Nadezhdin was an ally of the Pushkin crowd who was also completely committed to the apparently antithetical principles of personal criticism, personal attacks, and personae. Starting with his work in the late 1820s in the ''Herald of Europe'' and moving on to his editorship of both ''Telescope'' and its companion publication, ''Rumor'', Nadezhdin made his critical name not as Nadezhdin but as the "Ex-Student Nikodim Nadoumko," resident of Patriarch's Ponds...〔Frazier, Melissa, ''Romantic Encounters: Writers, Readers, and the Library for Reading'', Stanford University Press, 2007, p. 77.〕

...He began his career by publishing a series of scurrilous, though at times witty, articles against the Poets... He attacked Russian romanticism from the point of view of Schelling's German romantic idealism, denying all ideological significance to the Russian pseudo-romanticism... In a thesis on romantic poetry submitted to the University of Moscow in 1830 he advocated a synthesis of classicism and romanticism. In 1831 he started a monthly magazine, the ''Telescope'', where he continued his policy of belittling in the light of philosophical standards the achievement of Russian literature. In 1836 the magazine was suppressed for publishing Chaadaev's ''Philosophical Letter''. Nadézhdin himself was exiled to the North and not till some time afterwards allowed to return to Moscow. After that he renounced literature and devoted himself exclusively to his archæological and geographical studies.〔Mirsky, D.S., ''A history of Russian literature'', Northwestern University Press, 1999, pp. 125-26.〕