In this work, Peter Kropotkin is propounding the thesis that, in Russia, literature occupies a unique position because it is the only way of reflecting the real currents of intellectual development and of underground political opinion. The consequences, he feels, has been that the best minds of the country have chosen the poem, the novel, the satire, or literary criticism as the medium for expressing their aspirations, their conceptions of national life, their ideals.

Concentrating on content rather than on form, on intention rather than achievement, Russian Literature provides a fair and comprehensive introduction to Russian writing up to the end of the 19th century. Almost every poet and prose-writer of any significance is discussed—Pushkin, Lermontoff, Gogol, Turgueneff, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky—and every class of literature is included, criticism as well as novels, and political writings as well as poetry.