The article focuses on the dispute in writing between Demian Bedny and Artyom Vesyoly: namely, on D. Bedny’s invective ‘While we were thinking…’ [‘A my-to dumali…’], published in Izvestiyain 1928, and A. Vesyoly’s response ‘My answer to the literary hero’ [‘Moy otvet literaturnomu geroyu’], circulated the same year as a letter to literary organizations and editorial offices of periodicals. Using this hitherto unpublished material, the article compares Bedny’s feuilleton with Vesyoly’s epistolary response and characterizes the two authors’ social standing and beliefs, their creative principles and fates. Elevated to the rank of ‘the great proletarian writer’, second only to M. Gorky and bestowed with numerous awards, D. Bedny was losing every trace of artistic individuality under the heavy pressure of political and moral conformism. Whereas A. Vesyoly, a rebel and romantic, rejected conformism and was determined to follow his own path of searching and daring experimentation. The dispute between the two authors about the nature of talent and the integrity of a writer was finally resolved by a ‘mediation court’; time was the ultimate arbiter.