A Hero of Our Time

by Mikhail Lermontov, translator Vladimir Nabokov

In A Hero of Our Time, I think Lermontov is expressing the rage and boredom of young people of his generation with the stultifying atmosphere of bureaucracy and control in Russia at the time. Tsar Nikolai completely missed the point and thought that the rather boring stooge Maxim Maximych was the hero of our time and not Pechorin.