If you try to read the Russian classics, it helps to have at least two years of French and German, because the novels include many phrases in those foreign languages, including quotations from French and German literature and philosophers. This is because the educated classes in the 1800's, in the years in which Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Gogol were writing their masterpieces, were conversant in French and German.
That's because in the 17th & 18th centuary French was the language of the educated and polite society, like Greek was during the Roman Empire. Yes, I know, what the hell was the rest of Europe and for that matter, America, thinking?
Oh, thanks!!! I wish I had known that before I began my quest.