[mna_]

>In a typical American or British arithmetic textbook of the same period ...

British students were taught from Euclid's Elements until around the 1970s, so he's wrong.

[gerdesj]

In the original ancient greek. You had to translate the book first.

[vintermann]

Was it a typical textbook? I know it was used for a long time, and it's interesting that an ancient book was used in math education, but I doubt it was widespread by the 70s, or even by the time these two Russian textbooks were written.