[1] Modern-day Russian historians of literature use the term only in its historical context, otherwise preferring to speak of "the earliest stage of Social realism in Russia.
In an essay of February 26, 1846, in Severnaya Ptchela, Bulgarin criticized young writers—followers of Gogol—for producing prose that imitated real life but lacked artistry and inspiration.
[3] The term was picked up and used in a positive sense by Vissarion Belinsky, in relation to what he saw as the new social realism movement, pioneered by Gogol and now taking hold among the new generation of authors.
[2] The natural-school movement gained ground in 1842–1845 when a group of authors—Nekrasov, Turgenev, Grigorovich, Dal, Grebenka, Panayev (joined later by Dostoyevsky and Saltykov-Shchedrin)—published in Otechestvennye Zapiski, under the ideological guidance of Belinsky.
The former consisted mostly of so-called 'physiological sketches', a set of essays portraying the life and customs of certain types and groups from among the city's working people and minor officials, as well as outcasts and marginals – a genre born in France in the 1820s and imported into Russia almost wholesale.