Tbh the professor is a little difficult to understand and he expects us to know A LOT of content. Idk if it's because of the course structure or the professor himself but expecting students to learn about Russian history, art, architecture, alphabet, and literature from like 400 AD to almost modern day is unreasonable especially for a GE course. I felt extremely overwhelmed and only stuck with the class because of the P/NP option. But the professor also offers A LOT of extra credit (max of 10-11%) so that boosted my grade really high. The class consists of a pre-midterm quiz, 1 midterm, 1 final, 1 paper on any topic related to Russia in some way, and the participation grade. If you have the choice, I would take Nicholas Fedensko's discussion because he's so sweet and tries to destress his students by highlighting specifically what we need to know.

I honestly do not understand why one would complain about this class. The professor is a great lecturer and covers interesting topics. He gives 8% of extra credit, which easily lets you jump to a better grade. The extra credit involved quizzes, which students could repeat multiple times until they got a perfect score, and watching movies and writing a one-page summary for each. The important components of the class were the timed multiple choice exams, which were closed notes, but we did not use Respondus. The exam questions were very straight forward and not tricky. We also had to write a five-page-essay at the end of the quarter about an important Russian event/figure. We chose who to write about, so there was a lot of freedom. I found the paper to be really interesting to write because I learned from it. Another important thing was participating in the discussions. My TA was Katrin, and she had polls each section, which were very similar to the test questions, so we all felt very prepared. I definitely recommend this class. It is fun, interesting, and easy to get an A.