85 years ago, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the elimination of child homelessness and neglect.” According to historians, this document marked the end of the fight against homelessness - the scourge of Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s.
As experts note, the measures taken in the USSR to socialize orphans turned out to be very effective - they allowed hundreds of thousands of children to receive an education and become full-fledged members of society. Thus, reception centers for minors and boarding schools were created, patronage, adoption, guardianship and guardianship were actively introduced, quotas were introduced for industrial training and employment of teenagers. The methods developed as part of this work have received recognition throughout the world.
On May 31, 1935, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the Elimination of Child Homelessness and Neglect.” The document became one of the last steps in the fight against child homelessness, which was one of the most serious problems of Soviet society in the interwar period.
New genre of Russian books
His works are filled with the depth of psychological feelings, strong emotions, mystical phenomena and unusual characters. At the same time, many of his narratives are strikingly different from each other.
Writer Gogol
The terrifying "Viy"
“Viy” is a book that can rightfully be called the first horror film. It is teeming with evil spirits and frightening images: demons, devils, skeletons, dead people, a witch flying in a coffin.
Still from the film "Viy"
Comedy "The Inspector General"
The play "The Inspector General" has a comedic genre and many funny moments. “The Inspector General” criticizes people who are no strangers to hypocrisy and profit.
book auditor
“Taras Bulba” is a work filled with despair, courage, love, pain and betrayal.
Christmas tale
"The Night Before Christmas" is a wonderful mystical tale filled with folklore, history, humor and wonder. Gogol's work has been relevant for more than one century. Both children and adults read to them.
Still from the film “The Night Before Christmas”
Films and cartoons based on his stories and novels are still being published to this day.
Love in books
Despite the passions and love described in his books, Nikolai Gogol’s personal life was quite modest and inconspicuous. Unfortunately, the writer was not able to find out what it was: a wife and children. However, his heart flared up several times from love obsession.
Nikolay Gogol
On April 1 (March 20), 1809, writer Nikolai Gogol was born.
Private bussiness
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809–1852) was born in the town of Velikiye Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province, into the family of a middle-income landowner Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky (the writer later abandoned the second part of his surname because of what he believed was its Polish origin). Nikolai spent his childhood on his parents' estate Vasilevka-Yanovshchina. At the age of ten he was taken to Poltava to one of the local teachers to prepare for the gymnasium. He entered the Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn and studied there from May 1821 to June 1828. Gogol was not a diligent student, but had an excellent memory, prepared for exams within a few days and successfully moved from class to class. He was very weak in languages and made progress only in drawing and Russian literature.
Gogol's penchant for writing was evident very early. As a child, he composed poems that received the approval of Vasily Kapnist, whose estate was located next door. Kapnist announced to Gogol’s parents: “He will be a great talent, only fate will give him the leadership of a Christian teacher.” In the gymnasium, Gogol wrote elegies, the tragedy “The Robbers” (not preserved), the historical poem “Russia under the Yoke of the Tatars,” the story “The Tverdislavich Brothers” and other works in serious genres. At the same time, he creates the satire “Something about Nezhin, or the law is not written for fools,” ridiculing the style of the works of Gogol’s classmate Nestor Kukolnik, the future famous playwright. Among the high school students there were those who shared Gogol’s literary interests. They subscribed to magazines and even started their own handwritten magazine, in which Gogol wrote many poems. Gymnasium students also staged theatrical performances, in which Gogol was certainly an active participant.
When Nikolai Gogol was fifteen years old, his father died. The young man was burdened with worries about business; he gives advice to his mother, reassures her, thinks about the future arrangement of his own affairs. By the end of his stay at the gymnasium, Nikolai dreams not of literary, but of social activity; he plans to advance to the “public service” and work in the name of the highest good, the flourishing of which is drowned out by the vices and abuses poisoning society. After graduating from the gymnasium course in 1828, Gogol went to St. Petersburg.
But in the capital, his hopes quickly dissipated. Official service turned out to be a painful, meaningless duty, and not a service to society. In addition, Gogol’s modest means were clearly insufficient for metropolitan life. He tried to become an actor, but he was not accepted into the theater. Gogol wrote the poem “Italy” and sent it anonymously to the magazine “Son of the Fatherland.” The poem was published in issue No. 12 of the magazine “Son of the Fatherland and the Northern Archive” for 1829 and this became the first publication of Gogol’s work.
