It ends in Mikhail Mikhailovitch becoming thoroughly disillusioned, dejected, and taking to drink after having expended the whole of his capital on the ungrateful peasants.

This will serve to illustrate Uspensky's pessimistic point of view, for which he certainly had solid grounds.
While Uspensky never sought artistic effects in his work, and his chief strength lay in humor, in ridicule which pitilessly destroyed all illusions, Zlatovratsky never indulges in a smile, and is always, whether grieving or rejoicing, in a somewhat exalted frame of mind, which often attains the pitch of epic pathos, so that even his style assumes a rather poetical turn, something in the manner of hexameters.
Moreover, he is far from despising the artistic element.

He established his fame in 1874 by his first large work, "Peasant Jurors." As Zlatovratsky (whose father belonged to the priestly class) regards as ideal the commune and the peasant guild (_artel_), with their individualistic, moral ideals of union in a spirit of brotherly love and solidarity, both in work and in the enjoyment of its products, his pessimism is directed against the Russian educated classes, not excepting even their very best representatives.

This view he expresses in all his works which depict the educated classes: "The Golden Heart," "The Wanderer," "The Kremleff Family," "The Karavaeffs," "The Hetman," and so forth.

In these he represents educated people--the better classes, called "intelligent" people by Russians--under the guise of sheep who have strayed from the true fold, and the only thing about them which he regards as a sign of life (in a few of the best of them) is their vain efforts to identify themselves with the common people, and thus, as it were, restore the lost paradise[38].
There are many others who have written sketches and more ambitious works founded on a more or less intimate study and knowledge of the peasants.
On one of these we must turn our attention, briefly, as the author of one famous and heartrending book, "The Inhabitants of Podlipovo." Feodor Mikhailovitch Ryeshetnikoff (1841-1871) was one of three middle-class ("plebeian" is the Russian word) writers who made a name, the others being Alexander Ivanovitch Levitoff and Nikolai Ivanovitch Naumoff.