Between 1890 and 1893, Ignaty Potapenko published a number of works (including Not a Hero) in which he presented the Russian intelligentsia with a new role model, the “mediocre but commonsensical man” whose diligence and steady devotion to the improvement of society are depicted as being more productive than the reckless heroism of the regime’s most outspoken, and often violent, opponents. Not a Hero introduces the twenty-first-century reader to an important debate of the pre-revolutionary period, a debate that is still relevant today: how to bring about social change within an oppressive and ossified political system without resorting to violence.