“Век живи — век учись. Live for a century — learn for a century.”
— Russian Proverb
Take a moment to explore these online resources for Russian learners of all levels.
Let’s Listen is a free interactive online resource designed to provide Russian language learners with an opportunity to listen to authentic audio recorded by young people in Russia. The resource provides a series of interactive tasks for each audio file: vocabulary lists, questions, fill-in-the-blanks, and translation.
Rockin Russian offers music videos with Russian and English subtitles, as well as exercises divided by level.
This is a collection of canonical Russian poems. The poems are glossed and there is an audio file available of someone reading them, as well as biographical information about the poets. The poems are coded by difficulty of comprehension, starting with level (1) accessible to the beginners in the first year, level (2) better suited to intermediate students, and level (3) for advanced. There are exercises you can complete after each poem.
Very Much Russian is a website with miscellaneous resources including podcasts, jokes, proverbs and a slang dictionary.
The Russian Song Caption Database is a great resource to find more Russian music. Crucially, this database includes information on whether the band/singer has come out in favor or against the war in Ukraine.
On HiNative, you can ask questions about any language you want and get answers from real native speakers from around the world. You can ask questions like, “How do you say this in Spanish?” “What’s the difference between these two words?” “Is my pronunciation correct?” You can also teach other users about your own native language,
Radiooooo is an online collaborative archive of popular radio music, spanning from the birth of mass radio to today. In the simplest of terms, the site is a radio time machine, allowing you to pick any country, and any decade since 1900.
PopKult gives an expansive overview of contemporary pop culture in Eurasia. Explore this site for information on movies, music, brands, TV, etc. No direct language practice here, but a useful starting point to find more resources.
The following resources are recommended for students with specific levels of Russian.
Raketa
Podcast for beginners. Not the most fascinating topics, but good listening practice!
Russian with Anastasia
A variety of videos from more instructional to conversational.
Blogs from SRAS:
Olga’s Blog is a series of free intermediate Russian lessons developed by SRAS. Each entry is written in simplified Russian, glossed for vocabulary and cultural meaning. Each entry also comes with a related grammar lesson. Your host is Olga Dmitraschenko, a sixteen-year-old native Muscovite and incoming freshman to Moscow State University.
Roxana Burkhanova, a recent graduate of Moscow State University, discusses modern life, history, sociology, and politics in simplified Russian. Моя Россия builds upon Olga’s Blog, another set of intermediate Russian lessons that give shorter texts that focus more on daily life and cultural issues.
Shest’ Kadrov: Short Comedy Videos
These 91 videos are excerpts from the Russian comedy series Shest’ Kadrov directed by Alexander Zhigalkin. Cornell University obtained permission to use the material as a resource for Russian language students. Each video is accompanied by links for transcripts and vocabulary help. No exercises.
RAILS: Russian Advanced Interactive Listening Series
The RAILS lessons are designed to help students of Russian reach the advanced-level in listening proficiency. The RAILS lessons provide students an opportunity to work toward advanced-level listening proficiency by working closely with video clips that include examples of paragraph-length discourse. The lessons were developed for students with approximately two years of formal classroom instruction in Russian.
Russian Language Learning on the Web (not the catchiest name)
This online multimedia system allows students to learn Russian grammar and vocabulary through works of classic Russian literature. Students can explore the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy and Blok, each presented in their historical context. The website offers annotated versions of the texts alongside spoken Russian recordings, video discussions, and interactive exercises.
The Annotated Afanas′ev Library
You can read glossed folk tales to expand your vocabulary and get some reading practice. No exercises.
RAILS: Russian Advanced Interactive Listening Series
The RAILS lessons are designed to help students of Russian reach the advanced-level in listening proficiency. The RAILS lessons provide students an opportunity to work toward advanced-level listening proficiency by working closely with video clips that include examples of paragraph-length discourse. The lessons were developed for students with approximately two years of formal classroom instruction in Russia