What kind of Russian orthography is this?

Question

This is a screen shot from Tchaikovsky's Harmony textbook:

Is this the pre-reform orthography? If someone learns modern Russian, how difficult will it be to understand such paragraphs?

Answer 1

Yes, it's Russian in the pre-reform orthography. The reform was in 1918, so this is just a hundred years old Russian. It's easy to understand, just as it's easy to understand a hundred years old English. The main difference from the Modern Russian is the use of some letters, which were removed from the alphabet in 1918. They were substituted with other letters. In order to convert such a text into the modern Russian orthography, you have to follow 3 steps:

1. remove every ъ, "hard sign", at the end of the words, e.g. объ → об;
2. substitute the obsolete letters with modern ones:

   ѣ → е, e.g. разумѣется → разумеется

   i and ѵ → и, e.g. ученіе → учение

   ѳ → ф, e.g. Ѳедор → Федор

   Note, your sample passage has no ѵ or ѳ, but still they were used, although rarely.

3. substitute the adjective endings:

   -аго → -ого, e.g. образуемаго → образуемого

   -яго → -его, e.g. синяго → синего

Also, endings -ыя, -ія → -ые, -ие, and the pronoun ея → её, these are also not found in you sample.

That's all. You get a text in the Modern Russian orthography. To make it still more simple, there is an online converter, which can convert whole texts between the two orthographies, to and from.

UPD. I've just noticed that the text does have an adjective with the ending -ія, that is why шаткія → шаткие.