To date, attempts at empirically validating a construct of academic vocabulary in the form of a frequency list in languages other than English remain conspicuously absent in peer-reviewed journals. This study aims to close this gap by using Russian as a case study to develop an academic vocabulary list and prove its viability through a variety of data science methods, including cross-validation and out-of-sample coverage. Our findings support the utility of such a construct in Russian and its potential impact on teaching Russian for academic purposes.