"The contraries between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky did not cease with their deaths. Indeed, they were sharpened and dramatized by subsequent events. They had written their works during one of those periods of history which seemed particularly favorable to the creation of great art - a period in which a civilization or traditional culture is on the verge of decline. 'Then the vital force of this civilization meets with historical conditions which cease being appropriate to it, but it is still intact, for one moment, in the sphere of spiritual creativity, and it gives its last fruit there, while the freedom of poetry avails itself of the decay of social disciplines and ethos.' Less than forty years after the Grand Inquisitor had prophesied to Christ that the Kingdom of Man was at hand, some of Tolstoy's hopes and most of Dostoevsky's fears were realized. An eschatological despotism, the lonely, visionary rule foretold by Shigalov in The Possessed, was imposed upon Russia."
George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky
Is it now that time for us too?
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