The Master of Software Engineering Program at Carnegie Mellon University initiated in 2003 a software engineering education lecture series in Russia to introduce enduring principles and industry best practices for software development and software project management. Through a system of multi-day corporate/public workshops and a methodology for training local trainers to re-teach the material, the seminars have been successfully attended by practicing engineers from all over Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus. Our experiences of interacting with the Russian software industry provides an in-depth look at how software practitioners and executives in Russia approach issues of dealing with people, process and technology, and how the industry has changed from an educational perspective over the past four years since we had started.