Liodmila
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Lord, Lyudmila, forgive me, for God's sake, but sometimes I get desperate when I see what a mess people have in their heads. Sorry again, but your letter is a delirium tremens when devils seem to a person all around. Well, who encroaches on you and wants to destroy you? What is it expressed in? Who prevents the Slavs from showing their creativity? Why can't you just live, but you must certainly "survive"? Gogol did not write and did not think in a nightmare that there would be terrible people in their thoughts and souls, that they would ruin and destroy Russian civilization and make several out of one people, as in a fairy tale. Russian speakers and Russian people are not the same thing. The Russians were knocked out, robbed and destroyed, exiled and made a plan to exterminate the RUSSIAN PEOPLE. It is unpleasant for me to see and feel people who have nothing to do with Russia, but beat their chests and shout from all sides: we are Russians. There is no such people and nationality Ukrainians. There are Eastern Slavs, Western Slavs, and they are divided into parts depending on their residence.
Alexander
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: And there are no Poles and Czechs either? AK: “But what does it turn out: in the relatively close Catherine’s era, free cultivators lived in the Poltava region?” In addition to what was posted earlier. Artem, have you ever heard of the black-haired (state) peasants? Unlike the landlord peasants, they were considered personally free people who bore the tax burden at the expense of peasant labor (remember our correspondence with you about their taxation in the time of Lomonosov?). According to the 1724 census - 19% of farmers, this is without the Cossacks. Over the 18th century, the number of state peasants increased (despite the generous distribution of lands into private hands) due to the transfer of both part of the Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants of confiscated church estates (for example, my paternal ancestors, who were once serf lands to black-soil status) Joseph-Volotsky Monastery) plus the serfs of those Polish landowners whose estates were confiscated to the treasury (both under Catherine and after), As a result, according to the 1858 census - the state. peasants made up 45%. Nevertheless, it was the Cossack elders who gave such landowners as the nobleman of the Mirgorod district, Ivan Ivanovich Pererepenko, who quarreled with the nobleman of the same district, Ivan Nikiforovich Dovgochkhun. For example, the village of Mazepintsy was granted famous surname still in the Commonwealth. And yet, I am still waiting for your data on the losses of the allies in the "battle for France" promised by you in the first days of April. The fact is that by the will of fate until the end of the first decade of April I am 35 km from Sedan. I will definitely read your message (if you send it) and try to find time to check them in local French sources. Artem, I have a return flight on the 10th.
RAP, Russia
Artem Krechetnikov: Of course, I heard about the black-haired peasants. As far as I know, in the post-Petrine era they were called "official". The point is not whether there was or was not serfdom in Ukraine in the pre-Catherine era - of course, it was, no one argues with that! - but in the fact that the most massive, compressed in time, and therefore remained in the people's memory, the act of enslavement occurred under the "mother". And he was also remembered for what happened in the enlightened era, when people were no longer enslaved, but it was necessary to liberate. AK: “In all the descriptions of the Russian village by Pushkin, Nekrasov, Turgenev, bares are certainly present. But in Dikanka, apparently, there was no landowner. Apparently, The Night Before Christmas is a fairy tale. No wonder the film "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" is the creation of the great storyteller of Soviet cinema, Alexander Rou. Well, you yourself write about Solokha, the devil and dumplings, as your main associations with Gogol. I note that all the associations you noted are flying, including Patsyuk's dumplings. Artem, if you conclude that there was no landowner in Dikanka at that time on the basis that there is no gentleman or lady in The Night Before Christmas, then maybe you can assume that the first aircraft appeared in Dikanka? In addition, the plots of the works of Pushkin, Nekrasov, Turgenev are somewhat different than those of Gogol in The Night Before Christmas. And yet, if you remember, Pushkin had only one Boldin autumn. I think Pushkin's bars did not often visit their Nizhny Novgorod possessions. I think that if Alexander Sergeevich set the goal of translating local folk tales into literary form, then one could also do without mentioning the bar. Like A.N. Ostrovsky translated the folk New Year's fairy tale about the Snow Maiden without mentioning the bar, because the action takes place in the Berendeevka settlement. There is Tsar Berendey in the fairy tale, but there is no bar. True, Berendey dined in Berendeevo Posad. In Great Russia, near Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, there is the village of Berendeevka (a legacy of the withdrawal by Yuri Dolgoruky of part of the Berendey from Kiev to Vladimir-Suzdal), a city (posad) with this name only in Little Russia ї Berendichev, he is also Berdychev. And the last thing about the former Cossack, about the free, about a hundred years before Catherine, here is what Gogol wrote: “Years - where! - more than a hundred, my dead grandfather said, no one would have recognized our village: a farm, the poorest farm! Ten huts, not plastered, not covered, stuck out here and there, in the middle of the field. No wattle fence, no decent barn, where to put cattle or a cart. This is how the rich lived; but they would look at our brother, at the goal: a hole dug in the ground - here is a hut for you! It was only by the smoke that one could know that a man of God was living there.” Artem, Nikolai Vasilyevich, is he slandering or fantasizing?
RAP, Russia
Artem Krechetnikov: So you are saying that Dikanka belonged to the landowner? I do not know. There is not the slightest mention of the master, the estate, work for him in the story, and the characters do not look downtrodden and dependent in any way. If you really want to argue with me on any subject, take the matter more seriously. Find the address of the Poltava Museum of Local Lore on the Internet, write to them, if they confirm that there was a landowner in the described era in Dikanka, I will have to admit that I was mistaken. 2) You often try to prove some general things with separate facts. And they don't prove anything. There were villages in Ukraine, both poor and rich. In one place, Gogol described a village in which they ate dumplings with sour cream, in another - a village where they lived in dugouts. So what? On average, the Ukrainian village has always lived more prosperously than the Russian one, I have seen this many times with my own eyes. I don’t know what the matter is here: the climate, the diligence or absence of the landowners. Most likely, all at once. The dispute over whose Gogol is useless, for the anniversary of Gogol in Ukraine, the publication "Unknown Gogol" is being prepared, if I am not mistaken, which contains unpublished articles, letters, prose in the original, because he wrote in many European languages. And most importantly. Soviet education inspired - Gogol is a satirist. Do you still believe in it? Gogol is much more than just a writer, he is a personality, which is now lacking in the expanses of the former USSR.
Alexander
Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: Gogol, of course, is more than just a satirist, but also the initiator of Russian satire (along with Griboyedov). It's just that Gogol never liked Yushchenko...
michael
ru Artem Krechetnikov: Original! In general, the question often arises: what would Gogol say today, or, say, Ilf and Petrov? The state cannot be destroyed from the outside, you say? What about Germany, India, Korea, etc.? And Radio Liberty - our goal - the collapse of the USSR? Good and free, you say? And Sev.Ireland, too, easily and without tantrums? Objectivity sits on the truth and drives with impartiality. As for us, it's easy. He did nasty things to Russia, which means that he is a hero, it doesn’t matter if a Nazi (Shukhevych) or an perjurer (Mazepa) - a monument will be erected, they will be declared a national genius. By the way, there are still places...
Konst
ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: Germany and Korea were "destroyed" by the occupying powers after World War II, India - the former colonial metropolis (by the way, in full accordance with the wishes of Hindus and Muslims who did not want to live together, they argued only about where the border should be) . When I said that the state cannot be destroyed from outside, I did not mean military force(there are plenty of examples of this), but what was called "ideological sabotage" in the USSR. ABOUT Northern Ireland I have already written in detail to another reader. And as for the second paragraph - why not formulate it a little differently: the monuments are erected not for doing nasty things to Russia, but for fighting for the independence of Ukraine? By the way, I have noticed more than once the tendency of many Russians to view everything that happens in the world exclusively through the prism of Russia, as if everyone is only thinking about it. We have one roots, we have one history, one faith and one culture. Gogol is proof of that. It is impossible to set one people against another so systematically. It may end in bloodshed. Who needs it? For what?
Evgenia
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: I completely agree. The only question is who, in fact, is engaged in inciting. It seems to me that denying the very fact of the existence of the Ukrainian people is the real incitement. Come on, Mr. Krechetnikov. And Vasil Bykov, with all due respect to him personally and to the Belarusian people as a whole, still wrote in Russian. No one, no matter how much he wants, can and will not be able to cancel the fact that the Russian language successfully united the peoples of the USSR. And it began with the same Gogol. Or from Pushkin. It's no coincidence that half of Ukraine no longer has the right to speak Russian, but must learn the Galician language? And everything would be fine, the Romans also forced the whole world of that time to speak and write in Latin. But the only problem is that Ukraine is not Rome. The civilizational scale is not the same.
individual person
velbrite Artem Krechetnikov: From this point of view, it would be best for everyone to forget their languages and switch to English. How practical. The fact that "half of Ukraine no longer has the right to speak Russian" is, excuse me, nonsense. No one can forbid anyone to speak any language. Another thing is that living in any country, without knowing the state language, you will not make any career. There is such a breed of people who do not need to "criticize" and honey. And most importantly, they are in their essence ordinary people, but with a sick liver and with the opportunity to "talk" in the market, in transport, in the Air Force ... This, perhaps, calms them down. Yes, Gogol is great, just like Pushkin, Lermontov, Hugo and Shakespeare. I don’t understand why a person is labeled with a nationality label. Just a man of the world.
Victor
Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: To be honest, I don't understand it either. But, as Ilf and Petrov wrote, "Uzun-Kulak exists, and this has to be taken into account." I support and can confirm your thoughts, Artem, including "Little Russian identity is a fact of the past." Also, "what I wanted to publish." On this occasion, Leo Tolstoy seems to have said a lot explaining: “Don't really believe us writers. Because the main thing we want is to be sold.” It sounds, you see, sad, but the rare truth about us, people, is unequivocal and careless. Regarding the national question: history has shown us a lot of examples of the creativity of people of an indefinite, in the sense of mixed, nationality. What is interesting is that these people, as a rule, tragic fates. The most delightful example for me, who became a symbol of his time of a certain era in life, just Great Britain, was Rudyard Kipling. The interethnicity that he represented was one of the most unique in the history of mankind. This Anglo-Indian mix left so bright cultural footprint in the history of mankind, which confidently began to belong to world history indelibly. But, like many other artificially formed mestizo mixtures, including the Little Russian, did not leave any offspring. In our joint history with Russia, there have been so many inseparable and inseparable moments captured in cultural life that to list everything is like counting the stars in the sky. But we have not become an exception to the rule that does not allow nationalities representing the entire global spectrum to mix with each other. Apparently - like an individual, each nationality can only quietly disappear from the face of the Earth into oblivion when it has exhausted its mission. And each has its own, no doubt, not similar to others. Again, like everyone else individual person. It is somewhat pitiful only for those martyrs who, having no clearly defined roots, wandered in the world, as restless without the love and confident support of their motherland. By the way, today I-no helps us out a little, allowing us to virtually unite, and off the screen they will again be separated and live and create for ourselves almost without sadness in a foreign country.
