Impersonal sentences of Russian are those traditionally construed to consist of predicates only. Ever since the first Russian grammar was compiled, they have continued to pose a problem for grammarians. This paper is intended to be a review and evaluation of all types of the so-called impersonal sentences in the Russian language. The investigation of these sentences has been conducted in terms of their relationships to basic (kernel) sentences. Our paper attempts to define the origin for such impersonal sentences, i.e., how such sentences might be derived within the framework of a generative grammar from a set of rules possessing maximal simplicity and maximal generative power. The long-range aim of this investigation involves the most efficient manipulation of such sentences in a recognition device for Russian-English MT.