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During the period when this literature was most persecuted that is to say in the second half of the 19th century its most influential representatives were ardent socialists. Among them should be mentioned the critic Byelinsky, the "Petracheviens," adepts in the doctrine of Fourier, and that powerful agitator of ideas, Hertzen, who founded the Russian free press in London.

Byelinsky, as I know on very good authority, used to spend whole evenings with his friends debating and settling beforehand even the minutest, so to speak, domestic, details of the social organisation of the future." "Some people go crazy over it," the major observed suddenly.

"And I maintain," he answered savagely, "that you are a child come from Petersburg to enlighten us all, though we know for ourselves the commandment 'honour thy father and thy mother, which you could not repeat correctly; and the fact that it's immoral every one in Russia knows from Byelinsky." "Are we ever to have an end of this?" Madame Virginsky said resolutely to her husband.

"They didn't love the people!" yelled Stepan Trofimovitch. "Oh, how they loved Russia!" "Neither Russia nor the people!" Shatov yelled too, with flashing eyes. "You can't love what you don't know and they had no conception of the Russian people. All of them peered at the Russian people through their fingers, and you do too; Byelinsky especially: from that very letter to Gogol one can see it.

Byelinsky, like the Inquisitive Man in Krylov's fable, did not notice the elephant in the museum of curiosities, but concentrated his whole attention on the French Socialist beetles; he did not get beyond them. And yet perhaps he was cleverer than any of you.

As for the bowings, fasting and all the rest of it, I don't understand what they have to do with me. However busy the informers may be here, I don't care to become a Jesuit. In the year 1847 Byelinsky, who was abroad, sent his famous letter to Gogol, and warmly reproached him for believing in some sort of God.

Little busts and photographs of distinguished writers, heaps of rough manuscripts, a volume of Byelinsky with a page turned down, part of a skull by way of an ash-tray, a sheet of newspaper folded carelessly, but so that a passage is uppermost, boldly marked in blue pencil with the word "disgraceful."

You are wounded, in the first place, in your esthetic feelings, and, secondly, in your pride. How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you! Yes, there is that romantic strain in you, that was so derided by Byelinsky.

Could Byelinsky have sought salvation in Lenten oil, or peas with radish!..." But at this point Shatov interposed. "Those men of yours never loved the people, they didn't suffer for them, and didn't sacrifice anything for them, though they may have amused themselves by imagining it!" he growled sullenly, looking down, and moving impatiently in his chair.

The great critic and publicist Byelinsky, in particular, took it upon himself to elaborate in his works the theories of realism; he formulated the program about 1850 under the name of the "naturalistic school."