 It was true for Balakirev, who "opposed academicism with tremendous vigor," and it was true initially for Rimsky-Korsakov, who had been imbued by Balakirev and Stasov with the same attitude.One point Stasov omitted purposely, which would have disproved his statement completely, was that at the time he wrote it, Rimsky-Korsakov had been pouring his "book learning" into students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory for over a decade.Beginning with his three years of self-imposed study, Rimsky-Korsakov had drawn closer to Tchaikovsky and further away from the rest of The Five, while the rest of The Five had drawn back from him and Stasov had branded him a "renegade".