This is an insightful and honest look at Russian history that focuses more on the important cultural aspects, including great writers and composers, than some history courses. Hartnett overcomes her uneasiness with the teleprompter after a few lectures and is quite engaging. She quite accurately assesses how the Russian people have been treated and misused by their leaders from the beginning of the Russian Empire to the present day. She does a great job of showing how Russian culture has survived for hundreds of years and is still relevant today. Most importantly, she doesn't gloss over the Communist years as another Teaching Company course on Russia I watched did. This is a truly insightful course and it will deepen your understanding of why today's Russia is the way it is and why Russian literature is so profound--but also so profoundly odd in the eyes of a Western reader who lacks the Russian mindset. The only drawback of the course is that Hartnett seems to have structured each lecture to stand alone, so there is way too much repetition and backtracking over subjects we though we already covered. A little better organization would have made this a 5-star course. ( )