At the end of 1829, Nikolai Gogol was assigned to the department of appanages, where he served under the command of the famous poet Ivan Panaev, first as a scribe, then as an assistant to the chief clerk. There he was finally disillusioned with the civil service, but at the same time he gained vivid impressions of office life and the psychology of officials, which was later echoed in his “Petersburg stories.” Later, at the request of P. A. Pletnev, he becomes a history teacher at the Patriotic Institute.
Soon, under the pseudonym “V. Alov” Gogol publishes “an idyll in the paintings of “Hans Küchelgarten”” (with the note “written in 1827”). The romantic poem was riddled with borrowings from Zhukovsky, Pushkin and German poets. Critics greeted her appearance with caustic ridicule. Gogol experienced this very painfully. Having sent a servant to buy up all the copies on sale, he almost completely burned the unsold edition and hastily fled abroad, to Germany, from where, however, two months later he unexpectedly returned to St. Petersburg.
Thanks to Panaev, Gogol meets St. Petersburg writers: Delvig, Zhukovsky, Pletnev, Pushkin. Immediately upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, he discovered that everything Little Russian was “in great fashion” here. At the beginning of 1828, Gogol asked his mother to send him information about Little Russian customs, legends, costumes, as well as “notes kept by the ancestors of some old family, ancient manuscripts.” All this provided material for stories from Little Russian life, which were published in 1831-1832 in two parts in St. Petersburg under the title “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka. The stories published by the beekeeper Rudy Panko marked the beginning of Gogol’s literary fame. This time the book aroused almost universal admiration. “Everyone was delighted with this lively description of the singing and dancing tribe,” noted A. S. Pushkin.
In 1832, Gogol went to visit his homeland. On the way, he stops in Moscow where he is greeted as a famous writer. In Moscow he meets M.P. Pogodin, the family of S. T. Aksakov, M. N. Zagoskin, I. V. and P. V. Kireevsky, who had a great influence on the young writer. In 1834, Gogol was appointed associate professor in the department of general history at St. Petersburg University. However, the very next year he decided to give up this position in order to devote all his time to literature. He writes stories that made up his two subsequent collections - “Mirgorod” and “Arabesques”.
In 1833, Gogol conceived the comedy “Vladimir of the 3rd degree.” It was not finished, but the material was useful for several dramatic episodes - “The Morning of a Business Man”, “Litigation”, “Lackey” and “Excerpt”. The first of these plays was published in Pushkin's Sovremennik in 1836, the rest - in the first collected works of Gogol (1842). In the same meeting, the play “Marriage”, the first drafts of which date back to the same 1833, and “The Players” saw the light of day. In the fall of 1835, Gogol began writing “The Inspector General,” the plot of which was suggested to him by Pushkin. In January 1836, Gogol read the play in Zhukovsky's house in the presence of Pushkin and Vyazemsky, and in February - March he was already busy staging it on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater.
In July 1836, Gogol went abroad, where he worked on “Dead Souls,” begun in St. Petersburg. Gogol lived abroad - in Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany - for almost 12 years, only occasionally visiting Russia. He visited Greece, and before his final return to Russia, he visited Jerusalem. In the summer of 1840, Gogol was overcome by an attack of severe nervous illness. In 1842, the first volume of Dead Souls was published.
The second volume was completed by the beginning of 1852, but as a result of another crisis of the illness haunting Gogol, the writer burned the finished manuscript on the night of February 11-12.
Gogol spent the last days of his life in strict fasting and prayer. On the morning of February 21, 1852, he died in his last Moscow apartment in the Talyzin house.
What is he famous for?
Nikolay Gogol
Nikolai Gogol is a classic of Russian literature. “A great writer who, with his wonderfully artistic, deeply true creations, so powerfully contributed to the self-awareness of Russia, giving her the opportunity to look at herself, as if in a mirror,” Belinsky wrote about him.
He began working on the work that Gogol considered the most important in his life back in 1835. As in the case of “The Inspector General,” Pushkin suggested the idea to him. According to Gogol’s plan, “Dead Souls” was supposed to consist of three parts - like Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. The poem was supposed to become a “comedy about the soul”, to reveal the idea of restoring the human spirit on the path of ascent from the “hellish” depths through “purgatory” to the “heavenly” light.
