Teach Yourself Russian Language Life and Culture

I am a Russian language and culture teacher from St. Petersburg, Russia, living currently in the United States. This book is an excellent source of basic information about a vast and complex country. The book is written to get the reader acquainted with Russian history and culture. I use it with my students and find it easy to read, rather entertaining, and to the point. In order to study something in detail, one can use this book to point them in the right direction. I highly recommend it to everybody who wants to learn about Russia but does not know where to start. You will not be disappointed!

this book does what it advertises, a consise discussion of cultural scene from historical context to present, very pleased; ñïàñèáî for giving me everything in one volume, clear and full overview of most aspects of Russian lifestlye, great starting point

I wish I had had this book when I was teaching Russian culture, in its broadest sense, in UK universities. Most students took up the subject on entering the university and therefore had no grounding in it at all. This book, rightly, assumes zero knowledge on the part of the reader, yet manages not to assume a condescending tone. On the contrary it is readable, up-to-date, informative and interesting. Even an old Russia hand like myself learned a great deal from it. The fact that one of the authors is Russian, the other English, gives them a particularly broad insight into their subject.

As a Russian studying in the UK, I am often asked a lot of questions about Russia by my British and iternational friends. Very often I did not have the answers! So, I was actually looking for a suitable source on Russia. This excellent book is the best of this kind - it manages to compress a great deal of information and insights about all aspects of Russian life into just some 250 pages. It is refreshingly free of the usual stereotypes about Russia, but is still realistic. So, for a taste of what Russia is, I can certainly recommend this book.