Learn Hardcore Russian: Её переживание было сильным, но разговор с другом помог. - Her anxiety was strong, but a conversation with a friend helped.

Её переживание было сильным literally: Her emotional experience was strong.
- Focus is on the thing (the feeling / experience) as a noun.
- It sounds a bit more formal or literary, like describing a state from the outside.
Она сильно переживала: She was very worried / she was really going through it.
- Focus is on her action/process (verb переживала).
- More conversational and dynamic, like describing what she was doing/feeling over time.

So the given sentence “objectifies” the feeling as переживание, and then describes how strong that emotion was.

What exactly does переживание mean? Is it always something negative like “worry”?

Переживание is a noun derived from the verb переживать. It has a few related meanings:

Emotional experience, feeling, inner state
- Can be positive or negative:
  - переживание радости – an experience of joy
  - переживание страха – an experience of fear
Worry, anxiety, emotional suffering (very common meaning, especially in the plural)
- у неё много переживаний – she has a lot of worries / she is going through a lot

In your sentence, Её переживание было сильным, it’s about a strong emotional experience, and the context usually makes it feel like something rather difficult or painful, but grammatically the word itself is not strictly negative.

Why is it было сильным and not было сильное?

This is about the case used for a predicate adjective after the verb быть (“to be”).

In Russian, after быть in the past/future, you can sometimes use:

Nominative: Её переживание было сильное.
Instrumental: Её переживание было сильным.

Both are grammatically possible, but:

The instrumental (сильным) is more natural here.
It’s very common when you:
- describe a state/quality at some moment
- emphasize a kind of “condition” or “resulting state”

So Её переживание было сильным sounds idiomatic and neutral: Her emotional experience was (a) strong (one).

Using nominative сильное here is not wrong, but it can sound a bit less natural or more “flat” stylistically. For most learners, it’s best simply to memorize this pattern:
[neuter noun] было [adjective in instrumental] for descriptions like this.

Why is переживание neuter, and how does that affect the other words?

In Russian, each noun has a grammatical gender that you must memorize.

переживание ends in -ие, and nouns in -ие are almost always neuter.
Neuter singular nouns usually take adjectives and past-tense verbs in neuter singular.

In the sentence:

переживание – neuter singular, nominative (subject)
было – past tense of быть in neuter singular
сильным – adjective сильный in neuter singular instrumental (to match переживание)

So the gender of переживание forces было and сильным to be neuter singular too.

What case is разговор с другом in, and why is другом with -ом?

Let’s break it down:

разговор – nominative singular (subject of помог)
с другом – “with a friend”:
- The preposition с (with) usually requires the instrumental case when it means “together with”.
- друг in the instrumental singular becomes другом (ending -ом).

Patterns for masculine nouns like друг:

Nominative: друг
Instrumental singular: другом (answering с кем? – with whom?)

So разговор с другом literally: a conversation with (a) friend.

Why is the verb помог in that form, and how does it change with different subjects?

помог is the past tense, masculine singular form of the perfective verb помочь (to help).

Past tense in Russian agrees with the gender and number of the subject:

Masculine singular: помог
Feminine singular: помогла́
Neuter singular: помогло́
Plural (any gender): помогли́

In your sentence, the subject of the verb is разговор (masculine singular), so we use помог:

Разговор (он) помог. – The conversation helped.

If the subject were, say, поддержка (support, feminine), you’d say:

Её поддержка помогла. – Her support helped.

Where is “her” in the second part of the sentence? Should it be помог ей?

The meaning is “but the conversation with a friend helped (her).”

In Russian, if it’s clear from context who was helped, the indirect object ей (to her) can be omitted:

Разговор с другом помог. – The conversation with a friend helped (her).

If you want to make “her” explicit, you can absolutely say:

Разговор с другом помог ей. – The conversation with a friend helped her.

Both versions are correct. The original sentence just leaves ей understood from context (we already know we’re talking about её переживание).

Is её an adjective or a pronoun, and why doesn’t it change its form?

Её here is a possessive pronoun meaning “her” (possessive “her”, not “her” as object).

A key point: as a possessive pronoun, её is indeclinable – it does not change for gender, case, or number:

её переживание – her experience
её дом – her house
к её другу – to her friend
о её проблемах – about her problems

In all these different cases and genders, её stays the same.
It behaves like an adjective syntactically (it modifies a noun), but morphologically it’s a pronoun that doesn’t decline.

Could we say Её переживания были сильными instead? What would be the difference?

Yes, you can say:

Её переживания были сильными.

Differences in nuance:

Её переживание было сильным (singular)
- Feels like talking about one specific emotional experience or the overall experience in that situation as a single whole.
Её переживания были сильными (plural)
- Emphasizes multiple worries/experiences, a set of emotional reactions, all of which were strong.

Both are natural Russian; the singular just treats it as one unified emotional state; the plural treats them as several distinct “worries / emotional episodes.”

Can I change the word order, like Разговор с другом ей помог? Does that change the meaning?

You have some flexibility with word order in Russian; it mainly changes emphasis, not basic meaning.

All of these are possible:

Её переживание было сильным, но разговор с другом помог.
- Neutral order. Normal emphasis: “the conversation with a friend helped.”
… но разговор с другом ей помог.
- Slightly stronger emphasis on ей (her), explicitly stating who benefited.
… но ей помог разговор с другом.
- Emphasis shifts more onto разговор с другом as the thing that helped her, often contrastive (it was this, not something else).
… но помог разговор с другом.
- Emphasis on помог and what exactly did the helping (разговор).

Meaning stays essentially the same; you’re just highlighting different parts.

How is the sentence pronounced? Where are the stresses?

Here is the sentence with stressed syllables marked in uppercase:

ЕЁ переживАние БЫло сИльным, но разгавОр с дрУгом помОг.

More precisely, word by word:

еЁ
переживАние (pe-re-zhih-VA-ni-ye)
бЫло (BY-lo)
сИльным (SIL’-nym)
нО (no)
разговОр (raz-ga-VOR)
с дрУгом (s DROO-gom)
помОг (pa-MOG)

Remember:

переживАние – stress on -ва-.
разговОр – stress on the last syllable.
помОг – stress on -мог.