What is needed is constant work, day and night,
  constant reading, study, will ... Every hour
  is precious for it …

When I started to study Russian, I read one or two of his stories in this book [1], which was great because it has English and Russian versions on opposite pages. I got to enjoy reading in Russian because I didn't constantly have to look up every tenth word in a dictionary.

Russian is a hard language but there are some still harder. To understand magazine articles and carry on simple conversations on arbitrary topics is a time investment of about 600 hours. To read Chekhov and speak really well on advanced topics is about double that, or 1200 hours. Chekhov's style is close to modern Russian and his style of writing is more straightforward than earlier writers. To read Dostoyevsky... well, hell if I know, I can barely make it through the first page of Crime and Punishment even with a dictionary even after all this time investment and living in Russia for a few years! It's like a different language.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-Book-En...

Chekhov is still tout in Russian school : https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%8...

Only in the later stages of decline, when economy was tanking and people spent half their time queuing for things, they probably had less time to read...

That's what I meant: in the turmoil of 1991 and beyond, people would have less time to read...

However I was thinking already 1980's: probably the dysfunction of the economy had an impact on people people's reading (like, do you typically read a book while you are at the meat shop queue or shoe shop queue?)

Probably nitpicking, but I'd translate "прекрасно" as "beautiful" here.

"Прекрасно" is "good in every way", "perfect", it is something that cause wonder and delight or feeling of exaltation. So it's not about beauty. It's about what beauty of something do to you.

I would say that "прекрасно" is "harmonious and so beautiful" in this context.

¹ Moreover, nobody ever translated the name of the Russian fairy tale Василиса Прекрасная as Vasilisa the Excellent.

I think "beautiful" is more subtle (less banal, if you will) than "красивый". And so is "прекрасный".

I agree, but I'd say "excellent" is even further away in meaning. Translating between such distant languages is always an exercise in compromise, unless you're willing to take great liberties at interpretation (when translating poetry, for example).

Excellent is closer to идеально. Both imply relative comparison (to others). Beautiful is an absolute characteristic, same as красиво, so it's a better fit here.

That's why Russians are paying so much attention to their education/reading and what they wear :) This stuff is taught in school.

Did it work?

Well. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gogol/nikolai/g61n/

For example, is a 19th century translation of an ancient Greek text also somewhat impenetrable compared to a more contemporary translation? How much of the problem is that the translation may not target English as we expect it in its current common form?

Is it common (possible?) to find "from scratch" translations from the last 30-40 years of classical Russian literature?

I'll have to check that out - I enjoyed their War & Peace. I found Ginsburg's translation of The Master and Margarita to be unreadably bad. There was just no joy in it whatsoever, to the point where I was wondering why it was such a famous book. It's been a while, but I recall the adjective use being terribly wooden. So many sentences with the basic structure "X walked down the long broad beautiful street. He spoke with the tall bespectacled bearded man" etc. It was quite tiresome.

It probably doesn't help that he's on the penny as well, which is considered lucky if you find one and pick it up.

Ah yes, unlike that Einstein. That disheveled example of a someone who could have been so much more, had he just reached for a comb. /s

And? Any luck?