The Provincial's Diary in St. Petersburg

The main character of the chronicle novel "The Provincial's Diary in St. Petersburg", an unnamed nobleman, decides to escape from the tedious province. Upon arriving in St. Petersburg, he is instantly immersed in the whirlwind of metropolitan life with all its peculiarities: endless and aimless running around ministries, departments, theaters, and publishing regular magazines, in which incompetent idlers engage in "pencil drawing" — pretending to search for answers to the main questions of life. The satirical "Provincial's Diary in St. Petersburg" primarily exposed the morals prevailing in Petersburg society of the 1870s, but some traits and features noted by Saltykov-Shchedrin have not lost their relevance even a century and a half later.