Doug, I and my wife have always wondered about that. Some parts of the Russian folktales do sound pretty horrible today, for example, the widely-known Morozko begins with a woman marrying a widower with a daughter and forcing him to get rid of her (he agreed, took the daughter to the forest and left her there to freeze).

However, I'm not sure that the particular tale you posted is representative. Maybe it's just one of the older stories that don't make it into reprinting anymore. According to Vladimir Propp, the majority of Russian folktales have many structural elements similar to monomyth where the hero tends to cooperate with the helpers, and personally, I find many of these stories acceptable to read to my own daughter.