There are a lot of ways to define the level of your mastery of a Russian language. One of them is based on your Russian vocabulary i.e. the number of words you have learned after a certain phase of the study.

At the same time we will consider your active vocabulary as the one that is needed to have a conversation in Russian, and your passive vocabulary as the one that is needed to read books in Russian.

Quite often we read that grammar knowledge is crucial. I cannot deny its importance, but it still seems to me that the vocabulary is absolutely invaluable. Besides, on each level we need to learn phraseologisms and cliches (we will call them expressions in future).

I must say that these simple concepts is the long experience of studying foreign languages, as well as teaching them. But this is nothing more than a very general plan. I must say that so far there have not been produced the generally accepted rules on the precise definition of the language level, which reached a particular student. Until now, the definition of this level remains more or less a subjective matter.

So, for the purposes of oral communication in Russian, we will mark out three main levels:

basic level: 400-500 words, approximately 100 phraseologisms and clich?s. " With this vocabulary, you will be able to talk to a foreigner in Russian and understand him in case he would speak slowly. Note that if you know 150-200 words and about 25 phraseologisms and clich?s you can start communicating in Russian.
"mini-level": 800-1000 words plus about 200 phraseologisms. At this level you can already start talking to somebody with a little confidence and understand at least slowly spoken parts of speech;
"medium level": 1500-2000 words, approximately 300 phraseologisms and clich?s." At this level you can speak well enough, and sometimes, under favorable conditions, it may seem that you can speak Russian fluently. You will be able to understand Russian speech spoken at a normal rate.

For the purposes of reading in Russian we can point out:

"mini-level": 800-1000 words. At this level you can already read simple texts using a dictionary;
the level of reading "the literature in (your) area of specialisation": 3000-4000 words. At this level you will be confident enough to read literature in your area of specialisationfield and understand most of what is written about in the newspapers;
prose reading level: 8000 слов. At this level, you can read almost everything, including fiction.