Non-PRO English to Russian Art/Literary Poetry & Literature contextual phrase

Dostoevsky was a deeply religious man and politically a strong conservative Slavophile. For a short time, he became editor of the archconservative magazine The Citizen and later a regular contributor. He waged war against the liberals and the revolutionaries, who repaid him by calling his work “corruption” and “lunacy”. For Dostoevsky, Western society was too materialistic and commercial; instead he felt the values of the simple Russian people – meekness, compassion and acceptance of the will of God – were that society should emulate.
During their parallel careers, as Tolstoy was writing about the world of the country gentry (is it “мелкопоместное дворянство”?; it is just my tentative translation), a class and a way of life which were gradually disappearing, Dostoevsky was creating the anti-heroes who haunted the dark streets of misty St. Petersburg. Yet, although they were very different – Tolstoy the champion of nature and man, the brilliant recorder of reality in its most precise detail, and Dostoevsky the relentless explorer of men’s souls – they were joined in their belief that in the Russian people lay the virtues that could illuminate the world.