When the »Iskra« appeared in 1884 there had been virulent controversies and arguments in Croatian literature concerning the problems of vesrism, realism and naturalism. The aim of the »Iskra« was not only to take part in the discussions but also to offer its programme and to have its say. In the realistic — naturalistic — veristic controversies going on between the conservative »Vijenac« and the liberal »Hrvatska vila« of the Party of Right, the »Iskra« took sides of the »Vijenac« and its main ideologist Josip Pasarić, pleading for Šenoian programme in our literature, for »the healthy realism present in some stories by Šenoa, especially in Russian literature, particularly in Turgenev«. A storm about theoretical questions of realism and naturalism was raised by Eugen Kumičić’s well-known programmaitical article »On the novel« published in the »Hrvatska vila« in 1883. Among other things, Kumičić praises Zola, a writer who »uncovers every social wound with the greatest unscruputousness«. In the literature of our middle-class the notion of truth was always connected to that of goodness and beauty, which imposed moral obligiations on writers for their books to be »the lever of enlightenment« in the national life.