Igor Boguslavsky
Ukraine I am a Russian-speaking Ukrainian. The story of Taras Bulba is the story of my great-grandfather. There were such free people. Their favorite occupation was to fight, and in between wars to plow, sow and harvest on their native land. It was about them that Gogol wrote brilliantly.
Eugene
Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: A new national identity is being born before our eyes - Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Last summer I traveled around Crimea and met quite a few people who said they were Russians, insisting on their linguistic and cultural rights, but at the same time wanting to be loyal citizens of an independent Ukraine. It was interesting to listen to Aksenov's interview. How they proved to him that he was not a Russian writer, since his mother was not Russian. And the opponents themselves - fighters for the purity of the nation - have faces with typical Tatar features. How the children of a generation that has muzzled millions of lives proved their special spirituality Russian people, which did not give the right to Aksenov, who wrote more than 20 novels in Russian, to be called a Russian writer. Subsequently, this phrase about spirituality was translated by Aksenov as a high "degree" of spirituality.
Dima
Artem Krechetnikov: A writer's affiliation with one or another literature is determined by the language in which he writes, so Aksenov is definitely a Russian writer. But this question has another facet. Here on one of the Russian TV channels for a long time the program "Russian View" was released. To me, the title is deeply misleading and provocative. It implies that there is a certain system of views that is obligatory for all Russians, and if you think otherwise, then you seem to be no longer Russian. This is probably what Aksyonov's opponents had in mind. As for "Russian spirituality", I am also skeptical about this term. What kind of special spirituality? What is it expressed in? There are even those who like to declare the obvious shortcomings of Russian life and national character to be virtues. If we live badly and unsettled, it is because we are excessively kind, disinterested and trusting. I am sure, Artem, that you are insincere when you say that no one helped the collapse of the USSR, the opposite is so obvious. It's no secret that the respected BBC service has also always worked in this direction and continues to work, indulging the centrifugal nationalist forces, whose hands the USSR collapsed, and now inciting the post-Soviet peoples against Russia, one of the main competitors of the West. And about the fact that the state cannot be destroyed from the outside, too - bullshit. And what about Yugoslavia? And who tore Kosovo from Serbia? Is it good and free in Britain? So why does Northern Ireland want to leave good Britain for free swimming towards Ireland, but for some reason they don't let her in?... Well, now, closer to the topic. Little Russia existed in the Russian Empire on territories many times smaller than today's Ukraine. The modern contours of Ukraine arose as a result of the voluntaristic annexation by the Bolshevik comrades of the lands of Novorossia, the Donetsk region, and then Bukovina, parts of Bessarabia, Galicia, Transcarpathia and, for dessert, the presented Crimea. The very name "Ukraine" was invented by complex nationalists some 200 years ago. And in all the annexed territories, the Ukrainian language is devoutly implanted, which is continuously updated in order to become as different as possible from the language of the damned Muscovites. And yet, these Nazis always did not like Comrade Gogol and even banned his "Taras Bulba", because. in their opinion, in this work, the heroic Ukrainians - the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks - are depicted in an unseemly light. And in general, this author absolutely vilely does not use the word "Ukraine", "Ukrainian", but everywhere he writes the hated word "Russian". The way out lay on the surface: in the new editions of Taras Bulba, this injustice was resolved by the editors. Those parts where the Cossacks in the story are ugly "naughty" are simply cut out, and the words "Russian" are replaced by "Ukrainian". Justice schiro-Svidomo publishers successfully restored. In this form, one can fall in love with Comrade Gogol and introduce him to the rising patriotic generation. You can talk for a long time about the phenomenon of Ukrainian jingoistic patriots, but I messed up the papers pretty much anyway.
Senya, Lviv
Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: Frankly speaking, after reading your letter, one gets the feeling that you are a Great Russian nationalist, who is very complex because of the collapse of the empire. Those who used to walk along the line have fallen out of obedience, and there is no strength to kick their ears. Regarding the role of the BBC in the collapse of the USSR. I always answer this with a question: why didn't the Soviet Foreign Broadcasting destroy a single Western country? A rotten tree can be felled with one movement of the hand, but a healthy and strong one, no matter how much you shake, nothing will come of it. Although, of course, if the tree is not touched, it will stand still for some time. Kosovo was torn away from Yugoslavia (or rather, from Serbia) by its inhabitants, who did not want to be its citizens. Again, if the world hadn't intervened, Milosevic might have crushed discontent with force, shot and imprisoned all the dissatisfied, but he was not allowed to. But if peace and quiet reigned in Kosovo, and people were happy with everything, no one would tear it off, and no one would even think of doing it. Northern Ireland absolutely does not want to leave Britain. MOST of its inhabitants are Protestant Loyalists. If the majority of Northern Irish people voted for secession, no one would keep them, I assure you. But by all democratic norms, Northern Ireland should be part of the United Kingdom. The Catholic MINORITY appeals to historical law, says that this is the original Irish land, and among the Protestants many have English and Scottish roots and are, so to speak, descendants of the occupiers. The point, however, is that the resettlement took place about 250 years ago. Protestants live in Northern Ireland a little longer than Russian-speakers live in Latvia and Estonia, and it is difficult to deny them the right to decide the fate of Northern Ireland. There was no Ukraine, there was Little Russia. Artem Krechetnikov: It wasn't there before, but now it is. Everything flows, everything changes. Is there really a Ukrainian nation? And who created it and for what purpose did it appear new people in the 20th century? We have all repeatedly raised this issue from our recent history, we know that the population of Ukraine, if you look closely, is not homogeneous both on a national basis and on a religious basis. the entire population can be divided into several parts. what Ukraine actually is is NOVOROSSIYA, LITTLE RUSSIA AND GALICIA and is also divided into several groups small peoples inhabiting the outskirts of the Russian Empire. These are Poles, Turks, Hungarians and Bulgarians. I am very sorry to see how the champions of the most humane worldview managed to change the code and indifference of Rus', the principles of the development of Russian civilization, its cycles of development, the historical connection between the times of the development of Russian civilization. You can ask the question for what, and that we Russians have done wrong, that they baptize us and give fictitious names and nicknames. Absurdity and nothing more, and why no one wants to notice the small nationalisms of small peoples, but are allowed by their inattention to ongoing events. So where did the real ones go? historical names and terms that define part of the peoples of historical Russia and who benefits from this? Of course, you will say that all of the listed regions of Ukraine have differences and not the same historical periods of life and accession to Russia. We will not dwell on these concepts of the patchwork solution of the Ukrainian state. But one and not a little important question arises? why did the Bolsheviks and later the Soviet bodies and authorities need to create a Republic with the right to secede from the USSR. WE ALL REALIZE that Ukraine, as an independent state, will always be Russia's rival, regardless of the desire of the population inhabiting these regions. The created new elite of the USSR was built mainly on national features and belongings of the ruling classes of the republics. The ruling party of the CPSU consisted of national clans and national groups, after the collapse of the USSR, the initiative was picked up by the second person in the party, the ideologist of the party, the first president of Ukraine, Kravchuk. Subsequently, power passed to the Dnepropetrovsk group of Kuchma. After Kuchma, the clash between the Dnepropetrovsk and Galician groups goes on and on. To be continued.
Alexander
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: And why is it always a rival? Someone, I don't remember, Kravchuk or Kuchma, once said that ideally he would see relations between Russia and Ukraine similar to relations between the USA and Canada. I think it's a great example. Gogol is a great example of how two peoples can live and create together. His books are directed not against any nation, but against human types which can be found anywhere. The main question is why, as far as I know, Gogol is not included in the school curriculum in Ukraine. It seems to me rather strange that the Ministry of Education of Ukraine does not consider perhaps the greatest Ukrainian writer as national writer only because he wrote in Russian.
Andrew F
Switzerland AK: "In modern Ukraine, the attitude towards Gogol is quite complicated." Not at all. Gogol is studied at a secondary school in the section of foreign literature translated into Ukrainian.
Valery
Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: Here is the answer. "For Gogol's contemporaries, the hint was obvious. Is it like a fig in your pocket in the form of a harmless Christmas tale?" Pinch slowly? ... Well, pinch further ... Veiled or clearly in each of your articles, a flower - to foreigners and a fig in the pocket of users from Russia. Objectivity is zero, in everything predilection and the search for negativity.
Artem
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: I don't understand where your sarcasm is directed. And what - do you think that serfdom is good, and it is not necessary to criticize it? Or do you think that living under the rule of the Russian Tsar is such happiness that you don’t need to pay attention to everything else? Just think - some were turned into slaves, others were starved to death. Why not hit the man? I just don't understand one thing. And the Russians, territorially, where is this? If you approach from your position, then definitely not in Moscow.
Sergey
RF, Moscow Artem Krechetnikov: I don't quite understand what you mean. There are plenty of Russians in London, and they never cease to be Russian there. If you ask where the state of Russia is, then everyone knows its borders. Let's agree with the unconditional - Gogol is a great Russian writer and just a great writer. Everything else is really debatable. As for his nationality, with such close living together and the very kinship of the peoples - it was not so important, the Little Russians, like the Tveryaks or Siberians, belonged to the big Russian people. Naturally, for a long separation, Little Russians have grown to Ukrainians and now they are a different, not Russian people. But the Belarusians are still so close to the Russians that I would say that here we have a very conditional division. We all need to find kindred spirits around the world and find happiness in love, friendship and reading such great writers as Pushkin and Gogol.
Sergey Belov
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Bravo! There is nothing to add. Thanks for enlightening me. Now I understand why the Tatars are not Mongols, but Kyiv, the "mother of Russian cities", has nothing to do with Russians.
Sergey
RF, Moscow Artem Krechetnikov: Kyiv has the same attitude towards Russians that London, and Britain in general, have towards Americans: a historical homeland, a place where roots grow from. Kyiv really has nothing to do with the Modern Russian Federation. It is the capital of a foreign country. Friendly or not - how will it turn out. I am afraid that with such views and such an attitude towards Ukraine, as the authors of some letters have, one cannot count on friendship. A very superficial article, although it claims to be true. That's for sure Gogol is not on you! Read Nabokov's excellent article about Gogol, read Gogol's letters, not this vulgarity...
Nina
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Any person who expresses an opinion about something claims to be the truth, and the rest are free to agree or disagree with him. You are also claiming the truth. Issue a peremptory verdict: "The article is superficial", without any "as it seems to me ...". And I think it's very informative and deep! Here we talked. Artem, I do not see the difference between Russians and Ukrainians, and none of my friends see this difference between peoples. I don't really understand why Russians and Ukrainians are different? The fact that the Ukrainian (nationalist) government thinks so? I don’t understand the moaning about Gogol, Ukrainian nationalists during Gogol’s time lived in villages and had no serious influence on culture. I think that Gogol did not even have an idea to fight for Ukrainian identity, he simply did not think in terms of today's nationalism.