The first volume was published in May 1842 under the title “The Adventures of Chichikov, or Dead Souls,” changed at the request of censorship. It was met with polar reviews: from admiration to accusations of slander of reality. The first volume, depicting “albeit from one side all of Rus',” was correlated by Gogol with Dante’s “Hell.”
After the spiritual crisis and illness of 1842, Gogol’s religious and mystical sentiments intensified. He attaches increasing importance to his poem, believing that he can heal the souls of people with it. In one of his letters to Aksakov, he says: “My work is great, my feat is saving; I am now dead to everything petty.”
In the second volume of Dead Souls, the writer tried to give a positive picture of Russian life. But a severe mental crisis returns again. At the end of June - beginning of July 1845, Gogol burned the almost completed manuscript of the second volume, explaining that the book did not show the “paths and roads” to the ideal clearly enough. He continues to work hard on a new version of the second volume, more enlightened and purified; It seems to him that he understood how to write in order to “direct the whole society towards the beautiful.” Returning to Russia in 1848, Gogol visited Optina Pustyn three times, where he talked with the elders and asked for blessings to complete his work. “It is necessary for the Russian reader to really feel that the depicted face was taken from the very body from which he himself was created...” But Gogol was never able to show readers the way through Purgatory to Paradise.
On January 1, 1852, he informed one of his acquaintances that the second volume was “completely finished.” But in the last days of the month, signs of a new crisis of the illness haunting Gogol were clearly revealed. The impetus for this was the death of E. M. Khomyakova, a person spiritually close to Gogol, sister of N. M. Yazykov. The writer is tormented by a premonition of imminent death and doubts about the beneficialness of his own literary field. At the end of January - beginning of February, he meets with his confessor, priest Matvey Konstantinovsky, who arrived in Moscow. The content of their conversations remains unknown, but there is evidence that Father Matvey could have advised Gogol to destroy part of the chapters of the poem because of their harmful influence on readers. On February 7, Gogol confesses and receives communion, and on the night of February 11-12, he burns the white manuscript of the second volume (only five chapters of different draft editions have survived).
What you need to know
In the 1840s, Gogol considered it necessary to publicly present his main ideas and guide his contemporaries on the path of “true improvement.” To do this, he even interrupted work on “Dead Souls” and in 1847 published the book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” It included real letters from Gogol, sent in 1845 and 1846. Probably, while preparing the book, he made some changes to the texts of the letters. Gogol tried to offer for Russia an ideal program for all “classes” and “ranks” to fulfill their duty, from the peasant to the highest officials and the tsar.
The publication of the book was an event. The Moskvityanin magazine wrote: “For two months after the book was published, it was a favorite, living subject of general conversation. There was no evening conversation in Moscow, of course, in those circles where thought and literature penetrate, where they would not talk about it, heated debates would not be heard, and excerpts from it would not be read.” But most of the responses were critical. Vyazemsky wrote in one of his letters: “Our critics look at Gogol the way a master would look at a serf, who in his house occupied the place of a storyteller and amusement maker and suddenly ran away from home and became a monk.” Unexpected conservatism, reaching the point of readiness to renounce one’s own early works, since they did not sufficiently contribute to the spiritual correction of the reader, was received negatively by most contemporaries. Belinsky’s open letter to Gogol regarding “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” became widely known.
Direct speech
“They talked a lot about me, examining some of my aspects, but they did not define my main essence. Only Pushkin heard it. He always told me that no writer had yet had this gift of showing the vulgarity of life so clearly, of being able to outline the vulgarity of a vulgar person with such force, so that all the little things that escape the eye would flash large in the eyes of everyone. This is my main property, which belongs to me alone, and which other writers certainly do not have,” N. V. Gogol
“Do what you want with my play, but I won’t bother with it. I'm just as tired of her as I am of worrying about her. The action she produced was large and noisy. Everything is against me. Elderly and respectable officials shout that nothing is sacred to me when I dared to speak like that about serving people. The police are against me, the merchants are against me, the writers are against me. They scold and go to the play; tickets cannot be obtained for the fourth performance. If it were not for the high intercession of the sovereign, my play would never have been on stage, and there were already people trying to ban it. Now I see what it means to be a comic writer. The slightest ghost of truth - and not just one person, but entire classes rebel against you,” from Gogol’s letter to M. S. Shchepkin about “The Inspector General” (1836)
“You haven’t noticed that Russia sees its salvation not in mysticism, not in asceticism, not in pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity. She does not need sermons (she heard them enough!), not prayers (she repeated them enough!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of human dignity, lost for so many centuries in dirt and dung, rights and laws consistent not with the teachings of the church, but with common sense and justice, and their strict implementation, if possible. (...) And at this time, the great writer, who with his wonderfully artistic, deeply true creations so powerfully contributed to the self-awareness of Russia, giving her the opportunity to look at herself, as if in a mirror, appears with a book in which in the name of Christ and the church teaches the barbarian landowner to make more money from the peasants, scolding them with unwashed snouts! And that shouldn't have made me angry? Yes, if you had discovered the attempt on my life, then I would not have hated you any more for these shameful lines. (...) Preacher of the whip, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and obscurantism, panegyrist of Tatar morals - what are you doing? Look at your feet: after all, you are standing over an abyss... From Belinsky’s letter to Gogol.
