It is well known that most of Turgenev’s illustrious French colleagues as well as Henry James and the Scandinavian-American Boyesen, who met the Russian personally, always spoke of him as being “completely Russian.” The brothers Goncourt describe him in their _Journal_ of 1863 as a “white haired giant who looked like the spirit of a mountain or a forest,” an embodiment of Russian soil; Henry James stressed his eminently Russian characteristics and his preoccupation with Russian affairs; and after his death Renan said that “he was the incarnation of the whole race ... his conscience was in some sort the conscience of a people.” It is curious that the main reservation of later times dealt precisely with the problem of Turgenev’s national authenticity. There is still a widespread opinion that the author of _Fathers and Sons_ became dear to readers outside Russia because of his European formation and his Western leanings. Alfred Kazin stated not long ago that Turgenev “seemed of all the great Russians the least characteristic”; the American critic understands perfectly why Henry James “found it so easy in 1878 to include an appreciation of Turgenev in _French Poets and Novelists_.” The familiar thesis is that Europeans and Americans of the last century loved Turgenev for his moderation, his conformity to the rules of Victorian art, and his lack of irritating and disturbing Russian national traits. The supporters of this opinion point out that Turgenev’s novels and tales are as tame and respectable as their British counterparts of the same period; his heroines are not very different from the misses in the English family novels, and his nests of gentlefolk could be easily located in the countryside on the other side of the channel or even in Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Turgenev’s urbane and restrained manners and his polished style, his gloss and grace, are considered as having been more suitable to and therefore more naturally appreciated in London and Boston than in Moscow and St Petersburg (not to speak of Leningrad).