How will this little book help you? What will it teach you? It won’t teach you to read Lev Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky in the original or to understand Russian-language broadcasts by Radio Moscow. But it will tell you how to find your way in a strange Russian city or how to get the food you want in a cafe or restaurant even if the waiter does not speak English.

You won’t be able to write a letter to your Russian friends in Russian, but you will be able to:
-use current everyday expressions, such as the Russian equivalents of “Hello”, “How do you do”, “Goodbye” and “Thank you”;
-make out the various signs, notices and advertisements you may come across in the streets of Soviet cities;
-find your way around fairly easily and without a guide in railway stations, air terminals and shops;
-buy, without anybody’s help, a newspaper, a sandwich, a souvenir, and so on;
-order your meals, buy cinema or theatre tickets, make a telephone call, send a telegram and do many other important everyday things.

A person who has read this book must not flatter himself that he knows Russian, although, as we flatter ourselves, he may sometimes get this impression from his quick and easy successes. Our book is meant to help a foreigner to get around safely and, perhaps, to get him interested in Russian so that later on he will take up a more serious study-with real effort and toil.

You can get the book here and here.

All credits to the original uploaders.