In college back in the 1970s (yes, I'm old), I studied Russian for two years and Russian history for a year.
I've decided to delve back into the language and history, for no other reason than we're probably going to be Putin's fiefdom in a few months. 🙄
@WordsmithFL Aha! A fellow русский язык студент. I majored in Russian (also studied French, German and Serbo-Croatian) in the 70s. Some dream of being a translator but ended up taking a job in transportation and was pretty much stuck there for decades.
@REDonaldAuthor I got sidetracked by other interests -- I wound up in law enforcement out of college -- but Russian was always in the background. Years later, I acted as translator (badly) when a Russian delegation came to visit our city. When I worked at Kennedy Space Center doing tours, occasionally we'd get Russians who were very happy that someone could understand them and not hate them because of the Space Race. I always acknowledged they had most of the space firsts.
@REDonaldAuthor Here are a couple pages from our 1974 Russian textbook. It clearly dates the work with snappy phrases such as, "The proletariat hero loved to work" and "Lenin was a good Communist."
I think they were training us for the Foreign Service, or CIA translator, or somesuch.