The abolitionist movement in the Russian Empire of the 19th century is associated, first of all, with the abolition of serfdom. The liberation of the people led to the liberation of the individual not only economically and socially, but also spiritually. These changes in the society affected the literary process and, at the same time, literary criticism. One of the representatives of this field was Yevhen Solovyov (Andreevich). He wrote about various literary figures’ attitude to the serfdom. Among them were such writers as Radishchev, Pushkin, Herzen, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Grigorovich and others. They wrote about the problems of the common people, the “man”. The critic describes the phenomenon of “repentant nobles”, who included some landowner writers. In the future, the theme of freedom was dominant for the creative intellectuals. The abolition of serfdom also brought changes to literature, brought it to a fundamentally new level, and “served” the people.Thanks to these events, a literary type of “a new hero” that grew out of “a new person” appears.