История древнего мира. История средних веков

The proposed books by Russian scientists were repeatedly published in Russia until 1917 and enjoyed wide popularity not only as textbooks for Russian gymnasiums, but also as fascinating reading on the history of foreign countries. They tell about the origin, flourishing and decline of the centers of world civilization - the Ancient East, ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, when modern nations were founded and many peoples first appeared on the international stage, about the life of such prominent personalities as Pericles, Alexander the Great, Caesar , Cleopatra, Justinian, Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, Richard the Lionheart, the tragic fates of many of them, about the feat of Joan of Arc, the legendary William Tell, about the uprisings of slaves and peasants, the devastating invasions of "barbarians", the campaigns of the Normans and crusaders, about the emergence of Christianity and the establishment of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, knightly tournaments, culture, life and customs of those times.
It is addressed not only to students and teachers, but also to the widest range of readers.
FROM THE EDITOR:
Republishing gymnasium textbooks on the history of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, the editors expect that they will attract the attention of not only teachers and schoolchildren, but also those who want to expand their historical knowledge, comprehend the past, the lessons of dramatic cataclysms that shocked the world. Now, when interest in history has grown so much, and educational literature is extremely scarce, it is useful to acquaint the reader with those textbooks that were popular at the beginning of the century and have gone through more than one edition. Of course, over the past time, historical science has been enriched with a number of new studies and one can not agree with all the author's judgments, but both textbooks attract the attention of rich factual material, the ability to focus the reader's attention on the main thing, on the characteristics of the most interesting historical figures, complex and controversial events of past eras, literary skill.
The textbook on the history of the ancient world by Professor (later Academician) Robert Yuryevich Wipper (1859–1954), a student of the famous historians S. M. Solovyov and P. G. Vinogradov, ends with a section on "barbarian" kingdoms, which led to some repetitions with the textbook of the history of the Middle Ages by Professor A. A. Vasiliev (1867–1953). But this allows us to better understand the reasons for the fall of the slave-owning Roman Empire and the transition to feudalism: in Wipper's textbook, the emphasis is on the processes that took place within the empire, and in Vasiliev's textbook, in the depths of "barbarian societies." It must be said that the periodization of the history of the Middle Ages by A. A. Vasiliev does not coincide with the modern one: he ends the Middle Ages at the end of the 15th century (the fall of Constantinople, the discovery of America, the formation of centralized states in Europe). Thus, the period of the Late Middle Ages (XVI - the first half of the XVII century) is not covered. This time was then attributed to the New History.
The text of the textbook by R. Yu.