A reference book for more than 20 years. Fifth edition. An active method for beginners, for self-study or university students in the first year. Aims to train the communicative competence in four areas: written and oral expression, reading and listening comprehension. With numerous exercises, a grammar appendix and a glossary. The main idea of this fifth edition, which benefits from the very thorough review of the fourth edition, is to make learning vocabulary a little lighter with a more clearly marked distinction between active vocabulary and passive vocabulary. Solutions to the exercises are at the end of the book. The expanded format of the book provides a clearer view on Russian Cyrillic characters. With a mp3 CD (about 4 hours an 45 minutes of recordings).