Nikolai Gogol - Know Your Own

A writer of Ukrainian origin who wrote in Russian, one of the most influential prose writers of the 19th century. His Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka and Taras Bulba introduced readers worldwide to Ukrainian culture.

Who he was

Nikolai Gogol was born in Velyki Sorochyntsi in the Poltava region into a family of Ukrainian nobles. He studied at the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences and at 19 moved to Saint Petersburg. There he became one of the best-known writers of the empire.

His story

Gogol’s first fame came with Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, stories about the Ukrainian village full of humor, folklore and the supernatural. Taras Bulba and Viy came out in the collection Mirgorod. Later he wrote The Government Inspector, Dead Souls and The Overcoat, which influenced the development of world prose.

Gogol wrote in Russian, but Ukrainian themes, folklore and history run through much of his work. In his last years Gogol went through a deep religious crisis: in 1847 he published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, and shortly before his death he burned the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. He died in Moscow in 1852.

Debates and assessments

Gogol’s national identity is a long-standing subject of dispute. He wrote in Russian and belongs to both Russian and Ukrainian culture; in Ukraine, emphasis is placed on his Ukrainian origin and themes. In a letter to Alexandra Smirnova on 24 December 1844, Gogol wrote that he himself did not know “what kind of soul I have, a Khokhol [Ukrainian] one or a Russian one” (“какая у меня душа, хохлацкая или русская”). This profile presents him as a writer of Ukrainian origin whose works brought Ukraine into world literature.