Antique book Small Crossomathea for Adults 1904. (Russians' opinions about themselves). Collected by Scalkovsiy. Good condition, reduced format. The 1904 book of the Little Crestomatia for Adults quoted famous people at the time in which they describe their view of being in the royal Russia, and it is easy to draw a psychological picture of a man of those years. Preface: When you experience on your neck all the delights of domestic administrative, social and literary activities, I retired to Paris to rest, then after the hectic daily activities, relative inactivity caused, of course, boredom and I indulged in intensive reading. We do not like this or that, but in general, Russia is kind to us, Karamzin says. According to this correct remark, and I, who, living in St. Petersburg, read most of the French books, in a foreign country began to read and collect Russian books, mainly on Russian history and the history of Russian literature. Little by little has accumulated not a few such scraps, and by habit it is necessary to put everything in order and systematize - to business cards inclusive - it occurred to me whether it is possible to make a small Crossomath of these negative and satirical characteristics for the most part. Why, after a thousand years of state life, do we still stand as some kind of undergrowth? Why do institutions that were suitable even for Antillean Negroes and for the Japanese, not to mention different brothers, seem still something premature for us? It is hardly possible to explain all this with one story. It was harsh, but not for us alone. Now it is historically proven that the Mongolian yoke was not so difficult. We were exploited not by the Mongols, nominal lords, but by our princes, who acted as commissioners of the same Mongols. Finally, for almost four and a half centuries as the Mongols and in the memory of two and a half centuries, as Russia enjoys relative calm, and does not regret to conquer any foreigners or foreigners, and she powerfully pushes its limits to the oceans, including in the iron borders of dozens of nationalities alien to the Slavs. In addition to history, they also explained our backwardness with a terrible climate and poverty. But poverty and climate concepts are relative: Finns, ests, Latvians, Norwegians, Canadians live in much worse climatic and soil conditions than live two-thirds of Russians, they are also not rich, but their activities are not manifested only in reducing forests, filling rivers with manure and a little formed themselves to look for state salaries. The simplest explanation for everything is that we are an uncultured people in the European sense. This is unanimously evidenced by the reviews of the best Russian people, collected by me in the proposed book small crossomathea for adults. And where did the Russian people get this culture? We had no direct contact with the Roman world, but from decaying Byzantium we received not so much a religion as a church system, which could give us new cultural elements no more than what the Bulgarians, Georgians, Armenians, Copts or Abyssinians received. According to its culture, the mass of the rural population of Russia is now not higher, but lower than many Asian peoples. Among the Sarts, Tajiks of Central Asia, we find literacy, well-known contentment, and satisfactory nutrition. Of course, there are beggars and proletarians, but never in Bukhara or Kokan there was a population like our Belarusians or northerners, who from generation to generation would eat black unsewn bread with rotten kvass, and in the form of luxury would have rotten cabbage, cucumber and a little onion. The above-mentioned peoples have the right of personal property, and communism still prevails in our country, why the mass of the people has nothing firm and lasting in life, and its life goes by leaps and bounds, from heavy despondency to crazy rampant. Russian communism, according to Mr. Syromyatnik, is the original destructive beginning of the Russian people, is the waste of the natural resources of its country, the waste of the natural resources of its nature. It can only be cured by free labor and a firm right of ownership. Then he says, perhaps it will be the realization of the dream of peace between Europe and Russia. Until then, there will be no peace, no matter how much we desire it, because the elements of Russia and the West are elements of different eras of human development, and the West can only either fear us as a destructive force or despise us as a collapsing force.