Gleb Uspensky was highly politicized during the Soviet era as Vladimir Lenin's favorite narodnik (Populist), but in the West and in post-Soviet Russia he is one of the most neglected and least studied nineteenth-century Russian Realist writers. During the 1880s, at the height of the narodnichestvo (Populism) movement, Uspensky was immensely popular with truth-seeking youths who found an honest and authentic perception of Russian peasant life in his ocherki (sketches). Professional revolutionaries, however, such as Petr Nikitich Tkachev, reproached Uspensky for his lack of stable paradigms and character types. Such revolutionaries criticized his evasive and ever-changing attitude toward peasants. Maksim Gor'ky labeled Uspensky a "hysterical Realist." This categorization reflects a nineteenth-century Russian bias against any indication of infirmity. Uspensky's psychological instability, linked to his clinical schizophrenia, made him unstable; his approach to life was, however, an unbiased one. Today his works retain historical value as documents of ethnological...