The main issue was the magazine's editor-in-chief Mikhail Katkov's disagreement with the author's position as regards Russian dvoryanstvo.
At the time of the publication Katkov (while praising the novel's artistic qualities)[4] told the members of the magazine's stuff: "We've made a mistake, this is not our man, has nothing to do with us, [his departure is] not something to be pitied.
[1] Leskov himself rated A Decayed Family higher than The Cathedral Clergy and The Sealed Angel, referring to it as his "most mature work".
"Here its second part is presented in my own version, not that of Katkov," Leskov wrote in a letter to Ivan Aksakov on March 23, 1875.
On July 16, 1889, Leskov received the news that the whole issue of Volume 6 had been arrested by the police, which led to his first major heart attack.