Russian classical and Soviet literature is well-known, with the most famous authors being A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov, M. Gorky, S. Yesenin, V. Vysotsky. It has become popular all over the world and since the second half of the twentieth century, Russian literature has become known to many Vietnamese readers. Until now, it has been taught at various universities in our country, studied deeply by students in general, and by literature scholars, in particular. However, in the last decade, studying Russian literature in the Vietnamese higher education system has changed. The number of class hours and also the quality of education for this subject have sharply decreased. This article discusses studying Russian literature as one of the necessary subjects for the Vietnamese students learning Russian. The article studies the syllabi of this subject at the Russian Language Faculties in some Vietnamese universities, and also analyzes the significant difficulties that our students often encounter in the process of learning Russian literature: language basis, ability to study literature, insufficient students’ knowledge of the history and culture of Russia, the artwork analysis skills, self-study of students, number of hours in the Russian literature syllabus. Drawing on the personal experience of teaching Russian literature, the author of the article gives some recommendations for overcoming students’ difficulties in studying Russian literature. The work is based on theoretical and empirical methods: comparison, analysis and synthesis. The study also used methods such as online polling, a method for processing and analyzing the collected data.