An important goal of research on specific learning disorders (such as dyslexia, or specific reading disability, or dysgraphia, or specific writing disorder) is to elucidate the universal characteristics and cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences of literacy acquisition and disability. However, despite the acknowledged necessity of broadening the scope of reading research to include typologically diverse languages, the bulk of reading research has focused on a small group of closely related languages. This paper reviews the characteristics of the Russian language and orthographic system that are relevant to literacy acquisition, approaches to literacy instruction, and dyslexia in Russia, historically and at present, and discusses the potential contributions of Russian language research to the field of reading acquisition and reading disability.