Reading Comprehension of Russian Texts
The MSBSHSE reading section gives you unseen Russian material - short topical passages, notices, advertisements, personal letters and dialogues - and tests gist, specific detail, sequence and simple inference. Nothing is drawn from a text you have already studied, so decoding strategy matters as much as vocabulary size.
Decode before you translate
Read the title and pick out cognates first (телефон, программа, студент, метро, театр). Identify the text type from its shape: a notice is short lines with imperatives and often без + genitive (Вход воспрещён, Проезд без билета запрещён); a private letter opens with Дорогая ... and closes with До свидания / Целую; an advertisement is heavy in adjectives. Read the questions before the passage so you know which lines to hunt.
Grammar carries the meaning
Case endings, not word order, tell you who does what: in «Мать любит дочь» the mother is nominative and the daughter accusative. Aspect separates process from result: «Он решал задачу» (was working on it) versus «Он решил задачу» (solved it). Negation is often lexical rather than a bare не: нет, никогда, никто, нельзя, нечего.
Worked example
«В субботу Ирина обычно ездит на дачу. Но в эту субботу она осталась дома, потому что была больна.» Question: Почему Ирина не поехала на дачу? Reasoning: обычно marks habit, so ездит is a present-tense repeated action, not 'she is going now'. Но signals contrast. осталась is feminine past perfective and answers the question; потому что была больна confirms the cause. Answer: она была больна. An option such as 'she does not like the dacha' is invented - the text never says it.
Traps that cost marks
Reading a habitual present as 'right now'; answering from general knowledge instead of the text; ignoring connectives (но, потому что, поэтому, однако); confusing кто/что in questions; forgetting that the negative may sit in the question (не поехала) while the passage is positive.