Schlegel says of the Russian Nation:
"Her subjection to the Greek Church was alone sufficient during the
Middle Ages, and is in some measure sufficient even in our own time, to
keep Russia politically and intellectually at a distance from the rest
of the Western world."
Little if any part was taken by the Slavs in the Crusades. They had
hardly any of the spirit of chivalry, and their belief, during their
period of barbaric heathenism, was not so romantic and ideal as the
Gothic.
The heroic prose tales of Russia are older and more popular than her
ballads. They are told in the nurseries, and recount the heroic deeds
of Vladimir the Great. The ballads are mostly a recital of the feuds
between the Poles and the Tartars, not unlike the Border ballads of
Scotland.
Their greatest hero is Yermak, who conquered the Mongols, and in the
fifteenth century won for the Czars the country that is now called
Siberia. Yermak's deeds and praises are sung from one end of Russia to
the other, even at the present day; and the poorest peasants usually
have a colored print representing him on horseback, nailed to the wall
of their cabins.