What books should you start your acquaintance with ancient philosophy with?
I tried Asmus, the MSU textbook, but there were only Marx-Lenin-Engels and their understanding of ancient Greece, as well as spitting in the direction of the Western bourgeoisie, which does not understand anything in the interpretation of Aristotle. Which is better? A textbook? Or maybe it's better to read the originals right away, without any comments from our professors?
Start with the originals. Plato and Aristotle are “first philosophers”, the problems they pose and the solutions they give are expressed in a direct text that does not require the knowledge of any predecessors for understanding. And then you can take a university textbook and compare your understanding with it.
It is best to read the Anthology of World Philosophy in various publications. I would recommend this one:
Anthology of World Philosophy: Antiquity. – Mn.: Harvest, Moscow: OOO “AST Publishing House”, 2001. – 960 p.
Here is the page of the book on Ozone, it is currently out of stock, but may appear.
In fact, it is quite possible to read the classic edition of the AMP from 1969. Right here it is even available in an electronic version.
In Russian, there is an excellent textbook “Greek Philosophy” edited by Monica Canto-Sperber, written by a team of world-renowned specialists. I will not say how it is for very beginners, but look in its direction for sure.
Asmus writes in quite accessible language, and it's easy to break through his Marxism-Leninism, so I advise you to take it up again. Other authors will only make it harder. However, you can take Russell, but I warn you — he is even more engaged than Asmus, only instead of Marxism, he has left-liberal positivism, which is much more difficult to filter; Asmus did not believe in any Leninism (see biography of Asmus) and he has it for show, whereas Russell was a positivist quite sincerely, and therefore it is embedded in the body of the text, fused with it tightly.
Immersion in philosophy is better to start with textbooks, for example, with the textbook “History of Philosophy” Vasiliev, Krotov, Bugay. There you can get a basic layer of knowledge, having which, you can more easily immerse yourself in individual philosophical schools, trends and epochs.
And then you can study philosophers by epoch, starting with Antiquity.
It is always better to read the original first, if possible – in order to form your own view of the author's ideas, your own opinion about the subject of study. Then you can look at articles/textbooks/scientific works of famous and not-so-famous scientists, you will agree with someone, you will not agree with someone, someone's work will help you better understand what is stated in the source (for example, if it caused difficulties in understanding the terms) – treat the secondary material as a good discussion