Georgy Demchenko
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: I don't see much difference between the Russians and the British either. People in general are primarily divided into good and bad, and into smart and fools. But I have a question: why do many readers find manifestations of Ukrainian national self-consciousness so rejecting? Yes, let, in the end, people consider themselves who they want! During the Russian census, someone in the nationality column signed himself as a hobbit. Do you care? And one more question. You write: "Ukrainian nationalist government." And what should be the government of a sovereign state? Anti-national? Frankly speaking, I'm not sure that the nationality of N. Gogol worries the Ukrainian public so much, with the exception of a narrow circle of "Internet writers". It is difficult for me to consider a person a Ukrainian who: a. wrote in Russian; b. deliberately refused to write in Ukrainian. But whatever the position of N.V. Gogol on this issue, I will not cease to consider myself a Ukrainian and be proud of my people and language. "The Ukrainian "orange" authorities consider the word "Little Russian" abusive, and those who dare to call themselves "Little Russians" are almost criminals." I'm not going to talk about the position of the authorities, but I think that "Little Russian" is not a compliment. This is a "surzhik-speaking" and poorly educated subject who cannot decide whether he is with smart or beautiful. In a decent company for such a "compliment" you can get a candelabra :) :) :)
Victor
Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: I'm here all the time arguing with the Great Russian nationalists, let me tell you the hard truth - for balance. For some reason, neither the tsarist empire nor the communists managed to Russify, for example, Uzbeks or Lithuanians. Many Ukrainians themselves preferred a career in the empire to their national identity, they themselves decided that the Ukrainian language is “village”, and having moved to the city, they must become “cultured” and immediately start speaking Russian, even if broken. Nobody forced. I myself lived in Kyiv, and I remember how it all happened. Rather, the Soviet state supported school teaching, printing, and theaters in Ukrainian. And the fact that now people have appeared in Ukraine, especially young people who are proud of their people and language, makes me personally very happy. Ukrainians generally have a rather strange attitude towards history, given the level of their national identity. For example, I'm not entirely clear about this moment. There was Kievan Rus and lived in Kievan Rus Russian people. Modern Russia emerged from Kievan Rus. When did the completely independent, “non-Russian” nation of Ukrainians come to this territory? It's all nonsense! Ukrainians are not the name of a nation. So they called people who lived in ancient Rus' on the outskirts, near the edge. Hence the Russian language of Gogol - a completely justified phenomenon, because the so-called. The Ukrainian language is only a dialect.
Dmitriy
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Not Russians lived in Kievan Rus, but ancient Russes, to whom we have about the same attitude as modern Italians have to the Romans. We wouldn't even understand their language. Then, over the centuries, on the basis of the ancient Russian nationality, three different peoples were formed - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, or, if you like, Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians. Who is the elder brother and legal heir in this family ancient Kyiv- a moot point. Ukrainians, perhaps, have more rights, both geographically and linguistically. "It's a pity that we are 'sawing' Gogol and Ukraine in two - this is the fault of politicians." Valery, Russia, I fully support. And a special: thank you, - Arkady Klyuchansky. In looking at Gogol, our thoughts are in complete agreement. Artem, remember that you once compared your fantasies with Manilov's projects? AK: "why did the Ukrainian Gogol write in Russian". “Apparently, he was not very concerned about the national issue, and felt himself not a Ukrainian, namely, a Little Russian”, “the upbringing received from childhood limits self-identification to a rigid framework”, “the formation of self-consciousness”. In other words, Mykola Vasilyevich's own SELF-identification and SELF-consciousness did not define him as a Ukrainian, this definition itself arose in Galicia half a century after his death and did not bear the name of a specific ethnic group. And what are you, Artem, like Nozdryov, so unceremonious with N.V.'s SELF-consciousness? Gogol? This arrogance itself is reminiscent of the rite of conversion of one of the Ostrozhsky princes to Catholicism, when his descendants, having abandoned Orthodoxy, decided to make him, an upholder of the faith of the fathers, a faithful Catholic. For this, they did not disdain even exhumation. And once again I remind you that my wife, who was born in Ukraine from the Orthodox, went to the garden and school, where language was used, loving local culture etc., abandoned the Soviet identification of its SELF-determination. Once again I will remind you of her words: my ancestors were Little Russians, Cossacks, peasants, crests, but Russians, not Ukrainians. Estimates of self-determination of mother-in-law and father-in-law, who have half the library in Move, I hope you don’t want to know? AK: “In all the descriptions of the Russian village by Pushkin, Nekrasov, Turgenev, bares are certainly present. But in Dikanka, apparently, there was no landowner. Otkel only took Korobochki, Miklukhi-Maclay, yes, and the ancestors of my wife on the paternal side do not understand where the estate came from? Although it is clear with the latter, they were not Ukrainians, but a foreman like Taras Bulba. Ukrainians' conscience would not allow b.
RAP, Russia
Artem Krechetnikov: So I say that for most people their national identity is predetermined by birth, but for those who, for one reason or another, are in a borderline state (and there are millions of such people in the world), there is a choice. Your spouse has made her choice, but it is not the only one possible, and not mandatory for everyone. As for Gogol, as follows from Nikolai's letter, everything was not so simple and unambiguous with him. Villages in Ukraine have long been squires, but there were Cossacks. Regarding the one who made serfdom comprehensive, I will quote Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy about Catherine II: Madame, to glorify your great people,
Politely Voltaire and Diderot wrote to her, Only the people to whom you are the mother need,
Rather give freedom, rather give freedom! Messeiurs, she retorted, vous me comblez!
And immediately attached the Ukrainians to the ground! [In all descriptions of the Russian village by Pushkin, Nekrasov, Turgenev, there are certainly bars. But in Dikanka, apparently, there was no landowner. I remember that I drew attention to this at school, and was very surprised.] In "Mirgorod" there is a remark by Gogol that the Ukrainians themselves called themselves "nobles", in contrast to the Great Russians. At school, I didn't pay attention to it either.
Uncle Sasha
demorusska[What do you see as "insinuations", and even "vile" ones? In recognition of the fact that Russians and Ukrainians are two different peoples? So this is an objective reality.] But Gogol does not agree with you. "What Russian does not like to drive fast," he wrote about the Ukrainian Chichikov. The same is true of the Zaporozhye Cossacks in Taras Bulba.
Uncle Sasha
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Peoples are not something eternal and given once and for all. The emergence and disappearance of peoples is a historical process. At the time of Gogol, the formation of the Ukrainian nation was just going on. And in the time of Bulba (the first half of the 17th century), "Ukraine" was purely geographical concept like the Urals or the Kuban. Bulba and his Cossacks considered themselves Russians, and the Poles knew for sure that they were fighting the Russians. Another thing is that Muscovites and Russian residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then the Commonwealth, were already very different in political culture and everyday habits, so it was appropriate to talk about Western and Eastern Russians. The formation of Ukrainian self-consciousness began just after the unification with Russia, when the Little Russians came into close contact with the Great Russians and discovered that they were different. The question raised by you, Artem, is indeed very interesting and multifaceted. To formulate my opinion, I believe that Gogol is a Russian writer, despite the fact that he is Ukrainian (?) by nationality. Just like Heine is a German poet, and Aizimov is American writer although they are both Jews. In general, I think that digging into the nationalities of writers (and not only them) is an unpromising occupation. A writer is a representative of the literature in whose language he writes. There are exceptions, but not very successful ones. Nabokov and Brodsky created their best works in Russian. When you read Tolstoy, those parts that are written in French are much weaker than his Russian language. But this is so, by the way. Pursuit Ukrainian nationalists imagine the Ukrainian people as the very best - that's what is behind the endless arguments that Gogol - Ukrainian writer. Goldsmith and Sheridan are Irish, but, by G-d, no one in Ireland shouts about it on every corner and curses Great Britain for having an imperial cultural policy. Why did the Scots V. Scott, K. Doyle, R. Stevenson write in English, and even R. Burns created most of his works in English, although he clearly identified himself as a Scot? Yes, they just understood that writing in Scottish is like writing "on the table", no one will read it. All these arguments about the nationality of the writer (not to be confused about his literary affiliation to some language) come from a lack of culture. I already wrote about the attitude of the Ukrainian authorities, and the public, too, to their own cultural heritage so sorry for the repeat. One of the signs of the level of culture is the attitude towards the dead. In Kharkov, at the 1st city cemetery, there is the grave of the classic of Ukrainian literature, the wonderful writer G. Kvitko-Osnovyanenko. You should have seen the state she's in! If not for the fact that the monument itself is quite impressive, then this grave would have been lost in hundreds of others. But somewhere in Kyiv, from the high stands, some literary critics, and others, will probably rant about the contribution of Kvitko-Osnovyanenko to world literature. Here's your attitude to your own culture.
igor l.
Israel Artem Krechetnikov: It seems to me that Ukrainians are driven not by the desire to prove that their people are the best, but by a much more modest desire to prove that they exist at all. As can be seen even from my correspondence with readers, many are trying to deny this fact. For example, in today's Russia, some people, to put it mildly, do not care about Georgia and Estonia, but at the same time they recognize that Georgians and Estonians are other peoples, and Ukrainians are denied the very right to national existence. I have not seen the graves of Kvitka-Osnovyanenko in Kharkov, but if everything is as you write, then this, of course, is a disgrace. Best of all, who Gogol considered himself to be, he said himself. In 1846, in Carlsbad, he wrote down in a questionnaire: Mr. Gogol is a Ukrainian living in Moscow, although at that time the designation "little Russian" was more common. In a letter to his mother upon his arrival in St. Petersburg in 1828, he said: I will write on foreign language, i.e. he did not consider Russian native for himself. In a review of Pushkin's works about the Caucasus, G notes that the poet remains national when he writes about other people's events, another's history, but most importantly he looks at it through the eyes of his people, i.e. not the language is the main thing, but the views. Later, G. will write: I don’t know what is more in my soul - Khokholtsky or Russian. The author should not have missed the fact that even among Russian writers there were ardent opponents of considering G. his own. Vasily Rozanov yelled that he was not ours. I believe that G. is a great son of both the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, there is no need to divide him. He is a world-class star whose significance and influence has gone far beyond national borders.
nikolay
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Thank you. You brought a lot of interesting facts and well supplemented what I said. By the way, the modern Russian writer Vladimir Soloukhin in his book "Pebbles in the Palm" argued that the "tana of secrets and the Holy of Holies" of the story "Taras Bulba" is love for Catholic Poland. You keep repeating, Artem, that "Ukrainians will not agree with this." Well, here I am - Russian by father and Ukrainian by mother. We live in a Ukrainian southern city. My friends profess both presented (basic) points of view. However, we try to dampen such conversations. But all of them and I, for the most part, consider Russia to be a very dear and beloved neighbor, they have great respect for the Russian young leaders of the country. I have lived in Russia for a long time (20 years) and do not see much difference between the peoples either in mentality or in language.
