Рассмотрено творчество великого русского писателя Н.С. Лескова, его связь с общественной и художественной жизнью России второй половины XIX в., его отношение к русскому купечеству. Делается попытка выявить причины негативного отношения писателя к новым явлениям социально-экономической жизни страны и той роли, которую играли в ней купцы. Авторы приходят к выводу, что в произведениях Лескова наблюдается все возрастающий интерес к предпринимательству купцов, которые стали новыми хозяевами российской жизни.

The fiction works and journalism of N. S. Leskov could not hide his antipathy to the newly appeared Russian bourgeoisie, coming from prereform estates, mainly from prosperous peasants. Greed, roughness and lack of elementary cultural skills were the main distinctive features of those businessmen. However, in the author's opinion, such a description belongs mainly to those territories where the manorial economy in the most rigid forms of corvee (rent service) economy dominated. Where the chief-rent was not practiced or where, for example in Siberia, there was no serfdom at all, forms of business were more humane. There is constantly a merchant subject matter in the early works of Leskov, but it is expressed there in small but well-aimed details that were to be embodied later in serious characteristics in his large works. Leskov constantly mentions merchants as big fans of church singing, especially of dense and incredibly loud bass exclamations of deacons who were generously rewarded and enticed from one cathedral to another. Later, in the 1860s, when cancellation of serfdom released the initiative and entrepreneurial spirit of people and merchants became heroes of the time, Leskov began to peer at their affairs in more detail, began to describe them and give them characteristics. For example, in the short novel "Musk-ox" he made a portrait of quite a positive businessman of the people, Alexander Ivanovich Sviri-dov, who "was born in serf estate, made literate and given instruction in music". From the youth he played the violin in the landowner's orchestra, and at the age of nineteen he bought his freedom for five hundred rubles and became a distiller. Endowed with precise practical mind, Alexander Sviridov ran the business perfectly. At first he became popular as the best distiller in the neighbourhood, then he began to build distilleries and water-mills; he collected one thousand rubles as spare cash, went for a year to northern Germany and came back as such a good builder that his fame quickly reached faraway regions. Alexander Sviridov was known in three adjacent provinces and highly demanded in construction works. He ran business remarkably accurately and looked indulgently at the noble weaknesses of his customers. He also redeemed his family from serfdom, arranged his sisters' marriages, gave employment to his brother and brothers-in-law and paid them a salary, was fair yet disciplined them, as well as all his workers. He married a house parlour maid, having redeemed her from the landlord, and she became his faithful and successful assistant. Such an ideal couple caused envy and respect of ordinary people surrounding them, and young nobles tried to incline the young beautiful wife of a merchant to treason, especially if she took with herself the thick wallet of her husband, but all that was vain. Only the unlucky creature, the former seminarian, nicknamed for similarity to the musk-ox, suddenly fell madly in love with her and committed a suicide without any hope for mutuality. N.S. Leskov continues the merchant subject matter in his journalism, but examines it more thoroughly and critically, which corresponds considerably to the facts of that historical period.