Aldanov also saw Korolenko as belonging to the Polish school of literature, while owing a lot to the early Nikolai Gogol ("some of his stories would have fitted fine into the Dikanka Evenings cycle"), who all the while happened to be "totally untouched by" neither Lev Tolstoy, nor Chekhov. The critic and historian Natalya Shakhovskaya considered Korolenko's most distinct feature to be "the way romanticism and harsh realism gelled both in his prose and his own character." For the Soviet biographer V.B. Katayev, Korolenko was "a realist continually gravitating towards the romantic side of life" who has "walked his life the hard way of a hero." Writing in 1921, Anatoly Lunacharsky declared Korolenko "undoubtedly the biggest contemporary Russian writer" even if belonging wholly to the Russian historical and literary past, a "shining figure looming large between the liberal idealists and revolutionary narodniks." Like many others he too chose 'humanism' as the most striking feature of Korolenko's legacy and argued that "in all our literature, so marked with humanism there has never been a more vivid proponent of the latter." Seeing the whole Russian literature as divided into two distinct sections, the one that tended towards simplicity (Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy) and another that went for "the musical quality, for outward perfection (Pushkin, Turgenev)", Lunacharsky placed Korolenko firmly into the latter camp and praised him for having "...enriched the Russian literature with true gems, one of the best in the Russian canon." Social activism The majority of the critics, regardless of which political camp they belonged to, saw Korolenko the social activist at least as important and influential as Korolenko the writer. In his 1922 tribute Lev Gumilevsky, lauding the writer's style for "striking simplicity which added to the power of his word," called him Russia's "social... and literary conscience." Mark Aldanov also considered him "the symbol of civil consciousness and lofty ideals in literature." The Soviet biographer F. Kuleshov praised Korolenko as "the defender of the oppressed" and a "truth-seeker, ardent and riotous, who with the fervency of a true revolutionary fought the centuries-long traditions of lawlessness." According to this critic, the writer's unique persona united in itself "a brilliant story-teller..., astute psychologist, great publicist, energetic, tireless social activist, a true patriot and very simple, open and modest man with crystal clear, honest soul." Maxim Gorky, while crediting Korolenko with being a "huge master and fine stylist," also opined that he