Natalia
Russia Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: It's great that you and your friends, living in Ukraine, respect Russia and its leaders. I wish all Russians and Ukrainians to experience the same feelings, and that they be mutual. ... Russians and Ukrainians - two different peoples? So this is an objective reality. I am ready to put a box of vodka, that if you show a dozen inhabitants of Odessa, then you are unlikely to be able to sort them into Russians and Ukrainians. Another thing is "zapadentsy" - this is really a different people. So the border of the people passes, relatively speaking, along the Dnieper. to the east - ours, and then no more.
sk
Artem Krechetnikov: Well, not really. Real Ukrainians live in Kyiv, Poltava, Chernihiv, Cherkasy regions. Odessa is a truly cosmopolitan city, as it historically did not belong to Ukraine, but was founded in the former Wild Field, recaptured from Crimean Tatars and Turk. Why write in a language that more than half of the population does not even speak in their own country? Who will read it then? And even more so in history to remember. I think Gogol thought the same.
Andris
Latvija Artem Krechetnikov: People spoke Ukrainian, there was no literary language. ..."Gogol is a classic of Russian literature. Gogol is a generous gift of the Ukrainian land and the spirit of Russian culture. A great Russian writer, and a great son of Ukraine. Both peoples have something to celebrate and be proud of." That says it all and there is nothing to add.
Olga Alexandrovna
Russian Federation It will be correct like this: Gogol is a great or world Ukrainian Russian-speaking writer.
V.B.
Ukraine Artem Krechetnikov: I agree, you can say that. But the Scot also has nothing to do with the UK? Or have they simply not separated yet and declared their independence? Can it help, how did the Britons do it with the USSR?
eugene
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Nobody helped the collapse of the USSR. The state cannot be destroyed from outside. The USSR collapsed because it was impossible to live normally in it. And in Britain to live well and freely, so it is not going to fall apart. However, if Scotland wants to secede, no one will throw a tantrum because of this, and everything will happen peacefully and democratically. And do not confuse, please, state and nationality. Scotland - component Monarchist Federation, United Kingdom. But the Scots really have nothing to do with England and the British. Try calling a Scot an Englishman! The only thing that will save you is that you are a foreigner. Gogol is much more a Russian writer than Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. But for what purpose Artyom Krechetnikov commits vile insinuations is not clear to me. And the article is meaningless, incoherent. Does the Air Force print everything in a row, or what?
Philip Grigorievich
USSR Artem Krechetnikov: What do you see as "insinuations", and even "vile" ones? In recognition of the fact that Russians and Ukrainians are two different peoples? So this is an objective reality. I strongly advise you, dear Philip Grigorievich, to reconcile with her and calm down. And then from constant anger, they say, bad diseases develop. Dear Artem! Excuse me, but in my opinion it is possible to raise the issue of nationality only in one case - when the task is to quarrel (what difference does it make what language you spoke, what language you first heard, what language you wrote or thought?).
AndreyAF
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Personally, I would be glad if all people on Earth immediately forgot who is of what nationality. But nationalities and the national question exist independently of our desire, people attach enormous importance to it, and it is impossible not to discuss it. I generally do not approve of such a formulation of the question: there is no need to talk about it aloud, this question cannot be raised ... Everything needs to be talked about! And try to find the truth. If problems are hushed up, they will not cease to exist. Good article. Thank you. The question is, in fact, far from being an idle one under present conditions. But to your very reasonable question, "what did N.V. Gogol himself think about this," I, to my shame, cannot immediately answer with a quote. Nothing directly comes to mind in this regard. But it is obvious that he did not think in current categories. You are right, speaking about the "Little Russian consciousness". I will note, if I do not distort the quotes, that "written entirely on Ukrainian material" "T. B." ends with the fact that "is there a force in the world that would overpower the Russian force." Gogol, perhaps, treated the Little Russian specifics exactly as you write - comparable to the features of Pomorye, Siberia, etc. It's sad that all of this is getting political overtones today. Sad, but inevitable. New, as they say, songs of the new time. But both sides are to blame. And each side needs to think more about its own wrong than about someone else's. Then there will be a sense. Or rather, it would, if it were possible. Let me make one more remark. Naturally, Dead Souls is one of the most remarkable works of Russian literature. But it should always be remembered that Gogol considered this work only as the first part of a trilogy, in which completely different types would have to be later displayed. It is known with what difficulty he wrote the second volume, later destroyed by him. I personally believe that, judging by the surviving fragments, that one was no worse than the first. But Gogol was not interested in my opinion. So I think that one of the reasons for his severe depression in last years it could be precisely the consciousness that he will remain in the memory of the reading public as the author of a brilliant satire on the negative properties of the Russian character, but will not show a more balanced picture. In the planned row, which imitated Dante's "Hell" - "Purgatory" - "Paradise", the first part would not look like a libel at all. Left on its own, it made it possible to see, as you mentioned, "fig in your pocket." But Gogol never had a fig. Or rather, it was, but only in relation to specific Nozdrevs and Korobochkas, and not in your pocket, but openly. And also, to finish, I will say that until people understand that "Selected Places ..." is one of the most wonderful books written in Russian, and until they start reading and thinking, so they there will be nothing to oppose to their Nozdryovs and Korobochkas. No wonder Belinsky at one time was so angry, or rather, frightened. Sorry for the length, but the topic is very interesting. Thanks again.
Arkady Klyuchansky
Canada And why could the great Nabokov write in English? Although in possession of Russian he had no equal. And why Aitmatov wrote in Russian. This is a question of the same nature as why Richter played the piano and Oistrakh played the violin. Yes, because it was on these instruments that they had their best expression. And language is the same tool for a writer. It is a pity that we are "cutting" Gogol and Ukraine in two - this is the fault of politicians. After all, it never occurs to anyone to cut Nabokov into pieces.
Valery
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: I think Aitmatov wrote in Russian for exactly the same reasons as Gogol. Nabokov is a unique phenomenon in world literature. There are not so many people in the world who know two languages equally well from infancy, and here it is still necessary that such a person be born with writing talent. In the case of Nabokov, apparently, the factor of nationality comes into play, so he should be considered a Russian writer. But here's what's important. For Americans, this issue is not fundamental, because they do not need to prove anything to anyone. And when there are people who, like Andrei, deny the Ukrainian people not only respect, but also their very existence, it is clear that Ukrainians become especially sensitive to the national question. No need to offend people - there will be no sick pride. Artem, I completely agree with you! Firstly, I never take seriously the exaggeration of the issue of bilingualism, and even more so I will not take what people Kolya Gogol belongs to for two reasons: 1) Such discussions are held in order to distract people from real problems. 2) Kolya Gogol does not belong to Ukraine, and not to Russia, but to the then Russian empire. And that's it! Why divide the Slavic peoples of Kolya? For example, he successfully showed me the uniqueness of the Little Russian language, which lulls the entire Russian-Ukrainian culture and history. This is somehow so clearly visible that I'm even amazed. Yes, and you make fun of the same language. What is "zhyyynka" worth!!!) As for the Polish lords, Artyom, it seems to me that Gogol sought to mint his work from the point of view of literature as art. I think he didn’t want to show the panami’s corruption of the Ukrainian people, he just wanted to show how wonderful the Ukrainian-Russian culture was then.
Nicholas
Kyiv, Ukraine The division into Russians and Ukrainians is artificial. We are one people.
Andrey
Russia Artem Krechetnikov: Ukrainians will not agree with you. And if you continue to insist, it will only end with the fact that we finally quarrel. Indeed, Gogol (despite his constant depression, who spent a significant part of his life not only not in Russia, but not even in Ukraine (?) - but on the contrary, in Italy, for which I personally do not blame him at all - nevertheless - Russian writer, creator of the Ukrainian mentality. And he is as great as Pushkin. Who in general, by the way, well, a test of the pen - took and created the Russian language. Gogol did not write in Little Russian. It was pidgin English, and no one I didn’t read it. But his sense of the Great Russian language was on a par with Pushkin and Lermontov, a Scot, and Fet, a German. By the way, did you notice that all Russian writers were non-Russian? Even Tyutchev was not quite Russian ... And Was there Mandelstam? Or was there Pasternak, Marshak and Kharms? Can you point us to a "Russian" writer at all, with the exception of Dostoevsky, who was a Pole? I know one. Saltykov-Shchedrin, cat., of course, By origin, he was a pure Tatar, but the Belarusians, unfortunately, did not have their own writer, and you will need him soon. Seek and find.
individual person
UK Artem Krechetnikov: Well, to say that "all Russian writers are not Russian" is a strong exaggeration. If Lermontov had among his ancestors one Scot who came to Russia more than a hundred and fifty years before his birth, this does not mean that he is "not Russian." And what does it mean: "Belarusians did not have their own writer"? One Vasil Bykov would do honor to any literature. It is a rare case when I agree with Mr. Krechetnikov in almost everything. Let me remind him that now the Ukrainian "orange" authorities consider the word "Little Russian" abusive, and those who dare to call themselves "Little Russians" are almost criminals. A vivid example of this is the persecution of Russins in Transcarpathia by the SBU. At the same time, the BBC and other Western media are mumbling that there is freedom and democracy in Ukraine.
Ukraine
Artem Krechetnikov: Of course, it is difficult to speak for the whole country, but from the experience of my trips to Ukraine and communication with people, I can say that there are probably no "Little Russians" in Gogol's sense of the word. People are divided into those who consider themselves Ukrainians, and those who consider themselves Russians without any reservations. Little Russian identity is a fact of the past.For several centuries, Russia and Ukraine had common destiny. Now we've split up. And even, sadly, they became enemies. But I hope it's not forever. After all, we have a common history, a common faith, a common culture. And common celebrities that we will never be able to share. Here are some of them.
