Saltykoff (who wrote under the name of "Shtchedrin") was very keen to catch the spirit of the moment, and very caustic in portraying it, with the result that very often the names he invented for his characters clove to whole classes of society, and have become by-words, the mere mention of which reproduces the whole type.

For example, after the Emancipation, when the majority of landed proprietors were compelled to give up their parasitic life on the serfs, there arose a class of educated people who were seeking fresh fields for their easy, parasitic existence.

One of the commonest expedients, in the '70's, for restoring shattered finances was to go to Tashkent, where the cultured classes imagined that regular gold mines awaited them.

Saltykoff instantly detected this movement, and not only branded the pioneers in the colonization of Central Asia with the name of "Tashkentzians" (in "Gospoda Tashkentzy" Messrs.

Tashkentzians), but according to his wont, he rendered this nickname general by applying it to all cultured classes who had nothing in their souls but an insatiable appetite.