Russian to English Other Linguistics

Here is the full sentence: Напротив, он пытается сгладить острые утлы идейного расхождения.

I can't make this make sense-- I believe I've run into a typographical error. I understand that утлый means fragile, but here in the original sentence, it seems to be serving as the subject, so I'm puzzled.

The division that the author is writing about is the ideological division between two famous Russian literary and philosophical figures.

(Overall, the text is about Dostoevsky, but I don't want to talk about Dostoevsky at all. here's a link to the full text: http://www.oldgazette.ru/kshizn/20121947/text3.html)