A Hero of Our Time

"Lermontov wrote this novella directly after the unsuccessful Decembrist revolt against Tsar Nikolai I in 1825 which led to savage repression and resentment amongst young members of the intelligentsia who lost the ability to express themselves in any way. Many troublesome young intellectuals were punished by being sent to the Caucasus, which turned out to be a much freer environment for writers. Having offended the Tsar with his poem ‘On the Death of a Poet’, which was seen as an attack on Russian society, accusing it of being complicit in Pushkin’s death, Lermontov was himself sent to the Caucasus in 1837. In A Hero of Our Time , I think Lermontov is expressing the rage and boredom of young people of his generation with the stultifying atmosphere of bureaucracy and control in Russia at the time. Parallels have been drawn between Lermontov and Pechorin but I think we can see Pechorin as more of an everyman for his generation. Tsar Nikolai completely missed the point and thought that the rather boring stooge Maxim Maximych was the hero of our time and not Pechorin. It’s a short book and is structurally very interesting, and I really recommend the Nabokov translation."