Galina Stilman

Yes, this book is old. Yes, the culturally specific content is outdated and oftentimes hilarious. Yes, this book was written before any semblance of the 'communicative approach' took hold in RFL. Still, I consider this slightly obsolete, yet useful, textbook to be a great friend.

We used this for the first two years of Russian in high school beginning in 1975. Same textbook was also used by a friend in college beginning in 1978. I did a refresher course in 1990 and we used the 1990 Baker adaptation of Russian for Everybody published in Moscow, which I say now is much better, if only because it also uses Russian italics to teach the Russian written forms, between which there is more similarity. In hindsight I was surprised and disappointed that italics weren't used in show more Stilman/Harkins and why they didn't even think to include it. In any case I'm glad to have the Stilman/Harkins as a reference. show less

After teaching the reader the alphabet, the early edition of Stilman & Harkins jumps right into the locative case. Это берет кишки, мои друзья.