In its adventurous happeningsits abductions, duels, and sexual intriguesA Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and '30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorinthe archetypal Russian antiheroLermontov's novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.