to the æsthetic canons whose following has hitherto been the source of his power? PART VIII Political Literature, Satire, Art Criticism, Contemporary Novelists, Bibliography CHAPTER VIII POLITICAL LITERATURE: SATIRE: ART CRITICISM: CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS Political Literature--Difficulties of Censorship--The Circles--Westerners and Slavophiles--Political Literature abroad: Herzen--Ogaryóff--Bakunin--Lavróff--Stepniak--_The Contemporary_ and Tchernyshévskiy--SATIRE: Schedrin (Saltykoff)--ART CRITICISM: Its Importance in Russia--Byelinskiy--Dobrolúboff--Písareff--Mihailóvskiy--Tolstóy’s _What is Art?_--CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS--Otel--Korolenko--Present Drift of Literature--Merezherovskiy--Boborykin--Potápenko--Tchehoff. POLITICAL LITERATURE To speak of political literature in a country which has no political liberty, and where nothing can be printed without having been approved by a rigorous censorship, sounds almost like irony. And yet, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Government to prevent the discussion of political matters in the Press, or even in private circles, that discussion goes on, under all possible aspects and under all imaginable pretexts. As a result it would be no exaggeration to say that in the necessarily narrow circle of educated Russian “intellectuals” there is as much knowledge, all round, of matters political as there is in the educated circles of any other European country, and that a certain knowledge of the political life of other nations is wide-spread among the reading portion of Russians.