I think Pimsleur's tapes are great! I used them when studying Italian, and they helped my confidence in speaking and it gave me PERFECT pronunciation of words. Of course it won't get you to fluency, but it's a good start.

I just started using the New Penguin Russian Course Book, and I plan on combining it with Pimsleur. 5-6 years to fluency? No way! I'm planning on being functionally fluent in 1 year. That's with the advantage of 3 months of private language instruction as well. Wish me luck! Russian is definately a challenge.