Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is by far the best Russian dictionary available to American English speakers. In fact it's specifically geared towards American slang, spellings and idioms. Other dictionaries, while good in their own right, don't have these special focus. I brought mine to Russia and used it often.Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Issued by the US military...
Review: This is the dictionary the US military issued to its Russian language-studying soldiers at DLI in Monterey. It has excellent coverage of most basic and general vocabularies, and goes into depth on many other subjects (including military jargon). It is far easier to use than the Oxford Dictionary, as it lists each verb (glogol) with the prefix and/or suffix as an individual entry. Words are extremely easy to find here--unlike in many dictionaries of this type. Of course, there are some very specific Russian-English dictionaries out there that specialize in specific categories of the language. (Such as dictionaries of slang, or of obscenities) If you're a a generalist OR specialist who doesn't have a copy of this book, it is recommended. My copy is dog-eared and I did have to tape the cover (the paperback), due to frequent use.
Many of my Russian friends have used it to find the "right" word in English, and it has proven to be an exceptional resource in both directions. A must have for any student of Russian.
Rating:
Summary: Issued by the US military...
Review: This is the dictionary the US military issued to its Russian language-studying soldiers at DLI in Monterey. It has excellent coverage of most basic and general vocabularies, and goes into depth on many other subjects (including military jargon). It is far easier to use than the Oxford Dictionary, as it lists each verb (glogol) with the prefix and/or suffix as an individual entry. Words are extremely easy to find here--unlike in many dictionaries of this type. Of course, there are some very specific Russian-English dictionaries out there that specialize in specific categories of the language. (Such as dictionaries of slang, or of obscenities) If you're a a generalist OR specialist who doesn't have a copy of this book, it is recommended. My copy is dog-eared and I did have to tape the cover (the paperback), due to frequent use.
Many of my Russian friends have used it to find the "right" word in English, and it has proven to be an exceptional resource in both directions. A must have for any student of Russian.
Rating:
Summary: Great all-purpose dictionary
Review: This is the kind of dictionary a serious student of Russian (or any other foreign language) should get. If you're only going to be studying it for a few years or learning the language for a short trip abroad, you're better suited getting one of the smaller dictionaries with less words, not a mammoth volume of over a thousand pages with tens of thousands of words contained within. This dictionary has everything--current and up-to-date terminology, words in all sorts of fields (e.g., engineering, computers, science), obsolete words one might still run across in older books or poems, slang, idioms, words that don't have an equivalent in English (how awesome is it for a language to only need one word to say something like "to drag one's heels in the mud" or "to pinch from time to time"?), even the names of the pre-Revolutionary letters, such as the yat, which was replaced by the letter now representing the ye sound (E in Roman letters). It also has great appendices on the names of different types of geographical areas (cities, islands, continents, historic regions, former Soviet republics, lakes, rivers, parts of cities, etc.) and famous surnames. It also gives a chart of normal declensions in the beginning, plus the normal conjugations of the most common types of verbs. Unlike some other dictionaries, it doesn't do your homework for you by conjugating a huge sample of verbs, both regular and irregular, in every single tense there is, or declining a similarly huge pool of nouns as well. That's for you to learn, not up a dictionary to give you easy and immediately-available answers to. And since this is clearly designed for someone who is serious about learning the Russian language, it also doesn't have a section on the Cryllic alphabet. It's assumed that you already know it quite well if you're purchasing this dictionary in lieu of something designed for a more casual student.
Rating:
Summary: For Americans, Katzner is simply the best.
Review: This was my first dictionary, in 1987--and remains my favorite dictionary today. I have literally loved two copies of this dictionary to pieces. My current copy is the first dictionary I reach for if I need a quick translation. This was the dictionary that was always at my side when I worked as an interpreter in Moscow. Of course, it is not meant for every purpose, but I have seen nothing as good as this dictionary for its size. There is also a great quick-reference declension guide inside.
Rating:
Summary: Used at the US Military Defense Language Institute
Review: Very thorough and consise
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