The Russian alphabet can look, for the most part, like a group of symbols, but in fact some of them are quite similar to letters that can be found in the English alphabet. Once you master the Russian alphabet, you can move on to Russian words and phrases.
The original Russian alphabet name was азбука [ásbuka]. This word has two stems - азъ [as] (old mane of A) and буки [búki] (old name of Б ). As you can see, in the Early Cyrillic alphabet all letters used to have names. For example, Д д - dobro, З з - zemlja , К к - kako. Nowadays Russian letter names are much shorter.
The modifier letters in Russian are ь and ъ. The way a modifier letter works is that it modifies the pronunciation of the letter preceding it. It may also alter the sound of the following vowel. Russian cursive is a completely different animal than Russian print, and it’s worth spending some time learning as well.
The children normally learn the Russian alphabet and pronunciation before school. And as they become first grade students their first book is Azbuka. It's a Russian ABC book with short texts for each letter. The stressed syllables are marked red and bright pictures help the young students to read their first word.