ABSTRACT
Critical realism was by its very nature rather pessimistic. It would be wrong, to regard the entire Russian fiction as gloomy. There was quite a conspicuous populist group of authors who tackled the village and the peasant, even idealized the moral and social instincts of the Russian moujik. Russian realism kept on growing and branching off in varied, often unexpected directions. The dispassionate, quietly objective writings of P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky are certainly surprising after the outbursts of such critical realists as Pisemsky and Saltykov-Shchedrine. His characters are peasants, and generously supporting their illegal convents, and the demolition of which is described in the second novel. One of Melnikov-Pechersky's partial followers was Nikolai S. Leskov. His story, The Sealed Angel, breathes the most intimate atmosphere of the religious traditions and writings of the old believers. The apex of Russian realism was reached, in the work of the two greatest novelists of the last century, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
