The result was that Lermontoff was transferred as ensign to a dragoon regiment which was serving in Georgia, and early in 1837 he set out for the Caucasus.
Through his grandmother's efforts he was permitted to return from the Caucasus about eight months later, to a hussar regiment.

By this time people were beginning to appreciate him; he had written his magnificent "Ballad of Tzar Ivan Vasilievitch, the Young Lifeguardsman, and the Bold Merchant Kalashnikoff," which every one hailed as an entirely new phenomenon in Russian literature, amazing in its highly artistic pictures, full of power and dignity, combined with an exterior like that of the inartistic productions of folk-poetry.

This poem was productive of all the more astonishment, because his "The Demon,"[13] written much earlier (1825-1834), was little known.

"The Demon" is poor in contents, but surprisingly rich in wealth and luxury of coloring, and in the endless variety of its pictures of Caucasian life and nature.
In 1838, while residing in St.Petersburg, Lermontoff wrote little at first, but in 1839 he wrote "Mtzyri," and a whole series of fine tales in prose, which eventually appeared under the general title of "A Hero of Our Times." This work, which has lost much of its vivid interest for people of the present day, must remain, nevertheless, one of the most important monuments of that period to which Lermontoff so completely belonged.

In the person of the hero, Petchorin, he endeavored to present "a portrait composed of the vices of the generation of which he was a contemporary," and he "drew the man of the period as he understood him, and as, unfortunately, he was too often met with." Lermontoff admitted that in Petchorin he had tried to point out the "malady" which had attacked all Russian society of that day.