When I read old Russian novels (19th century, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy) I see many archaic words and structures. It's not "ye olde English", as any modern Russian person would understand it, but it just sounds wierd. Part of it can be explained by very different historical situation (titles and stuff). However when I read documents from the era, they look much closer to modern language.

Furthermore, when I read English literature of the same time it looks much more modern.

So what's up with that? I uderstand there was some special literature style with little resemblance of actual spoken language. Was it different per culture and English literature became closer to natural speech while Russian literature was still in previous phase?