Terence Wade, the author of this book, died on 22 November 2005. He is sadly missed by colleagues and family alike. Throughout his academic career, Terence's great gift and also his passion was to teach the Russian language to students. His intense love of the language drove him to promote Russian language and cultural studies in Britain and internationally. As a young graduate he trained interpreters at the Joint Services School for Linguists. This grounding led to a long and successful career at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, during which he was made Professor of Russian and Chairman of the Department of Modern Languages. Terence was respected by Slavonic Studies Departments all over Britain as an external examiner and research assessor, and was also involved in and became chairman of the Scottish Institute of Linguists.

An enthusiastic member of the ATR, Association of Teachers of Russian (later ALL, Association of Language Learning), he first served as editor of the Journal of Russian Studies, and then Chairman of the ATR in 1986–89 and finally President in 1989–90. For many years Terence represented Great Britain on the presidium of MAPRYAL (the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature) and received the accolade of the Pushkin medal for his services to Russian teaching presented by the Russian government.