Prince Vladimir
Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich, also known as Vladimir the Holy, Vladimir the Red Sun. This man is among the first princes of Ancient Rus', it is with his personality that the historical choice of adopting Christianity is connected, which predetermined the appearance of Russian culture for centuries to come. He was supposedly born around 960 in Kyiv, was the son of Prince Svyatoslav and Malusha (Malka) - the slave of Svyatoslav, Princess Olga. He reigned first in Novgorod, then, after a series of intrigues and civil strife, he defeated the brothers who were older than him, and as legitimate sons had more rights to the throne, and began to reign in Kiev. Ukrainians consider him theirs, because he was born in Kyiv, and was the prince of Kyiv. Russians also consider Vladimir theirs, and there are reasons for this too. Under him, the state of the Eastern Slavs, which today is called Ancient Rus' or Kievan Rus, began to expand to the east, approaching the lands that would later become the core of Great Rus' - Vladimir conquered the Vyatichi, fought with the Bulgars on the Volga, imposed tribute on Khazaria. The princes of Moscow descended from Vladimir, rightly considering themselves, thus, the successors and heirs of the first Rurikovich.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
Great writer, classic of Russian literature of Little Russian origin. He was born in 1809 in Sorochintsy, Poltava province. According to family tradition, he came from an old Cossack family, his full surname was Gogol-Yanovsky. In 1828 he came to St. Petersburg, where he began his literary activity. Gogol always considered himself Russian, while not forgetting for a moment that he was from Little Russia, and was very proud of this. In part, it was the magnificent Little Russian flavor of "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" that contributed to the success of his early works. Very quickly Gogol became one of the first Russian writers. Today in Ukraine they are trying to make Gogol a "Svidomo Ukrainian", even translate into Ukrainian his works, which he himself wrote in beautiful Russian. But what about the fact that Gogol himself considered his native Little Russia an integral part of Great Russia, wrote in Russian, and even made the most Ukrainian of his heroes, Taras Bulba, the embodiment of Russian power?
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich
Avant-garde artist, author of the world-famous Black Square. Born in 1879 in Kyiv, died in 1935 in Leningrad. We have the right to consider him a representative of the great Russian culture, if only because he spent most of his life in Kursk, Moscow, Petrograd, and then Leningrad. It was in Russia that he formed as an artist, his exhibitions, art actions were held here, in Russian he wrote his philosophical works, such as “Suprematism. The world as pointlessness or eternal rest” and “God will not be cast off. Art, church, factory. One of the exhibitions in which he participated was called "Left Currents in Russian Painting." In general, he associated himself precisely with Russia and with Russian culture, while not forgetting, of course, about his Ukrainian origin. Sometimes he wrote letters in Ukrainian, sometimes he said about himself “I am a Ukrainian”, which gives grounds for modern Ukrainian nationalists to “remove” Malevich from Russian culture, declaring him exclusively theirs. At the same time, however, they forget that Malevich came from a Polish family. And just as often as “I am a Ukrainian,” he said “I am a Pole.”
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
Great poet. It was “poet”, she really did not like the word “poetess”. We Russians consider Anna Andreevna a Russian poet. And what is surprising in this, if everything that is written by her is written in Russian, if her name is connected with Russia, with St. Petersburg and Leningrad, with Tsarskoye Selo forever?
Ukrainians, on the contrary, consider Anna Andreevna their own. She is included in the book "100 Great Ukrainians". And, of course, there are reasons for this too. Real surname Akhmatova - Gorenko, she was born in 1889 in Odessa, spent her youth in Sevastopol, Kyiv and Evpatoria. The Gorenko family is an old Cossack family, however, Anna Andreevna cannot be attributed to the purebred "Little Russians", since her grandmother was a Crimean woman of semi-Greek origin.
Ivan Poddubny
Famous strongman, multiple world champion, classical Greco-Roman wrestler, circus performer.
Ukrainians really stand up for the fact that Ivan Maksimovich is a Ukrainian. And they have many reasons for this. First of all, origin. Ivan Poddubny was born in 1871 in the Poltava province, his father came from the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, and Poddubny himself repeatedly recalled that his father told him: “Remember, Ivan, that you are from your father-mother Cossack, Zaporizhzhya ...”. They tell a story that when in 1937 Poddubny was given a passport, where “Russian” was in the “nationality” column, Ivan Maksimovich crossed it out and entered “Ukrainian” himself. And he forwarded the spelling of the surname to the Ukrainian manner "Piddubny".
However, in the face of a common enemy, the old strong man did not think about the difference in dialects and spelling of words. When during the war years he was under occupation in Yeysk, the Germans came to him with an offer to go to Germany and train German athletes. He replied: “I am a Russian wrestler. I will stay with them." On all posters and postcards depicting the great strongman, in all languages of the world, it was written “Ivan Poddubny. Russia".
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky
Outstanding natural scientist, thinker and public figure.
Russians do not hesitate to speak of Vernadsky as a representative of Russian scientific thought. And this is not surprising. He was born in 1863 in St. Petersburg, wrote his scientific works and taught exclusively in Russian.
Ukrainians, however, consider Vernadsky among the outstanding Ukrainian scientists. The fact is that according to family legend, his father's family came from Zaporizhzhya Cossacks. In 1868 the Vernadsky family moved to Kharkov. Here Vladimir began his studies at the gymnasium. !917 found Vernadsky in the Poltava province. Vernadsky recognized the independence of Ukraine and in 1918 became the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, established by the government of Hetman Skoropadsky. However, already in 1921 Vernadsky moved to Russia, where he spent the rest of his life. The great scientist died in 1945 in Moscow, and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
Marko Vovchok
Writer, poetess, translator. Ukrainians do not hesitate to refer it to the classics of Ukrainian literature, and not by chance. She wrote in Ukrainian, described the historical past of Ukrainian lands, and studied ethnographic materials in Ukraine. The great Taras Shevchenko himself, when Marko Vovchok asked him to edit her story, written in Ukrainian, said that it was "the perfection of Ukrainian literature." It was Marko Vovchok who enriched Ukrainian literature with a variety of genres that had not been in it until now: children's stories and stories, social stories, psychological stories and stories. In general, a classic, one of the founders of Ukrainian literature.
Nevertheless, the Russians can rightfully consider this great woman to be theirs. She was born in 1833 in the village of Ekaterinovka, Yelets district, Oryol province, in the family of an impoverished Russian nobleman. Before her marriage and the beginning of her studies in literature, her name was Maria Alexandrovna Vilinskaya. In her youth, she lived in Kharkov, where she studied at the gymnasium. There I got acquainted with the Ukrainian language. Soon she met the Ukrainian folklorist and ethnographer A. V. Markovich, who became her husband. The young people left for Ukraine, where Maria, together with her husband, went on ethnographic expeditions, during which she fell in love and got to know the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian language well. Becoming published, the writer took the pseudonym Marko Vovchok, who glorified her. I must say that she wrote not only in Ukrainian, but also in Russian, she translated a lot. In particular, it was she who gave the Russian-speaking reader the opportunity to read the novels of Jules Verne.
Is Gogol modern? Do we need it today? Does his work fit into the social and cultural atmosphere of today's Russia?…
Who bothers Gogol?
Attempts to push Gogol and other Russian literary classics "off the ship of modernity" are by no means new. Kulturtragers, burning with the desire to "cleanse" Russia from the "burden of the old culture", were enough before. Let us recall, for example, Trotsky, who, with his characteristic impudence, attributed to Russia "the poverty of its cultural tradition."
Today, avant-gardism, dressed up in liberal market clothes, turns its nose up at Russian classical literature even more defiantly than under Trotsky. This is understandable: the Russian classics have always been opposed to an all-inclusive marketplace, speculation and usury. Can Gogol, who caustically ridiculed greed, deceit, betrayal, become "one of his own" for those who reduce all the music of life only to the sound of coins, and the value of the universe limits it to "exchange value"? Of course not.
Both the Trotskyists and the liberal "elites" would like to start history from a "clean slate". Together with them stood the leaders of Ukrainian nationalism, who are also eager to impose their own scenario, invented by them, on history. It is difficult for all this Russophobic public to love Gogol: he always interfered with her, still interferes with her Russianness and her commitment to the truth of life, to historical truths.
Nikolai Gogol is often referred to as "a mystery and a riddle, the solution of which is yet to come." If we are talking about the depths of his work, then perhaps this is so. As for the motives and engines of this creativity, Gogol clearly showed them in the title of one of his articles: "You Must Love Russia." He addressed his reader: "Thank God that you are Russian!"
Everyone who cherishes Russian culture also cherishes Gogol, who not only expressed its spiritual essence, but also became an outstanding participant in its creation. Without him, Russian culture would look different, without much of what has become familiar and natural for us. Most Russians love Gogol. Many Ukrainians also love him.
Many, but not all. Now in the homeland of Gogol, the attitude towards him is very ambiguous. Concerns about the “purity” of the so-called Ukrainian idea cannot decide in any way whether to delete it from history or declare it “an inalienable property of Ukraine”. The most zealous Ukrainophiles deny Gogol for "connection with Muscovites", evilly and stupidly attributing "anti-patriotism" to him. The “founder” of this approach to the great writer was a certain Pavlo Shtepa, the author of the shameful book “Muscovite”, which contained a considerable amount of schizophrenic nonsense, designed to prove the racial superiority of the “Ukrs” over the “subhuman Muscovites”. Characteristically, the “mission” to spread this scandalous opus was carried out by the administration of President Yushchenko. The version about Gogol's "treason" and "anti-Ukrainianism" is especially strong in Galicia, and this is no coincidence: for the Galician Uniates, the deeply Orthodox Gogol is a "schismatic" and "agent of Moscow."
There is, however, another tendency designed to "nationalize" Nikolai Vasilievich, tear him out of Russian culture, cut him off from the Russian language, and attribute to him a secret "anti-moskalism." "National Svidomo" historians and journalists persistently and almost under a microscope look for any hints of his hostility to Russia in Gogol's writings and letters. They do not find anything and begin to attract some trifles, completely unaware that by doing this they humiliate both themselves and Gogol. Nor do they understand that the creative scale of a great writer cannot fit into narrowly ethnic, provincial stocks. However, one can sympathize with them: they, most likely, would not have touched Gogol if literary giants of the Gogol level had been present in Ukrainian-language literature. But they are not.
As in Ukraine, in Russia there are also lovers to argue on the topic: "Who was Gogol - Ukrainian or Russian?". It is time to understand that disputes on this subject are scholastic. Firstly, Gogol is Gogol - neither as a person, nor as an artist, he can be dissected. He was the bearer of the all-Russian consciousness, and he himself did not have much need to find out whether he was Russian or Ukrainian.
Secondly, we need to finally decide on the semantic levels of the words "Russian" and "Ukrainian". If we are talking about personal data or ethnographic details, this is one thing. If the question is posed in a broad historical and civilizational plane, then this is completely different: Russians are those who are connected by historical and cultural roots with Ancient (or, in other words, Kievan) Rus, a state created by the Eastern Slavs in the 9th century.
Gogol, through the lips of his favorite hero Taras Bulba, addressed the glorious past of Kievan Rus: “You heard from your fathers and grandfathers in what honor our land was for everyone: it made itself known to the Greeks, and took chervonets from Tsargrad, and the cities were magnificent, and temples , and princes, princes of the Russian family, their own princes, and not Catholic mistrust. Russians are the descendants of those who inhabited this state. These are Little Russians-Ukrainians, and Belarusians, and Great Russians (“Muscovites” - in the terminology of Ukrainophiles). It is absurd to argue about which of the three nationalities has more or less rights to the Old Russian heritage. The reality is that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians have much more in common than differences.
