Fyodor Dostoevsky. Diary of a writer (№ 423796)

Pushkin loved the people exactly as the people demand, and he did not guess how to love the people, did not prepare, did not study: he himself suddenly turned out to be the people. He bowed before the truth of the people, he recognized the truth of the people as his own. Despite all the vices of the people and many of its stinking habits, he was able to discern the great essence of his spirit when no one almost looked at the people like that, and took this essence of the people into his soul as an ideal. And this was when the most humane and European-developed lovers of the Russian people frankly regretted that our people were so low that they could not rise to the level of the Parisian street crowd. In fact, these amateurs have always despised the people.