“When a few years ago the passion for “new art” in our country took on the character of an acute public fad, when not only young writers who had just begun their literary careers, but also some of the illustrious veterans of the 80s became preachers of decadence and symbolism , then progressive journalism hastened to brand with contempt the “strange hypnosis of mental and moral decline,” declared the Russian intelligentsia responsible for this decline, “which in recent years has become so apathetic and indifferent to social issues,” and predicted that the new direction of literature, as something superficial and painful, has no rights to citizenship in the future. But the subsequent course of literary development did not justify this harsh sentence..."