From a cultural point of view, Russia in 1400 was an actively developing and very distant province of the Byzantine Empire, whose power was waning at that time. An Orthodox country, Russia was hostile to every idea coming from the West, especially if the idea was connected to Catholicism. This hostility increased after Rome’s attempts to extend its influence to the East. It is in this context that the problems of translations of Western scientific literature in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are examined here.