A Hero of Our Time

So many literary heroes have lost relevance and been sent to the oblivion of books over the last two centuries, while the "superfluous man" Pechorin, a cold cynic who does not believe in high ideals, living "not with his heart,... but with his head," an egotistical squanderer of life who abandons women and fearlessly tests fate, is still more alive than all the living. This is a contradictory and ambiguous personality, as Lermontov wrote the first psychological novel in Russian prose. Try to figure out impartially — do you agree with the critics who wrote that such a depraved hero is an insult to Russia, or are you on the side of Belinsky, who was convinced that Lermontov showed the tragedy of educated people of that (or maybe our?) time?