The intersectionally (Crenshaw, Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299, 1991, July) inclusive Russian studies classroom aspires to construct an ecology of belonging even though it is fundamentally premised upon diversity—both among participants and across content. Whether focusing primarily on linguistic and cultural proficiency or on literary and area content, Russian studies curricula exist to explore differences across times and cultures to enable both critical engagement and understanding, as well as to develop competencies. This undertaking demands empathy at multiple levels: not only at the interpersonal, but also at the curricular and substantive levels. Empathy entails seeing another person’s situation from their point of view rather than your own, which is the primary activity of international humanistic study as a whole. Like Rancière’s (The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation. Stanford University Press, 1987) ignorant school master, empathetic pedagogy requires humility, the relinquishing of Freire’s (Pedagogy of the oppressed, 1970) banking model of expertise, as though you are teaching in a language that no one in the room fully knows including you. Rather than eschewing our own grammars, knowledge systems, values, perspectives, and beliefs, however, empathy allows us to inhabit a double consciousness, becoming more reflectively ourselves even as we encounter what is unrecognizable or even illegible. Our classrooms are not enhanced by the pressure to “cover” our full selves, or improved if we cover and sample content, to conform to an environment’s expectations (Yoshino, Covering: The assault on our civil rights. Random House, 2006). This chapter, therefore, offers a model of empathy as a systemic sine qua non of the inclusive Russian studies curriculum. In the post-Russian context, where all elements of the curriculum, from pronouns to borders, are contested spaces, both instructors and students may feel disoriented and even overwhelmed as accepted approaches and content may not seem to meet the moment satisfactorily. All three types of empathy, cognitive, emotional, and compassionate, enable not only a more dynamic and respectful classroom, but they also reveal the internalized and systemic nature of bias and oppression which Givens (Radical empathy: Finding a path to bridging racial divides. Policy Press, 2021) has invited us to investigate everywhere and to interrupt with “radical empathy.” Curriculum and course design at the programmatic level, as much as the everyday activity of lesson planning, can be scaffolded in such a way as to reveal and call out what Lorde (There is no hierarchy of oppressions. Homophobia and education. Council on Interracial Books for Children, 1983) has termed as unquestioned “hierarchies of oppression,” thereby not only recognizing our diverse learning communities but equipping our students with the systems of meaning making and self-expression that will facilitate and support their passage through worlds both Russian-speaking and closer to home.