Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), born in Sorochyntsi in modern-day Ukraine, achieved instant fame with his vibrant Ukrainian folk tales Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka before moving to Saint Petersburg. Mentored by Pushkin, who gifted him the original plots for his two greatest works, Gogol skewered the absurdities of Tsarist bureaucracy with surreal comedy.

His 1836 comedy The Government Inspector (*Revizor*) famously caused Tsar Nicholas I to remark after the premiere: 'Everybody caught it, and I most of all!' In The Overcoat (1842), following the tragic clerk Akaky Akakievich, Gogol invented humanitarian social realism, prompting Dostoevsky's famous tribute: 'We all came out from under Gogol's Overcoat.' In Dead Souls (1842), following the swindler Chichikov buying deceased serfs, Gogol gave Russia its ultimate national epic, comparing Russia to a speeding troika before succumbing to religious asceticism and burning Part II of Dead Souls shortly before his death.