The author turns to Maxim Gorky’s literary–philosophical understanding of the meshchanstvo as a sociopsychological state and attitude to the world for which the main feature is the desire “to comfo...

The article discusses the philosophical underpinnings of Mikhail Yu. Lermontov's poetry as chiefly expressed in the antithesis of heaven and earth. It is argued that in Russian spiritual culture, Lermontov was the first to bring together the opposed poles of God and man in the sphere of the God-man.