Singer of Ukraine
Yes, Gogol reflected the all-Russian consciousness, but there is no doubt that he loved Ukraine. His attachment to his small homeland was obvious to everyone. Gogol's "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" are imbued with tender feelings for both their native places and fellow countrymen. Poeticizing Ukraine, he sought to "infect" with love for her all reading Russia. He quite succeeded in this: having barely appeared in the bookstores of St. Petersburg, "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" made an extraordinary sensation in the capital's society. The audience was fascinated by them. Over the next almost 180 years, admirers of Gogol's talent continued to share good feelings writer to his homeland, absorbed the poetic images of Ukraine created by him. As long as Gogol's books are being read in Russia, these images will be alive in the minds of Russians. The strength of his work is such that it is able to resist the state division between Ukraine and Russia, and the "gas wars", and Russophobia of the "orange" screamers.
Gogol sought to instill in the St. Petersburg "light" a warm attitude towards the Ukrainian grassroots culture. In the essay “On Little Russian Songs,” he expressed regret that the then “higher circles” were almost unfamiliar with Ukrainian folk music: “Only the Ukrainian steppes heard the best songs and voices: only there, under the canopy of clay huts crowned with mulberries and cherries, with in the brilliance of morning, noon and evening, with the lemon yellowness of ears of wheat, they are heard, interrupted by steppe gulls, strings of larks and wailing orioles.
Folk songs sincerely worried Nikolai Vasilyevich: “They are all harmonious, fragrant, extremely diverse. They have new colors everywhere, simplicity and tenderness of feelings. A whirlwind, oblivion, the brightest and most faithful painting and the most sonorous sonority of words are combined in them at once. He called them "living history - bright, full of colors of truth, exposing the whole life of the people," said: "Whoever has not penetrated deeply into them will not know anything about the past life of this flourishing part of Russia."
The writer associated the “leaky life” with the times when Southern Rus' was not yet flourishing and was suffocating under foreign oppression. He wrote that many Ukrainian songs “burn, tear apart the soul”, in their sounds one can clearly hear “complaints about the homeless situation of the then Little Russia”, “cheerless despair” is replaced by “the cry of the heart when sharp iron touches it”, and explained: “This is was defenseless Little Russia in that year when the Union rapaciously burst into it. The songs of the people expressed their despair and pain: “By them, by these sounds one can guess about his past sufferings, just as one can recognize the former storm with hail and heavy rain by diamond tears that humiliate refreshed trees from top to bottom when the sun throws an evening ray.
Gogol said: "Little Russian songs may well be called historical." History entered these songs with notes of dreary despair, and passionate love of freedom, and a thirst for struggle against oppression: “The broad will of Cossack life breathes in them, that strength, will, power with which the Cossack throws the silence and carelessness of a homely life in order to go into full poetry of battles, dangers and wild feasting with comrades. Neither the black-browed girlfriend, glowing with freshness, all devoted to love, nor the aged mother, overflowing like a stream of tears, nothing can hold him back. ... The Black Sea sparkles, all the wonderful, immeasurable steppe from Taman to the Danube, the wild ocean of flowers sways with a touch of wind; swans and cranes drown in the boundless depths of the sky; the dying Cossack lies in the midst of this freshness of virgin nature and gathers all his strength so as not to die without looking once more at his comrades.
Gogol - historian
Does everyone know that Gogol was a professional historian? He faced a difficult choice, deciding what to prefer - the work of a historian or literary work. In 1830-1835 he taught history at the St. Petersburg Women's Patriotic Institute, and in 1834-1835 he was an adjunct professor at the Department of General History at St. Petersburg University. In those years, Nikolai Vasilyevich spent a lot of time on historical research, studied the works of leading Russian and foreign historians, wrote serious and in-depth scientific articles.
It is not enough to say that he knew history very well. Possessing a subtle intuition, he easily delved into the deep semantic essence of historical events and processes. Gogol showed the delusions of the "progressives", who scornfully dismissed history, "breeding" the past and the present as dead and alive. He wrote that these people “appointed” the “lowest place” to past centuries, not realizing that the present cannot appear from nowhere: “Everything that we have, what we use, what we can boast of before other centuries, the organization of our administrative parts, rights and privileges, morals, customs, knowledge - all this got its beginning and germ in the dark, closed to us Middle Ages. They contain the original elements and the foundation of everything new. Without them, the new history is not clear, not complete. Indeed, tearing modern history from the Middle Ages, it is impossible to fully study it. Such a story turns out to be approximate and superficial, it, according to Gogol, becomes "like a statue of an artist who has not studied human anatomy."
In the 19th century, the Middle Ages were almost not studied, and therefore it seemed to be a heap of disparate, incompatible events and facts. Gogol saw the fallacy of such ideas: "Consider the history of the Middle Ages more carefully and deeper, and you will find both a connection, and a goal, and a direction." At the same time, he admitted that "to be able to find all this, you need to be gifted with that flair that few historians have." Nikolai Vasilyevich himself possessed such a flair, a vivid proof of which is his literary masterpiece "Taras Bulba".
Gogol was going to create a major work on the history of Southern Rus' and wrote on this occasion: “We still do not have a complete and satisfactory history of the Little Russian people. I do not call history many compilations compiled from various chronicles without a strict critical look ... I decided to take on this work and imagine how this part separated from Russia, what kind of political structure it received, being under foreign possession, how a warlike a people marked by a perfect originality of character and deeds, how for three centuries, with arms in hand, they obtained their rights and stubbornly defended their religion, how, finally, they joined Russia forever.
Conceived historical work only the fact that Gogol was fascinated by the literary path prevented him. But the materials that he prepared for writing this work testify to his precise and clear understanding of the course and meaning of the processes that took place in the southern Russian lands. Gogol presented a general outline of these processes in the article "A Look at the Compilation of Little Russia".
In it, he gave a negative assessment of the period of fragmentation in Rus', calling it "a terrible, insignificant time", "a chaos of battles", when "relatives were ready to rise up against each other every minute with the fury of wolves, and brother slaughtered brother for a piece of land." Later, Marxist historians, adjusting Russian history to a formation scheme and proving the predestination of historical processes, stated: “Feudal fragmentation was a natural, progressive phenomenon and a new, higher stage in the development of society and the state.” The fact that protracted princely strife tore the country to shreds and weakened it in the face of the threat of foreign invasion was hardly taken into account in Marxist constructions.
Gogol was clear all the perniciousness of fragmentation, which led the once powerful state to the loss of independence. North-Eastern Rus' fell under the influence of the Mongol Empire, and South-Western Rus' fell under the rule of first Lithuanian and then Polish kings. “The connection between Northern and Southern Russia was broken,” wrote Gogol, “two states were formed, called by the same name - Rus.”
Subordinate Eastern Rus' Horde Gogol did not see anything good, but admitted that it became "a salvation for Russia, saving it for independence, because the specific princes would not have saved it from the Lithuanian conquerors." Of course, Rus' under the Mongols experienced many troubles, but at the same time it did not lose its identity, its Orthodox faith. A different situation developed in Southern Rus', whose inhabitants had to prove their right to freedom of religion for several centuries and to take up arms for this.
Gogol wrote that the struggle of the Little Russians against the Turks, Crimeans, Lithuanians, Poles was carried out under the banner of loyalty to Orthodoxy, and emphasized that this people from the very beginning "had one main goal - to fight against the infidels and preserve the purity of their religion." Religion was the bond that allowed this people to save themselves. It was faith that united him into a single society. The struggle for the preservation of the Orthodox faith impregnated all the thoughts and actions of the inhabitants of Southern Rus' with a special meaning.
At the forefront of this struggle stood the Cossacks, about whom Gogol wrote as follows: “It was a motley gathering of the most desperate people of the border nations. A wild highlander, a robbed Russian, a Polish serf who fled from the despotism of the pans, even a Tatar who fled from Islamism laid the foundation for this strange society, which later set the goal of eternal war with the infidels. Most of This society consisted, however, of the primitive, indigenous inhabitants of southern Russia. Everyone had the full will to pester this society, but he had to unfailingly accept Orthodox faith. ... Eternal danger instilled in the Cossacks some kind of contempt for life. The Cossack cared more about a good measure of wine than about his own fate. At the same time, reckless bachelors, along with gold coins, Tsakhins and horses, began to kidnap Tatar wives and daughters and marry them. And so a people was formed, which by faith and place of residence belonged to Europe, meanwhile, in terms of way of life, customs, costume, completely Asian. One can imagine the gnashing of teeth that these Gogol lines cause in the propagandists of “Ukrainianism” with their incantations about the “Aryan purity of Ukrainian blood”, about the “racial superiority of the descendants of the ancient Ukrainians over Asian Muscovites” ...
Gogol's ardent interest in the South Russian Middle Ages led to the birth of Taras Bulba. While working on it, the writer plunged headlong into the primary sources, reflecting the dramatic atmosphere of the period when Southern Rus' was under the rule of the Commonwealth. One of these sources was the notes of Simon Oskolsky, a Dominican Catholic monk, an adherent of Polish rule over the southern Russian lands. In 1637 and 1638, Oskolsky, in his role as regimental pastor, accompanied Hetman Nikolai Pototsky, nicknamed "The Bear's Paw", on two campaigns against the Cossacks, who had rebelled against the Poles. In 1738, the Ukrainian nobleman Stepan Lukomsky translated Okolsky's diaries from Polish into Russian.
Having studied the history of the Cossack uprising of 1637-1638, described in these diaries, suppressed by Pototsky, Gogol made it the basis of his famous story. He also felt a personal involvement in the events of two centuries ago: “When I got close to Taras Bulba and rummaged through the chest of history, more than once I was enveloped in hot waves, that my mother’s family of Lizogubs defended the Fatherland with sabers.”
In Chapter XII of Taras Bulba, Gogol recreated the atmosphere of 1638: “It is known what a war for faith is like in the Russian land: there is no force stronger than faith. ... One hundred and twenty thousand Cossack troops appeared on the borders of Ukraine. ... the whole nation rose, for the patience of the people was overwhelmed - it rose to avenge the ridicule of its rights, for the shameful humiliation of its morals, for insulting the faith of their ancestors and holy custom, for the shame of churches, for the outrages of foreign lords, for oppression, for union, for shameful dominion Judaism on Christian land - for everything that accumulated and ruined the harsh hatred of the Cossacks from ancient times. The young but strong-willed Hetman Ostranitsa led the whole innumerable Cossack force. Near him was seen his experienced comrade and adviser Gunya.
