Introduction (Russian)
Dante could only have had a very superficial idea about distant Russia which in his time was under the dominion of Genghis Khan’s mongols, or rather by his successors since the great monarch had died about forty years before Dante’s birth. But Dante must have been able to have had a less imprecise knowledge of at least the region of the Crimea and the river Don, known originally as Tanai, since the maritime republics, especially Venice and Genoa, had close commercial contacts with that region. [...]