11 facts about Nikolai Gogol
- Since the two previous children in the family died without even living for a week, the mother vowed to name her son Nicholas after the miraculous icon of Nicholas Dikansky, kept in the local church.
- Gogol's father Vasily Afanasyevich wrote Ukrainian comedies, which were successfully staged in the theater of D. P. Troshchinsky, a famous nobleman and patron of the arts who lived nearby. It is believed that his father’s stage activities predetermined Nikolai Gogol’s interest in theater. Later, Gogol used excerpts from his father’s plays as epigraphs to the chapters of Sorochinsk Fair.
- In the gymnasium theater, Gogol was especially remembered for his performance of the role of Mrs. Prostakova from Fonvizin’s “Minor.”
- The composition of “The Inspector General” was influenced by Karl Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii,” where, according to Gogol, “all phenomena” are united into “general groups” and “strong crises felt by the general mass are selected.” The final “silent scene” of the play was also created under the influence of Bryullov.
- In Rome, familiar Polish priests tried to persuade Gogol to convert to Catholicism, but he refused. In a letter to his mother, Gogol explained: “Both our religion and the Catholic one are absolutely the same, and therefore there is absolutely no need to change one for the other. Both are true."
- In Foma Opiskin’s speeches from Dostoevsky’s story “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants,” there are repeated allusions to “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.”
- From the university church, where Gogol was buried, to the place of burial in the Danilov Monastery, the coffin was carried in the arms of university professors and students.
- On the tombstone of Nikolai Gogol there was a quotation from the book of the prophet Jeremiah: “I will laugh at my bitter word.”
- The first monument to Gogol by Parmen Zabila was erected in Nizhyn in 1881.
- In 1931, Gogol’s remains were transferred to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, which gave rise to many mystical assumptions that he did not die, but was buried in a lethargic sleep. But the version of lethargic sleep is refuted by the memoirs of the sculptor Nikolai Ramazanov, who made Gogol’s death mask.
- In 1909, in Moscow, on Prechistensky (Gogolevsky) Boulevard, a monument to Gogol by sculptor N. A. Andreev was erected. Created with public money collected by subscription, it is rightfully considered one of the best sculptures in the capital. However, the tragic and mournful appearance of the writer did not correspond to Soviet ideology. In 1951, the objectionable monument was sent to the branch of the Museum of Architecture in the Donskoy Monastery, and in its place, on the centenary of Gogol’s death, a new one was erected, created by N.V. Tomsky. In 1959, the monument by Andreev, popularly called “small Gogol,” was moved to the courtyard of the Gogol house-museum on Nikitsky Boulevard.
Materials about Nikolai Gogol
Gogol in the Fundamental Electronic Library
Works by N.V. Gogol in the Moshkov Library
Eikhenbaum B. M. How Gogol’s “Overcoat” was made
Article about Nikolai Gogol in Russian Wikipedia
Anxious mother
Nikolai Gogol's mother, Maria Ivanova, was the owner of rare beauty. But at the same time, the woman was filled with fears, religiosity and increased anxiety. Rumor has it that there were many people with mental disorders in her family. She herself acted very strangely. Being a religious person, the woman talked little about the love of God, but constantly thought about the Last Judgment, painting terrifying pictures for the children in great detail. Maria Ivanovna's inner world was filled with darkness and mysticism. Her depressed state was also greatly influenced by the fact that out of twelve children in the Gogol-Yankovsky family, only five survived.
