From A Literary History of Russia, 1905 by Aleksander Brückner

The first intercourse with Polish-Latin literature and teaching had come about . .  .  .   Russians and Lithuanians learned Latin and Polish ; translations from the latter begin at the end of the fifteenth century. At first these are . . . interesting Apocrypha : the Book of the Three Kings, by Johannes of Hildesheim, the Tundalus Vision of the Tortures in Purgatory, although Orthodoxy acknowledges no Purgatory and the like, legends of the saints . . . and ascetic writings . . . found their way into Russian. Francis Skórina, of Polotsk, . . . the first Russian to obtain the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Italy, printed at Prague and afterwards at Vilna between 1518 and 1525 Books of the Scriptures, the Breviary, and others to satisfy the needs of his countrymen ; the language of his texts in some degree accommodated itself to the West Russian. The Protestant propaganda also wanted to make use of Russian, but soon gave up the attempts, after the issue of a catechism ; for the populace remained through ignorance and unshakable adherence to the Faith of their fathers inaccessible to it, while the easily-won nobility only read and wrote Polish. The Orthodox Brotherhoods, established on Western models for pious and charitable purposes at Lemberg [Lvov, Lwów] and Vilna, as also Constantin of Ostróg, one of the richest and most powerful princes in the world, provided schools, teachers, and means ; and as nothing could be done with Græco-Slavic alone, they based on the Latin of the Polish schools their programme and their whole curriculum. Thus Russia acquired after fully six hundred years the first establishments which deserved the name of schools and not mere spelling-classes. The Prince himself kept up a Press (the first complete Slavonic bible appeared at Ostróg in 1581 ; . . ) and schools, built built monasteries and churches, and ordered of Polish Protestants, as his Russians were as yet not strong enough, the polemical writings for the defence of Orthodoxy against Jesuits and Catholics, which were then translated into Russian. Soon, however, his schools bore excellent fruit ; there proceeded from them brilliant controversialists, the first grammarians and lexicographers. And in the same way worked the schools of the Brotherhood. But the foundation of their culture, Polish and Latin, took them wholly away from Russian soil, to which they were only attached by their creed ; they wrote by the by almost exclusively Polish, like Smotritsky, the most brilliant among them, compiler of a grammar which for a century and a half regulated the laws of Church Slavonic ; even their Russian writings are thought out in Polish and crammed so full of Polonisms that one would think one had Polish printed in Cyrillic before one. From Lemberg, Ostróg, and Vilna this movement, half religious, half scholastic, spread and finally transplanted itself to Kiev, which had begun at length to recover from the desolation of centuries, and was destined to raise itself once more to its former leading position . . . ; for it was Kiev that was to pave the way for the entry of the Latin-Polish school and its scholastic methods into Moscow itself.

Translated (? from the German) by H. Havelock
Edited by Eillis H. Minns, Pembroke College, Cambridge
London and Leipsic : T. Fisher Unwin 1908, pp. 34 - 35.

Author Br�ckner, Aleksander, 1856-1939. Title Historia de la literatura rusa. Tr. del alem�n por Manuel de Montoliu. Con un ap�ndice dedicado a la literatura rusa contempor�nea. Publisher Barcelona, Editorial Labor [1929]. Description 324 p. illus., ports. 19 cm. Series Colecci�n Labor ;no. 207-208.Secci�n III, Ciencias literarias Language Spanish Note "Bibliograf�a": p. [317]-318.

Author Br�ckner, Aleksander, 1856-1939. Title Russische literatur. Publisher Breslau, F. Hirt, 1922. Description 104 p., 1 l. incl. ports. 20 cm. Language German

Author Br�ckner, Aleksander, 1856-1939. Title Russische literaturgeschichte [microform], von dr. Alexander Br�ckner. Publisher Berlin, Leipzig, W. de Gruyter & co., 1919. Description 2 v. 16 cm. Series Sammlung G�schen. [166, 788] Language German Note "Literaturverzeichnis": v. 1, p. [4] Contents I. Von den anf�ngen bis 1866.--II. 1867-1914.

Author Brückner, Aleksander, 1856-1939. Title Geschichte der russischen litteratur. Von Dr. A. Brückner. Publisher Leipzig : C.F. Amelang, 1909. Description 3 p. L., 508 p. 24 cm. Series Die Litteraturen des Ostens Einzeldarstellungen,2 bd. Language German

Author Br�ckner, Aleksander, 1856-1939. Uniform Title [ Geschichte der russischen Litteratur. English] Title A literary history of Russia... / ed. by Ellis H. Minns, tr. by H. Havelock. Publisher London : Unwin, 1908. Description 558 p. : col. front. ; 23 cm. Series Library of literary history ;9 Language English Note Translation of: Geschichte der russischen Litteratur. Frontispiece accompanied by guard sheet with descriptive letter-press.

Author Br�ckner, Aleksander, 1856-1939. Title Geschichte der russischen litteratur. Von A. Br�ckner. Publisher Leipzig, C. F. Amelang 1905. Description 508 p. 23 cm. Language German Note Added t.-p.: Die litteraturen des Ostens in einzeldarstellungen. 2. bd.