusative object of любить.

Why is there a comma before кого любить? There’s no и or чтобы.

The comma marks the boundary of a separate dependent unit that clarifies выбирать:

свободен … выбирать – “free to choose”
(что именно?) кого любить – “(what exactly?) whom to love”

In Russian punctuation, a non-finite clause like кого любить functioning as a separate clarifying construction after a verb or infinitive is often set off by a comma.

Very roughly:

свободен выбирать кого любить – less pause, everything runs together.
свободен выбирать, кого любить – slight pause, “free to choose — whom to love”.

The latter is stylistically more natural here.

Is the word order fixed? Could we rearrange parts like жить в обществе or честно говорить?

Russian word order is flexible, but changes can affect emphasis or naturalness.

Some possibilities:

В обществе, где каждый свободен… мне нравится жить.
- Still correct.
- Emphasis shifts a bit to жить at the end: “What I like is to live there.”
Мне нравится в обществе жить, где каждый свободен…
- Grammatically possible, but feels a bit clumsy/stylistically awkward.
…где каждый свободен говорить честно и выбирать, кого любить.
- Moving честно after говорить is fine.
- Meaning is unchanged.

The original order is natural and clear; most rearrangements will either sound more marked or less elegant, though still grammatically legal.

Why are there so many verbs in infinitive form (жить, говорить, выбирать, любить) without any word like “to”?

Russian infinitives are single words ending in -ть / -ти (and a few others). They don’t need a separate “to” particle:

жить – to live
говорить – to speak
выбирать – to choose
любить – to love

You know they are infinitives by:

Their endings (common infinitive endings are -ть, -ти, -чь).
The context:
- after нравится: мне нравится жить…
- after predicates like свободен: свободен говорить / выбирать
- in small “wh‑infinitive” clauses: кого любить – “whom to love”.

Russian simply doesn’t use a separate word for “to” in this function; the infinitive form itself carries that meaning.

How should I pronounce the sentence? Where are the main stresses?

Here’s a rough stress and pronunciation guide (stressed syllables in CAPS):

Мне НРА-вится жить в ОБ-ществе, где КАЖ-дый сво-БО-ден ЧЕ-стно гово-РИ́ть и вы-би-РАТЬ, ко-ВО люби́ТЬ.

More precisely:

мне – [mnʲe], single syllable
нра́вится – НРА-в-и-ца: НРА stressed
жить – [ʐitʲ], like “zh” in “measure” + “ee” + soft “t”
о́бществе – О́б-щес-тве: О́Б stressed
где – [gdʲe]
ка́ждый – КА́Ж-дый
свобо́ден – сво-БО́-ден
че́стно – ЧЕ́СТ-но
говори́ть – гово-РИ́ТЬ
выбира́ть – вы-би-РА́ТЬ
кого́ – ко-ВО́
люби́ть – лю-БИ́ТЬ

Rhythmically, Russians will usually pause lightly at the commas:

…жить в обществе, // где каждый свободен честно говорить и выбирать, // кого любить.