I think my Russian girlfriend is about to revoke my English license. I
have told her that the Subjunctive is moving from old fashioned to
obsolete and she answers me with First Subjunctive, Second & Third.
She starts to explain to me the Oblique Mood and I tell her that she
is not studying anything spoken on this planet. Help. What in heck is
the Oblique? The Russians are stealing our Language!!

This is scary.

When I lived in Holland my Dutch teacher (who had never even visited
England) was teaching me things about the English language.

And you know what?

He was always right.

Dunno about Russians but there are some very clever people out there.

Lucky you!

Back in 1976 when I was in Germany I was friends with a bilingual secretary/PA

Her grasp of English grammer made me feel like a peasant.

However it slipped up on things like:

   'Someone told me that /they/ had ...'

A necessary construct - the third person furtive.

The most advanced non-native Englkish speaker I know is my girlfriend,
and she is very smart indeed. My girlfriend's teachers are... less
than smart, imo.They think that their utterly strange distinctions
signify in some way, whereas I, a Usage Is King kind of guy, hold that
they are masturbating with something other than the spoken language.
But I am a Mere American editor. I guess they think English is what
was spoken in Whitehall circa 1943. I think it is hysterical that they
presume to offer rules of grammar unknown to a billion English
speakers. For example, the closest thing to the oblique mood that I
could Google was a textual analysis of the New Testament. OI Ve! God
speaks obliquly!

Foreign languages are taught on the basis of the native language.
If this has more complicated grammatical forms than the foreign
language, there is a tendency to project (in the psychological sense)
these onto the foreign language and find justification therefor.
A simple example:  Native English speakers have a great hastle with
learning the gender of words in most foreign languages because English
words very seldom have gender (exception: ships).  Learning French,
they learn that there are two genders.  But German learners of French,
who are comfortable with three genders, learn that that in French
there are also three genders, just that neutrum and masculine are the
same.  !!
(And Germans seriously claim that one cannot really learn German
without learning Latin ...)
If Russian has lots of levels of the subjunctive [Were Russian to have
... ;-)] this could explain your girlfriend's argument.  Can she give
examples that are really different  - and sound like normal English - 
or does it turn out that they are identical, but that she  - in her
unfathomable Slavic mind -  just perceives that there is a difference?

Can anyone with a good knowledge of Russian comment on this?

Since most languages (European ones, anyway) are grammatically more
complicated than English, most foreigners will have an acceptance for
things like the subjunctive that native English speakers in everyday
usage avoid or neglect.
You're right, it's going out of style, as any newspaper report will
show, whereas in German it has to be used when reporting indirectly
what someone said.

Interesting question.

Jimbaen,
While shaving this morning, I suddenly wondered if your girlfriend is
confusing us with her terms: "first, second, third subjunctive" and
"oblique mood."

Without checking anywhere, I remember that we describe use of the
subjunctive differently:
Contrary to Fact:  Were you to speak Russian, you would know what she is saying.
Conditional:  Were Russian to have the ablative case, Russian speakers would 
              argue that in German some occurances of the dative are really 
              the ablative.
Indirect Discourse:  He said she be a wanton woman. (especially useful for the
                     writer or speaker to distance himself from the contents of 
                     the statement: that's his opinion, not necessarily mine.)

What else?  Is this possibly her Oblique Mood"?  Oh, would that he were here!

I think I was on the wrong track before in suggesting that she would
find different grammatical forms. Maybe if you find an old book on
English grammar (Fowler?), you two can discover that there is some
basis for her claims.
I think that I am right in saying that foreigners with their more
structured native languages do latch on to grammatical subtleties that
we ignore.
And the formal teaching of foreign languages tends to lag behind
current usage (your 1943 Whitehall).  These points both apply to my
learning of German, and occasionally (despite lots of mistakes still),
like your girlfriend, I can explain a point of grammar to my wife, who
just uses the language correctly.
Good luck!

Hope you and she have settled this.  
Would be interesting to have a response ...
Best, Myoarin

For he who wants a response.
We surrendered to each other. :)

Thanks. Have a good weekend!