The leader of the rebellious Cossacks, Stepan Ostranin, was a Poltava resident, Gogol's countryman. Chosen by the Cossacks as their hetman, he inflicted several defeats on the Poles, but Pototsky managed to defeat the Cossacks near the town of Zhovnina. Ostranin with part of the Cossacks went to the Moscow kingdom. The remaining Cossacks were led by Ostranin's assistant, Colonel Dmitry Gunya. For two months, the Cossacks held back the attacks of the gentry troops, but the forces were not equal. Guna and his comrades also had to go to Russia. Two years later, he led the sea campaign of the Donets and Cossacks against the Turks.
Gogol was convinced that the thoughts of the Cossacks who fought against the union were high and noble. He made no secret of his disgust for the Unia, for the Jesuits, for the papacy, for medieval Catholic expansion against Southern and Western Rus'. In the treatise “On the Middle Ages”, he spoke about the sky-high ambitions of medieval popes, their “irresistible desire to rule”, about the despotism of “countless legions of powerful clergy - zealous subjects of the spiritual monarch, who imposed their iron fetters on all corners of the world”, about the “gloomy Inquisition - ferocious, blind, believing in nothing but her terrible and hellishly ingenious tortures. Medieval Catholicism brought to the peoples "terrible judgments, inexorable, irresistible, which are not conscience before a windy world, but a terrible image of death and execution." Against this despotism, iron chains, the Inquisition with its inexorable terrible judgments and the Orthodox of Southern Rus' rose up, in stubborn fidelity to their father's covenants, drawing energy, without which their life would be "colorless and powerless."
From the history of the union resistance
The stubborn proselytism of the Roman Church was rooted in the distant past, and it always aroused bewilderment among the Russian people: after all, back in the 10th century, Rus' made a voluntary and conscious choice, adopting the Orthodox faith closest to it in spirit. "The Tale of Bygone Years" tells how Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich, knowing well the difference between Orthodoxy and Latinism, said goodbye to the papal ambassadors: "Go where you came from, for our fathers did not accept your faith." Catholicism imposed deadly patterns on the peoples, declaring its doctrine a "secret" and forbidding the development of native languages and cultures. Orthodoxy, while preaching philanthropy, did not deprive peoples of the right to originality and to the knowledge of divine truth, rejected rigid unification, highly appreciating the beauty and richness of human existence. Rus', having become an Orthodox power, got the opportunity to live in accordance with the ideals of world affirmation, brotherhood and goodwill towards all living things.
The papacy did not consider the right of peoples to spiritual freedom, having approved the practice of crusades - military-religious expeditions against peoples who were outside of Catholicism. Those who took a vow to take up arms against the pagans and the Orthodox, the popes absolved their sins and gave sanction to seize lands and property in the conquered countries. During the Crusades, many West Slavic tribes were wiped off the face of the earth, a large Baltic tribe of the Prussians, the tribal nobility was cut out from the Lats and Estonians, who found themselves in serfdom among the Teutonic Knights.
In 1204, with the blessing of the Roman curia, the crusaders captured Constantinople, which was the center of the Orthodox world, subjected it to wild robbery, insulted the shrines that were in the Hagia Sophia and other churches. Tons of gold were exported from Byzantium to Western Europe, which served as the material basis for the subsequent economic growth and prosperity of Europe. Before the Crusades, it was a gray backwater of world civilization, but now it was turning into a financial and commercial monopoly that defended its interests with the help of aggression.
The papacy tried to establish its new role by "officially" substantiating the principle of violence in matters of faith and usurping the right to "punish sins" of entire nations. In such circumstances, the church conscience was doomed to silence, the defense of the gospel commandments receded into the background. Catholics began to interpret the salvation of the soul as deliverance from punishment for sins. There were indulgences - tariffs for the absolution of sins. Orthodox such a phenomenon seemed savagery.
The aggressive proselytism of the Latins did not bypass Orthodox Rus' either. In 1224, the German Crusaders captured the Russian city of Yuryev, founded by Yaroslav the Wise. The entire Orthodox population of the city was destroyed. The limit to the seizure of Russian lands by the crusaders and the destruction of the Russian population was put by the noble prince Alexander Nevsky. Having defeated the Swedes on the Neva and the Teutons near Pskov, he saved the spiritual freedom of the Russians.
But the tests for Rus' did not end there. As a result of specific fragmentation, its western and southern lands became part of the Russian-Lithuanian principality, where the dynasty was Lithuanian, and nine-tenths of the population was Russian. official language was Russian, the predominant religion - Orthodoxy. But at the end of the 14th century, Prince Jagiello converted to Catholicism, which opened the gates for the penetration of Polish cultural influence into Lithuania.
In the second half of the 16th century, Lithuania united with Poland into one state - the Commonwealth, after which the Polish gentry began to seize the southern Russian lands, and the Catholic Church launched an offensive against Russian Orthodox traditions. In 1596, the Union of Brest was imposed on part of the Orthodox clergy of Southern and Western Rus', according to which the Orthodox had to submit to the Pope. The papacy was content, believing that it had achieved what it had dreamed of for several centuries.
But the Latins did not take into account the loyalty of the Russian people to their spiritual values, their firmness and readiness to go to the end in defending Orthodoxy. The Russians clearly felt that coercion in matters of faith is a kind of lie and that submission to it means spiritual death. They put up all sorts of resistance to the union. "Peace and Accord" in the papal edition did not work, and could not work, because the Catholics and the Uniate elite that took their side openly demonstrated their intolerance and hatred to the Orthodox. Orthodox monasteries and churches were closed en masse. In some of them, the Uniates tried to establish their services, taking even Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. But the people did not go to these services, and then the Orthodox monasteries were converted into warehouses, taverns, pens for cattle.
Not all the inhabitants of Southern Rus' managed to resist the onslaught of the Uniates. It was especially difficult for representatives of the local nobility, who were tempted by various promises, benefits, the opportunity to enter power, to acquire numerous servants, to do this. Among the Western Russian princes and boyars there were those who, for the sake of material wealth, deviated from the faith of their ancestors, took upon themselves the sin of Judas.
However, the vast majority of the inhabitants of Southern and Western Rus' preserved the faith of their ancestors, courageously overcoming arbitrariness, persecution and suffering. Peasants, artisans, merchants who did not recognize the union were severely infringed on their rights. Social oppression was added to religious discrimination: Polish lords bought up or seized Russian villages by force, turning Orthodox plowmen into powerless "cattle". The Orthodox people did not intend to endure humiliation. After the announcement of the union, a wave of anti-Polish and anti-Uniate uprisings swept across southern and western Rus'. Papists and their henchmen were smashed in Kyiv, Lvov, Poltava, Lutsk, Minsk, Polotsk, Mogilev, Orsha. The Pope, rejecting "peaceful", persuasive rhetoric, called on the Polish king to drown the rebels in blood: "May the one who keeps his sword from blood be cursed! Let schism know that it has no mercy!”
Nothing could stop the rebels, inspired by the fact that a patriarchate was proclaimed in their consanguineous Muscovy, and on the eve of the announcement of the Union of Brest, the voice of the Russian Orthodox Church became much more audible than before.
The Cossacks stood at the head of the liberation movement in Ukraine. It was formed by the most freedom-loving and passionate people of Southern Rus', who did not want to live under the Polish-Catholic oppression and fled beyond the Dnieper rapids, where the famous free brotherhood, the Zaporozhian Sich, was formed. The Cossacks entered into a desperate battle with the Poles. They knew that in the event of captivity they could not wait for mercy from the gentry, but for the sake of the liberation of the Russian land they were ready to endure any torment.
Many of them were martyred for Rus' and the Russian faith. Captured by the Poles, the Cossack hetman Kosinsky was walled up alive in the monastery wall. After his death, the Cossack uprising was led by Nalivaiko. Involving tens of thousands of peasants and townspeople in the uprising, the Nalivaikists liberated Vinnitsa, Kremenets, Lutsk, Pinsk, and Mogilev from the Poles. But forces in the fight against the powerful and who did not know the need for weapons Polish army the Cossacks did not have enough. Nalivaiko and his closest comrades were treacherously captured, some were quartered and beheaded by the Poles, others were burned alive in copper tanks. However, the spirit of the Cossacks was impossible to break. Wave after wave of uprisings against panism and union rolled on.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the “appetites” of Catholic Poland also spread to Muscovy, where, thanks to the efforts of the Poles, a large-scale turmoil began. At first, the Polish magnates and the Vatican behind them relied on impostors and renegades from among the Russians, but their calculations failed. Then the Polish king Sigismund gave the order to launch a direct armed intervention against the "schismatic Muscovites".
After the failure in Muscovy, the Catholic Church sharply increased the pressure on the Orthodox of Southern and Western Rus'. Orthodoxy was actually outlawed there. The Polish Sejm banned the use of the Russian language in office work. The answer to the persecution was the creation of Orthodox brotherhoods in Kyiv, Lvov, Lutsk, Vilna and other Russian cities. The brotherhoods organized schools, preached vigorously in defense of Orthodoxy, and published theological and educational literature.
Military resistance to the Polish-Catholic yoke expanded. The performances of the Cossacks led by the hetmans Zhmailo, Pavlyuk, Ostranin, and Gunya overtook the Poles with many fears. The Polish magnate Nikolai Pototsky, who fought against Ostranin and Guni, wrote in his diary: “The peasants were so stubborn and rebellious that none of them asked for peace and for forgiveness of their guilt. On the contrary, they only shouted that they should all die in battle with our army. And even those who did not get weapons beat our soldiers with shafts.
In the spring of 1648, a grandiose anti-Polish uprising broke out in Ukraine under the leadership of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky. The Cossacks, peasants and townspeople were ready to fight to the death in their struggle, but, given the experience of previous uprisings, they understood that they alone, without the combination of all the forces of the Russian world, would not be able to cope with a cruel enemy. Bogdan Khmelnitsky appealed to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with a request to accept the united faith Ukraine into the Russian state. The addition of forces in the struggle against Poland brought results: Eastern Ukraine, together with Kiev - the "mother of Russian cities" - was liberated.
The process of unification of ancient Russian territories stretched to late XVIII century. Many troubles during this time had to endure the Orthodox of Southern and Western Rus'. Discrimination against Orthodoxy led to the fact that by the middle of the 18th century, more than half of the churches were taken from the Orthodox in favor of the Uniates. Every year it became clearer and clearer to Belarusians and Ukrainians that they would be able to preserve their national and historical existence only as part of a single Russian state.
Fighting, suffering and dying during the years of the Polish Catholic oppression for the right to their own, and not imposed, spiritual world, to their own, and not imposed history, Orthodox Ukrainians and Belarusians were convinced that their struggle and suffering would not be in vain.
