История одного города

The book of the great Russian satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin about the life of the city of Glupov has always been recognized by progressive readers as one of the most outstanding works of world literature. The writer called it "The History of a City", but behind the pictures of the gloomy life of the Foolovites, people's lack of rights, cruel tyranny, the bitter truth of all Russian reality, terrible images of a despotic autocratic system, the infinitely difficult life of people "under the yoke of madness" arose. The history of one city” caused a lot of interpretations and indignation, which forced Saltykov-Shchedrin to respond to the article of the well-known publicist A. Suvorin. The author of the critical article "Historical Satire", which appeared in the April issue of the journal "Bulletin of Europe" for 1871, accused the writer of mocking the Russian people and distorting the facts of Russian history, without penetrating into the depth of the idea and the essence of the artistic originality of the work. I.S. Turgenev called the book remarkable and believed that it reflected "the satirical history of Russian society in the second half of the last and the beginning of this century." M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin knew that “a writer whose heart has not been ill with all the pains of the society in which he acts can hardly claim in literature a value higher than mediocre and very fleeting.” Nevertheless, the former interest of the reading public in the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin faded somewhat after the publication of the story.