After his own Marxist beginnings, Iorga was also a critic of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's socialist and Poporanist school, and treated its literature with noted disdain. In reply, Russian Marxist journalist Leon Trotsky accused him of wishing to bury all left-wing contributions to culture, and local socialist Henric Sanielevici wrote that Iorga's literary doctrine did not live up to its moral goals. Iorga wrote with noted warmth about "Contemporanul" and its cultural agenda, but concluded that Poporanists represented merely "the left-wing current of the National Liberal Party".