Why on earth Lenin ever thought communism and official atheism could be implemented in a country so backward and superstitious, I'll never know.

I took a semester of Russian in college, and I had the same problem with it I had with Hebrew: my brain absolutely refuses to process any other alphabets than the one I grew up with. Languages I can understand just fine, but having to start off with a whole new set of letters before I got to grammar and vocab just destroyed me. I was two weeks behind everyone else because no matter what I tried -- flashcards, A/V, osmosis -- I could never get the goddamn alphabet to sink in.