Dobrolyubov’s interest in the essays of N. S. Tolstoy is strictly directed: from heterogeneous material he selects “features to characterize the Russian common people.” At the same time, sometimes overly trusting the author’s knowledge of the people, he agrees, for example, with the fact that the peasants do not have a “concept of public interest,” but interprets this in his own way - as a consequence of serfdom. In a review of the second part of “Trans-Volga Sketches” by N. S. Tolstoy, published in the same 1857, the critic even more clearly expressed the idea that the “nature” of the Russian peasant is “good”, but distorted by “unfortunate” historical circumstances.