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boots… Pushkin: Dostoyevsky takes issue with the utilitarian and materialist strain in Russian criticism as exemplified by the critic Dmitry Pisarev (1840–68). In his essay ‘Mr Shchedrin, or a Schism among the Nihilists’ (1864), Dostoyevsky wrote: ‘From this it follows that boots in any case are better than Pushkin, because one can get by without Pushkin, but it’s utterly impossible to get by without boots, and consequently, Pushkin — is a luxury and nonsense.’ See also III, 1, note 17.
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