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p Now that we are acquainted with the nature of Dobrolyubov’s "real criticism”, it will be easy for us to define fully his attitude to Ostrovsky.

p He found in Ostrovsky’s works, as we already know, a profound and full portrayal of the important aspects and demands of Russian life. Dobrolyubov particularly appreciated the fullness of this portrayal. Other writers took, as he put it, individual phenomena of social life. Thus, for example, many of them portrayed in their works people who had become superior to their environment in development, but who lacked will and perished through inaction. Such phenomena are very interesting, but they are not of national significance. In Ostrovsky’s works, however, the aspirations of present-day Russian life are expressed extremely broadly. He depicts the false relations which embrace the whole of our social life, and with all their unpleasant consequences at that. In so doing he echoes the aspirations for a better social organisation or, as Feuerbach would have put it, promotes the rehabilitation of reality.

p “Arbitrariness, on the one hand, and lack of awareness of one’s rights, on the other,” says Dobrolyubov, "these are the foundations of all the unseemliness of the mutual relations that are developed in most of Ostrovsky’s comedies; demands for right, legality and human respect—this is what any careful reader hears from the depths of this unseemliness. Surely you will not deny the extensive significance of these demands for Russian life? Surely you will admit that such a background for the comedies corresponds to the state of Russian society more than to that of any other in Europe."  [620•* 

p In another passage our critic says that the main theme of Ostrovsky’s work is the unnaturalness of social relations, which resultsfrom the obduracy of some and the lack of rights of others. Here he adds that Ostrovsky’s feelings were incensed by this order of 621 things, exposed it in all its varied guises and put it to the shame of the very society that lived in this order.

p In expressing this view of the social importance of Ostrovsky’s comedies, our critic-enlightenor was giving his preaching a, let us say, reformatory character. The brilliant articles that Dobrolyubov wrote on Ostrovsky’s plays were an energetic summons to struggle not only against obduracy but—and this is the main thing—against the “artificial” relations on which this obduracy grew and flourished. This is theit main theme, this is theit great historical significance. The younger generation of that period produced a considerable number of people capable of responding to this energetic summons. All of them read Dobrolyubov’s critical articles with great enthusiasm; all of them saw him as one of their dearest teachers; all of them were prepared to follow his instructions. He did not "beat the drum" in vain ; he had every reason "to fear not".

p However it is now time to note the following. The criticenlightener whose aim it was to disseminate progressive ideas in society was bound to welcome works like Ostrovsky’s plays with great enthusiasm. They gave him rich material to reveal the “unnaturalness” of our social relations at the time. This goes without saying. But once having examined these relations from the viewpoint of the enlighteuer, once having brought them before the court of abstract, “natural” reason, our critic was quite true to himself in refusing to examine them from the concrete, i.e., the historical viewpoint. And the dispute of the Slavophils with the Westerners was nothing but an attempt—not wholly satisfactory, but nevertheless an attempt—to regard them precisely from the concrete viewpoint. Therefore we should not be surprised at Dobrolyubov’s lack of interest in this dispute. In this case Dobrolyubov was even more of an enlightener than Ghernyshevsky. That means that in this case he was even more capable than Chernyshevsky of being content with the solutions of abstract reason. Ostrovsky’s former Slavophil sympathies were simply not of interest to him.

p The play Slick Lo Your Own Sleigh seemed to the Slavophils to be an argument in defence of the old Russian order of things. Whereas some Westerners regarded it as an attack on them. Both the former and the latter were wrong, because they drew incorrect conclusions from the play. The only correct conclusion which can be drawn from it is, according to Dobrolyubov, that obdurates—even such kind, honest and in their way clever ones as M. F. Rusakov—inevitably deform all those who are unfortunate enough to be affected by their authority and influence. Rusakoy’s daughter, Avdotia Maksimovna, behaves very irresponsibly with Vikhorev. But the same obduracy is to be blamed for her mistakes. Dobrolyubov expresses this with the words: "Obduracy 622 depersonalises, and depersonalisation is the complete opposite of all free, rational activity.” This is a very true conclusion. But this true conclusion is of such an abstract nature that the question of whether Russia should follow the path of West European development cannot be seen from its heights.

The same is true of the play Live Not as You Like. Ostrovsky undoubtedly wrote it at a time when the influence of the Slavophil circle of the Moskvityanin on him was at its strongest. But from his viewpoint of an enlightener Dobrolyubov saw it only as a new argument against obduracy. The play’s main character, Pyotr Ilyich, tyrannises his wife, drinks and brawls until the church bells for matins bring him to his senses, on the edge of an icehole. The Slavophils found these salutary church bells very touching. But Dobrolyubov saw them as an indictment of obduracy: a social environment in which people are reformed not by rational argument, but by chance circumstances, must be too savage. And the more savage the social environment, the more energetically people who are aware of its unseemliness must struggle, the more loudly one should "beat the drum”. Again a perfectly correct conclusion. And again, at the heights of this perfectly correct conclusion, there is a lack of interest in the concrete question; as to which path of social development Russia would follow.