(Kowalewsky). Thomas Mann wrote of Merezhkovsky as of a "genius critic and specialist in a world psychology, second only to Nietzsche." Notable other Germans influenced by Merezhkovsky included Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Alfred Rosenberg Later researchers noted Merezhkovsky's willingness to question dogmas and thwart tradition with disregard to public opinion, never shying controversy and even scandal. Crucial in this context (according to O.Dafier) was his "quest for ways of overcoming deep crisis which came as a result of the Russian traditionalist Church losing its credibility." Criticism In Russia the general response to Merezhkovsky's literary, cultural and social activities was negative. His prose, even if on the face of it stylistically flawless and occasionally accessible, was, critics argued, an elitist thing unto itself, "hermetically closed for the uninitiated majority." "Having isolated himself from the real life, Merezhkovsky built up the inner temple for his own personal use. Me-and-culture, me-and-Eternity – those were his recurring themes," wrote in 1911 Leon Trotsky. For all his scientifically strict, academic approach to the process of collecting and re-processing material, contemporary academia, with little exception, ridiculed Merezhkovsky, dismissing him as a gifted charlatan, bent on rewriting history in accordance with his own current ideological and philosophical whims. Due to his incorrigible, as many saw it, tendency towards inconsistency, Merezhkovsky's old allies were deserting him, while new ones approached him warily. Vasily Rozanov wrote in 1909: Another former friend, Minsky, questioned Merezhkovsky's credibility as a critic, finding in his biographies a tendency to see in his subjects only things that he wanted to see, skillfully "re-moulding questions into instant answers." For all his religiosity, Merezhkovsky was never popular with either Russian Orthodox Church officials or the religious intellectual elite of the time, people like Sergey Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky and Lev Shestov fiercely denouncing his ideas and projects. Similarly, the reputation of a radical Social democrat hasn't made Merezhkovsky popular in the leftist literary camp. He was variously described as "an anti-literature phenomenon" (Viktor Shklovsky), "the greatest corpse in the Russian literature" (Ivanov-Razumnik) and "a book-worm", totally "foreign to all things human" (Korney Chukovsky). The writer's work published in emigration was, according to the 1934 Soviet Literary encyclopedia "the telling example of the ideological degradation and cultural degeneration of the White emigres." Maxim Gorky's verdict: "Dmitry Merezhkovsky, a well-known God-admirer of a Christian mode, is a small man whose literary activity is akin to that of