Among the liberal critics condemning Nikolai Gogol’s reactionary Selected Passages from Correspondence is the influential Vissarion Belinsky, now the foremost Russian literary critic and a leader of the progressive intelligentsia.

Widely known for his annual surveys of Russian literature and essays on major figures of Russian and world literature, Belinsky has attempted to synthesize his conception of literature as an organ of social progress with German idealist aesthetics.

A committed revolutionary, Belinsky believes that literature should, if necessary, sacrifice artistic excellence to social values.