When you want to read in both Russian and English, though, there's a great option: bilingual books! Reading bilingual books and inferring the vocabulary and grammar is a far superior method of language learning than traditional memorization. It is also much less painful. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (November 9, 1818 - September 3, 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.