Gogol's mother
Stranger
The reason for the rumors that Gogol had a lady of his heart was the lines he wrote in 1829 in a letter to his precious mother. In this epistole, justifying his unexpected departure from St. Petersburg to the German city of Lubeck, he shared with her his innermost experiences: “Who would have expected such weakness from me. But I saw her... no, I won’t name her... she’s too tall for anyone, not just me. I would call her an angel, but this expression is low and inappropriate for her... No, it was not love... I at least have not heard such love... In a fit of rage and terrible mental torment, I thirsted, seethed to drink in just one look, just one I was hungry for a glance. ...No, this creature... was not a woman. If she had been a woman, she would not have been able to produce such terrible, inexpressible impressions with all the power of her charms. It was a deity created by him, a part of himself! But, for God's sake, don't ask her name. She's too tall, too tall."
In the book “Gogol in Life,” Vikenty Veresaev, referring to the materials of the literary historian Vladimir Shenrok, notes that Nikolai Vasilyevich most likely specially invented this whole story with a fiery passion for a certain person, since none of his friends during this period noticed any or changes and mental turmoil.
Nevertheless, in Gogol’s fate there were real women who knew how to play on the strings of his soul. These included aristocrats, Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset and Anna Vielgorskaya.
Attitude towards the opposite sex
Nikolai Vasilyevich dearly loved his mother and his sisters. He was afraid of loving women. And a modest existence did not allow for marital relationships and children. And yet, love visited the famous writer more than once.
Gogol's sister, Elizaveta
Alexandra
One of Nikolai Gogol’s favorite women was the queen’s beautiful and sophisticated maid of honor, Alexandra Osipovna Roset. A touching and bright friendship began between the writer and the maid of honor, which lasted for many years. Alexandra and Nikolai carried on long correspondence. In his messages, Gogol called the maid of honor “swallow Rozzeti”, “Sasha”. Alexandra Roset, being without a dowry, soon married a diplomat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nikolai Mikhailovich Smirnov. Marriage to a wealthy man helped Alexandra and her brothers escape poverty, but Sasha did not feel love for her husband. However, she also did not burn with passion for Nikolai Gogol.
Spiritual connection
Their communication and affection were imbued with purity and brotherly tenderness. Smirnova’s husband, Roset, knew about their communication, but did not object, not observing any danger to their marriage. Alexandra, who has Ukrainian roots, often called herself a “Khokhlyachka” and Gogol a “Khokhlya”. She loved to sing Ukrainian songs to him and inspired him to write novels. Such friendship between a man and a woman is quite rare. Not everyone around them understood them.
Alexandra Roset - Smirnova
Maria
The second important woman in the life of the mystical writer was his cousin, Maria Sinelnikova. The girl got married very early. Her marriage was not happy, which prompted Maria to leave her husband and move to the Vlasovka estate, in the vicinity of Kharkov. Maria was a very sociable and secular woman. One day, when her health began to deteriorate a little, her relatives came to visit her in order to visit the sick woman: Gogol’s mother and sister, and the writer himself.
Gogol's modest appearance, his long nose, and brown hair never particularly attracted the weaker sex. However, such unprecedented modesty and gentleness of the writer could not leave the girl indifferent.
The cousins walked for a long time in the garden, receiving mutual pleasure. Maria loved to whisper secrets in Gogol's ear, which caused Nikolai embarrassment and redness on his face. The woman did not hesitate to tell the writer about her love and deep affection.
Maria Sinelnikova
Hot love
Eight days later, the Gogolis left the estate, and Maria approached the room in which the writer stayed with trepidation and excitement. She did not allow anyone into the apartment, so that everything in the room remained as it was in his presence.
Mourning ring
No woman loved Nikolai Gogol as much as his cousin. They carried on a long and tender correspondence, which she kept for a long time. After Gogol’s death, the woman put a gold ring on her finger with an engraved inscription: “He passed away.” N. Gogol. 1852 Feb. 21” and never took it off. The ring contained a medallion in which the woman kept a lock of Nikolai Gogol's brown hair. Like Nikolai Gogol's wife, she mourned for her beloved man for the rest of her life.
Gogol Nikolay
Consequences of the hard times of war
“Mass homelessness in Soviet Russia was a result of the First World War and the subsequent Civil War. She became a real scourge of society, an army of orphans ended up on the streets,” historian, advisor to the rector of Moscow State Pedagogical University Evgeny Spitsyn, told RT in an interview.
