What to do?

Probably, in Russian literature of the 19th century there was no more scandalous novel than “What to do?” - a book, first published in 1862, immediately prohibited censorship and, nevertheless, known to every Russian reader. This novel, translated into 9 languages ​​during the life of the author, was admired by Kropotkin, Zola and Strindberg and Dostoevsky and Leskov were indignant, he was either unconditionally accepted, or was equally unconditionally denied him. But what exactly so sensational and dangerous was found contemporaries in the work, about which the author himself wrote that in it he only “wanted to portray ordinary decent people of the new generation”?..