The most famous physician in Russia, Petrovich Kashchenko, was considered a man unreliable and until 1917 was under the secret supervision of the police. During his student years, he organized a circus at the university, where he read outrageous literature about the fact that Russia can live without a tsar, for which he was expelled to Kazan. Then he wrote an article about the fact that Russia is very large, and the peasants have very little land, and sued for transparent hints to Nizhny Novgorod with a ban on practicing in St. Petersburg. Over the years of working in the Nizhny Novgorod province, Kashchenko became a world celebrity, and when the question arose, who would head the new Syvory Hospital in Gatchina for mental patients, even Nicholas II approved his candidacy. According to the legend, the emperor asked, “What can a man who sympathizes with the socialists help the mentally ill?”

Knowing that his contacts are monitored, and the correspondence is read intensively, Kashchenko eventually limited the circle of meetings, and the newspapers ceased to write out at all. Once in 1916, medical students came to the Sivoric Hospital, and one of them asked the question: "How can you not read newspapers at the height of war and political crisis?"
Kashchenko said the following:
I don’t need to read newspapers to know what’s going on in the world. My patients are my daily newspaper. Let's see, since the beginning of this year, seven "Rasputin" have entered our hospital, with one in spring and summer, and five since the beginning of autumn. From this I conclude that Rasputin’s influence is growing. I learned the biography of Rasputin from the stories of the sick in every detail, and since one crazy man worked as a courtier in the Tsarsky Selo, I now know more about the leisure of the royal family than the journalists. I also know better about the war than reporters: two officers were brought from the Austrian front: one was injured by reason during artillery shelling, the other - during the offensive. So, the second officer every day draws a map of the offensive with all the details – and all the villages he remembers, I looked at the map. And how many prisoners were taken, and how many weapons, and that due to the theft of the intendant the division did not have enough supplies. Then, gentlemen, we have not only medical bodies, but also our gardens, stalls, workshops, livestock yard – every day I sign invoices, by which I see how much the prices of goods have risen and how much more expensive we ourselves sell potatoes, calves and handicrafts. I can forecast you wholesale prices for any goods better than “Burse News”.
“But in the world there are not only news and stock exchanges,” said the student. I need to read something for the soul.
“Now I will show you what I have for my soul,” Kashchenko replied. Following the students along the corridor, he pointed to the door of the large chamber. Do you see, gentlemen? We have writers here. There is Gogol who claims to have hidden the second volume of Dead Souls in the basement, there is Leo Tolstoy. Very interesting people. But this one, who sits on the couch, straight like a rod, is the critic Chukovsky. He knows Evgeny Onegin and Homer, he quotes Chekhov without mistakes with entire pages. My friends and I often come to listen. With him, there is only one problem – he constantly requires paper and ink to “defeat Gorky and the helpless Chersk”. And when he gets a paper, he marries and marries for hours. He wipes out a hundred leaves with meaningless abominations, he wipes out in ink – and he sits content. One word is criticism.