During the revolutionary events of 1917, the system of charitable and orphan institutions that existed in the Russian Empire ceased to exist. In December of the same year, Vladimir Lenin signed a decree declaring the care of children a direct responsibility of the state. At the beginning of 1918, the Council of People's Commissars created commissions on juvenile affairs, which included pedagogical, social and medical workers, as well as representatives of justice authorities.
Since 1918, all issues of the development of education in the regions were transferred to the jurisdiction of the provincial departments of public education (GubONO), which were departments of the provincial executive committees and at the same time local bodies of the People's Commissariat of Education. There was an acute shortage of special institutions involved in the social rehabilitation of minors.
In 1919, a decree was issued establishing the Council of Children's Defenders. He was involved in the evacuation of children to the “grain” areas, organizing public catering, food and material supplies. The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK) began to be involved in this work.
“The participation of the Cheka authorities was justified and logical. They had a well-developed local apparatus. In addition, homelessness served as fertile ground for the emergence of crime,” Spitsyn noted.
In 1920, a decree of the People's Commissariat of Education was promulgated, which dealt with the organization of reception centers for street children, as well as providing them with treatment and nutrition. On January 27, 1921, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee created a Commission to improve the lives of children, headed by the Chairman of the Cheka and People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Felix Dzerzhinsky / RIA Novosti
“In the early 1920s, the situation with homelessness became critical. It was a national disaster. The number of street children runs into millions. In various sources, their number was estimated from 4.5 million to 7 million. Some children’s parents died, others were lost during moves and evacuations,” said the head of the department of political science and sociology of the Russian Economic University named after G.V. in an interview with RT. Plekhanov Andrey Koshkin.
According to the expert, children left without a permanent place of residence or parental supervision began to be sent to boarding institutions. To provide them with primary care, reception and distribution points were created. Dzerzhinsky was assisted in organizing the system for overcoming homelessness by famous Soviet teachers, in particular Anton Makarenko, who was later classified by UNESCO as one of the people who determined the method of pedagogical thinking in the twentieth century.
Registration of homeless children in the school duty room by an employee of the Moscow Department of Public Education / RIA Novosti
“Given the scale of homelessness, the problems associated with it have become a political issue. This was a test of the viability of the Soviet management system; the issue of the future of the entire country was being decided,” Koshkin emphasized.
Fearing love
Contemporaries said that Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol never had physical intimacy with women. His personal life was often prone to loneliness. Things did not go further than platonic love and tender correspondence. Despite the passionate heroes of his stories, Gogol himself treated love very carefully. He wrote to his best friend that love passion could burn him to the ground. Therefore, Gogol kept a certain distance from the subject of his passion. But at the same time he brilliantly described love passion in his books.
When a person falls in love, he is like a sole, which, if you soak it in water and bend it, it will bend. N.V. Gogol.
Death
In April 1848, Gogol returned to Russia. He spent most of his time in Moscow, sometimes coming to St. Petersburg and his homeland, Ukraine. The writer read individual chapters from the second volume of “Dead Souls” to friends, again basking in the rays of universal love and worship. Nikolai Vasilyevich came to the production of “The Inspector General” at the Maly Theater and was pleased with the performance. In January 1852 it became known that the novel was “completely over.” However, soon a new spiritual crisis marked Gogol’s biography. The main work of his whole life - literary creativity - seemed useless to him. He burned the second volume of Dead Souls and a few days later (February 21, 1852) died in Moscow. He was buried in the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery, and in 1931 he was moved to the Novodevichy cemetery.
“Viy” - an old legend or voices from the other world?
From childhood, his believing mother instilled in Gogol the fear of life after death. The writer carried it through all his works - many of them vividly describe the afterlife.
The story "Viy" is also based on Gogol's childhood nightmare. Nikolai Vasilyevich himself said that the work was based on an old legend, and the writer did not add anything of his own to it.
However, researchers who studied Gogol’s literature and legacy did not find a single belief, legend or myth that was in any way reminiscent of the story “Viy.”
Everyone knows that Gogol was sick with a mental disorder.
He was haunted by voices from other worlds. Perhaps this is how the idea of a mystical story appeared.
However, it cannot be said one hundred percent that the writer worked in the genre of mysticism. Still, even Gogol’s devil in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” is a humorous character rather than a mysterious one.
