The article considers the question of following the tradition of Russian literature of the previous decades by Nekrasov. In particular, it discusses the question of whether the democratic poet can be seriously considered the heir and successor of the literary traditions of A. Pushkin. The authors emphasize that in the middle of the nineteenth century there was the birth of a new social stratum - democrats, among which the poet Nekrasov should be included. The principles of the attitude to the world of the “noble” wing of Russian literature and the “revolutionary-democratic” wing are sharply contrasted. The authors of the work claim that Nekrasov not only did not follow the tradition of Pushkin, but also fought against it, entered into a dispute with the writers-predecessors, which is not always of a creative nature. The authors of the article suggest that in the Russian literature of ХIХ century, two independent literary streams - conditionally “Pushkin's” and “Nekrasov's” - should be distinguished, which (co