 On 8 June he delivered his speech, giving an impressive performance that had a significant emotional impact on his audience.His speech was met with thunderous applause, and even his long-time rival Turgenev embraced him.Konstantin Staniukovich praised the speech in his essay "The Pushkin Anniversary and Dostoevsky's Speech" in "", writing that "the language of Dostoevsky's [Pushkin Speech] really looks like a sermon.