The book reflects the struggle of opinions about the ideas of V.G. Belinsky, from the time of the tacit ban on mentioning his name in print (1848) to the present day. Due to many circumstances of a socio-political and cultural nature, the posthumous fate of his legacy was very dramatic. The humanist, enlightener, Westerner under the pen of representatives of both the "right" and "left" camps of the Russian public turned into a revolutionary socialist and "forerunner of Bolshevism."