P. D. Boborykin’s works in the criticism of his contemporaries and M. O. Menshikov

The article discusses the problem of critics’ understanding of the features of P. D. Boborykin’s works. The aim of the study is to identify the peculiarities of understanding the specifics of Boborykin’s life and writing path by M. O. Menshikov against the background of the opinions of his contemporaries A. A. Grigoriev, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G. A. Laroche, P. N. Tkachev, V. P. Burenin, N. K. Mikhailovsky, A. M. Skabichevsky, M. A. Protopopov, L. E. Obolensky, A. I. Bogdanovich, V. M. Shulyatikov, D. V. Filosofov, P. A. Kozitsky, V. V. Rozanov, as well as a number of critics of the early 21st century. Several reference books on writers of the pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods have been used for the analysis. The scientific novelty lies in identifying the specifics of contemporaries’ opinions about Boborykin, updating the modern view of the writer’s fiction, and introducing into scientific use the text by M. O. Menshikov, which is relevant and significant for understanding Boborykin’s works but has not been used by the modern scientific community. An attempt has been made to show the significance and depth of Menshikov’s conclusions about the peculiarities of the writer’s worldview, using various texts by the writer and critical responses. As a result, we have come to the following conclusions. Although many of Boborykin’s contemporary liberal critics pointed out the artistic and aesthetic flaws in his works, they consistently emphasized his ability to capture the trends of the time, fashionable themes, and his adherence to the works of Ivan Turgenev and Émile Zola. Protopopov, Bogdanovich, Filosofov, and Kozitsky were the most profound and versatile in their analysis of the writer’s artistic world. Menshikov’s critical approach to the writer’s legacy is characterized by his desire to understand the moral essence of the writer’s works and his ideological principles, to identify the specific features of his ideal personality in his literary works, and to provide a thorough analysis of the writer’s publicistic works in close connection with his biography and literary works, as well as the polemical nature of his critical narrative. Menshikov, a critic and publicist for the “Novoye Vremya” newspaper, was able to expose Boborykin’s rejection of Russian cultural traditions, his admiration for Europe, and his Russophobia.