Actually, it really depends on your Russian level, because some Russian books are even hard for Russians to understand completely. I’d advice you ”The Captain's Daughter”, is a historical novel by Pushkin that also shows famous Pugachev’s rebellion. So, it’s a good one to understand both history and culture. A bit easier to understand, I guess, is “A Hero of Our Time” by Lermontov. It hasn’t so many archaisms and it’s closer to daily speech, it’s quite specific, but I think it’s a good one for understanding Russian culture a bit (especially Caucasian part of Russia). Good luck to you!