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Nikolai Dobroliubov's essays published in The Contemporary between 1856 and 1861 represent the highest point in the evolution of Russian democratic literary criticism of the nineteenth century. The reviews of the Academy exhibitions published by the journal during the same period, for instance, those written by Mikhail Mikhailov and Pavel Kovalevskii, applied similar principles to the analysis of the visual arts and their relationship to society. Moreover, Dobroliubov's essays provide an essential background for understanding the writings of art critics of the 1860s and subsequent decades: such a critic was Vladimir Stasov who continued to share Dobroliubov's views until his death in 1906. Dobroliubov continued Belinskii's uncompromising attacks on the notion of 'art for art's sake'; in the article entitled 'Morning. A Litterary [sic.] miscellany' he ridicules the literary pretensions of authors who refuse to contribute to social progress. His notion of real'naia kritika (Real Criticism) is elaborated in the articles entitled 'A Dark Kingdom' and 'A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom', both devoted to the plays of Aleksandr Ostrovskii, such as 'Thunderstorm'. Dobroliubov's concepts of both art and art criticism were deeply rooted in the aesthetic ideas of Nikolai Chernyshevskii, his co-editor of The Contemporary and the author of the highly influential dissertation The Aesthetic Relationships of Art to Reality, published in 1855. Following Chernyshevskii and Belinskii, Dobroliubov advocates the truthful portrayal and profound analysis of reality as the most important features of a work of literature. Art is here considered alongside science and philosophy, all of which contribute to both the proper understanding and the development of society.
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acknowledgements