How did the Russian nationalist group known as The Five respond to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s music?

The Russian nationalist group known as The Five often viewed Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as a rival, representing a more cosmopolitan, conservatory-trained approach to music compared to their own nationalist goals.1

During his lifetime, Russian musicians—including those aligned with the nationalist movement—frequently criticized Tchaikovsky’s style, arguing that his music was insufficiently nationalistic. While The Five sought to create a Russian school of music free from the influence of Western European forms, Tchaikovsky navigated a path between these nationalist tendencies and the Western-oriented training he received at the conservatory. Despite this friction, Tchaikovsky was also inspired by Russian folk music, and even members of The Five, such as Aleksandr Borodin and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, incorporated traditional European training into their own work.21