In 1839, Gogol witnessed an event that was extremely significant for the historical fate of Ukraine and Belarus. In that year, at the insistence and almost with the full support of the Ukrainian and Belarusian population, a Uniate Church Council was convened in Polotsk, at which a decision was made to include the Uniate Church of Western Russian regions into the Russian Orthodox Church. One and a half million former Uniates voluntarily wished to join the purity of Orthodoxy. On the memorial medal, knocked out in honor of the liquidation of the Union of Brest, the words were minted: "Rejected by violence (1596) reunited by love (1839)". Historical justice has been restored. No wonder the Gospel says: "He who endures to the end will be saved."
The claims of the papacy to dominate the minds and souls of the majority of Ukrainians and Belarusians turned out to be illusory. There was one exception - Galicia, captured by Austria. The abolition of the Union of Brest in 1839 did not affect Galicia. At the end of the 19th century, the Austrian Empire began preparations for a military-political confrontation with Russia, so a new wave of de-Russification fell upon the Galicians. It was a purposeful operation of the Austrian General Staff. The Russian language was supplanted by an artificial dialect, which appeared as a result of the activities of the “Viennese school of Ukrainian studies” that was maintained by the General Staff. At the beginning of the 20th century, Mykhailo Grushevsky, for the money of the Vienna court, wrote the "History of Ukraine-Rus", the purpose of which was "separation" Ukrainian history from Russian history.
Those who resisted the plans of the Austrians were massacred during the First World War. The result of all this "engineering" was the formation of a special ethnic group with its own religion, its own language, its own geopolitical orientation. By all accounts, this ethnic group belongs not to the East Slavic, but to the Western European civilization. Typically, the Western mentality of the Galicians manifests itself in the desire to impose uniform rigid patterns on the world, rejecting the existential diversity, blooming complexity. This mentality pushes them to continue the work of fanatics, who in the Middle Ages tortured and burned South Rus' for loyalty to their native faith and native language. The Galician activists, just as during the spread of the union in the Western Russian lands, continue to feel like the legionnaires of the Pope, who expects them to "conquer the Eastern schism." The renegades became "missionaries."
Nikolai Gogol, who wrote: “We are not called into the world to exterminate and destroy”, was and remains a symbol of opposition to the self-styled “conquerors” and “missionaries”, their anger and hatred. The words put by Gogol into the mouth of Taras Bulba and become a hymn to Russian traditions, the Russian ability to give their lives “for their friends” do not lose their strength and their meaning: “There were comrades in other lands, but there were no such comrades. ... to love like the Russian soul - to love not only with the mind or anything else, but with everything that God has given, whatever is in you ... No, no one can love like that! I know that vile things have now begun on our land; they only think that they have with them stacks of grain, stacks and their horse herds, so that their sealed honey would be intact in the cellars. Adopt the devil knows what infidel customs; they abhor their tongue; he sells his own, as they sell a soulless creature in a trading market. The mercy of a foreign king, and not a king at all, but the foul mercy of a Polish magnate who beats them in the face with his yellow shoe, is dearer to them than any brotherhood. But the last bastard, whatever he is, even though he was all covered in soot and worship, there is, brothers, a grain of Russian feeling. And someday it will wake up, and it will hit, miserable, on the floor with its hands, grab itself by the head, loudly cursing its vile life, ready to atone for the shameful deed with torment. Let everyone know what partnership is in the Russian land! If it comes to that, to die, then no one will ever die like that! No one, no one!"
“In front of us is a mass - the Russian language!”
In Ukraine, "Taras Bulba" is now published in a "translation" from Russian into Ukrainian. Everything that concerns Russia and Russians is thrown out of the text of the story. "Russia" was replaced by "Ukraine", "the riotous manner of Russian nature" turned into a "broad gulyatsky zamis of Ukrainian nature", and "Russian power" into "Ukrainian power". Gogol’s scenes of the last battle of the Cossacks Taras Bulba with the Poles are saturated with special energy, when the Cossack heroes Shilo, Bovdyuga, Balaban, Kukubenko die one after another, exclaiming before death: “Let the Orthodox Russian land stand forever!”, “Let it be famous until the end of the century, the Russian land!”, “Let the Russian land bloom forever!”, “Let the Russian land forever loved by Christ flaunt!”. In the Ukrainian "translation" "Russian land" turned out to be "Cossack land" everywhere.
There is no need to prove that all this translation pandemonium is an open insult to the great Gogol, a mockery of his artistic heritage and a direct desecration of the people's and historical memory. But Ivan Malkovich, director of the Kiev publishing house under the avant-garde name "A-ba-ba-ha-la-ma-ga", which released an ideological translation of "Taras Bulba", does not blow his mustache, justifying this translation by the fact that "the Russian language for Ukraine is a stranger."
There are no limits to ignorance. The denial of bilingualism and the assertive imposition of language on all the inhabitants of Ukraine reflect precisely ignorance: after all, the Russian literary language originated precisely in Ukraine back in the 16th century. In the "Grammar" of Ivan Uzhevich, released in 1634, he was called the "Slovene Russian language" and was characterized as a high book language, the language of theology and science. The famous Russian philosopher and founder of the Eurasian movement, Nikolai Trubetskoy, wrote: “The culture that has been living and developing in Russia since the time of Peter the Great is an organic and direct continuation not of Moscow, but of Kiev culture.”
Gogol was also a natural bearer of this culture. There is not a single work written by him in Ukrainian. It is not enough to say that he wrote in Russian. His contribution to the development of the Russian literary language cannot be assessed otherwise than as outstanding and colossal. Without Gogol, there would not be that Russian language, which is given the definition of "great and mighty." Few people can compare with a native of the Poltava hinterland with the power of penetration into the Russian language element, the power of poetic inspiration, the beauty, liveliness and naturalness of the style. Russian speech was for Gogol the space of wonderworking. He considered it unusually alive, absorbing various dialects, dialects and becoming richer and brighter from this.
A letter from Nikolai Vasilyevich to his countryman Osip Bodiansky is known: “We, Osip Maksimovich, must write in Russian, we must strive to support and strengthen one, sovereign language for all our native tribes. The dominant feature should be a single sacred thing - the language of Pushkin ... We, Little Russians and Russians, need one poetry, calm and strong, imperishable poetry of truth, goodness and beauty. Russian and Little Russian are the souls of twins, replenishing one another, native and equally strong. It is impossible to give preference to one at the expense of the other. Gogol sincerely loved the Russian language, admired it from the bottom of his heart: “Before us is a mass - the Russian language! Deep pleasure calls you, pleasure to plunge into all its immensity ... ". What can the zealots of Ukrainophilism invent in response to these words of Gogol?
However, even Gogol is not able to shake their narrow-minded persistence: the attacks of the “Svidomo” on the Russian language do not weaken. Recently, Yuras Gnatkevich, a representative of the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc in the Verkhovna Rada, demanded that a law be adopted, according to which all means mass media Ukraine - both printed, and electronic, and private, and public - should be published only in Ukrainian. Pan MP, dissatisfied with the fact that 90% of the Ukrainian media go out in "alien language", said that the language situation in Ukraine needs to be regulated by coercive measures: "We must force Ukrainians to respect native language and speak it." They say, if they don't want to speak as we prescribe, then we must force them. How to force? With the help of rough teeth? Everyone sees that on the Ukrainian political scene today, doggies and nostrils are fussily flickering. It is a pity that there is no Gogol on them.
Sergey Rybakov
Illustration - portrait of N.V. Gogol by A.I. Ivanova, 1841
Andrey Marchukov, Ph.D., Institute Russian history RAS, especially for RIA Novosti.
These days Russia is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of one of the the greatest classics Russian Literature Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The anniversary is a great occasion to remember the writer and all that he wanted to convey to his contemporaries and descendants. It is also celebrated in Ukraine. And this is right, because both Gogol himself and his work are our common heritage. But, unfortunately, in Ukraine, the anniversary has become another occasion for political speculation around the personality and work of the writer. There is an ideological campaign, the name of which is "the struggle for Gogol." It is being waged by the same forces as the "Holodomor-genocide" campaign.
Its task is to “prove” that Gogol belongs only to Ukraine, that he did not love and despise Russia, and was almost a Ukrainian nationalist. And the goal is to change the consciousness of the people of Ukraine (and Russia), to break our spiritual unity.
With regard to Gogol in Ukraine, two trends can be traced.
The first - his rejection of the Russian as a writer - still prevails. It is characteristic that in most Ukrainian textbooks Gogol is not included in " native literature”, and, together with other Russian writers, is placed in the section of “foreign” literature. It would seem: there is a genius, a Little Russian by birth, who wrote some of the most poetic descriptions Ukraine - why give it up? The fact is that Gogol and nationalists have different love for Ukraine. As well as the attitude towards Russia and Russianness.
The second trend is the desire to make Gogol a fighter for the Ukrainian nation and a hater of Russia. It was she who became the core of the entire campaign.
The essence of the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism is the assertion that Ukrainians and Russians are peoples completely alien to each other, with different origins and historical fates. Gogol's image is also created in full accordance with this attitude - contrary to what he himself thought and wrote.
Gogol is condemned for having "betrayed" his nationality and "sold" his soul to Russia. His work is divided into two parts. The first - "Ukrainian" ("Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" and "Mirgorod") - is good. The second - "Russian" ("Inspector", "Dead Souls", the St. Petersburg cycle and, of course, "Selected places from correspondence with friends") - is bad. Gogol did not manage to fall in love with Russia, but he showed the bleakness of Russian life.
The “fighters for the Ukrainian Gogol” accuse Russia of having appropriated his work to itself in order to rise “from the downtroddenness of Asia” and not feel “intellectual and cultural inferiority” in front of the European peoples.
Gogol's works are subject to "correction", especially when translated into Ukrainian. Everything that speaks of Russianness is withdrawn from them. For example, in one of the modern publications for schoolchildren and students "Taras Bulba" all the words "Russian" were "translated" as "Ukrainian" or "Cossack". So, "Russian power" turned into "Ukrainian", "Russian soul" - into "Cossack". The exclamation "Let the Russian land be famous until the end of the century!" now it sounds “May the Cossack land be glorious!”, and the phrase “how they know how to fight on Russian land!” - “how to die fighting in the Ukrainian land!”.
In Gogol's time, the word "Ukrainian" had a different, territorial, meaning, and the word "Ukrainian" was almost never used. Then the creators of the Ukrainian idea began to use them, turning them into a synonym for the word “non-Russian”. In the course were the names "Little Russian", Little Russia, which Gogol used. Over time, the terms "Little Russian" and "Ukrainian" began to mean completely different national choices.
So how did Gogol look at the national question? His national outlook, views on Russia and Little Russia developed along with his growth as a person and writer, and they were shaped by completely different ideas and aspirations. Already in his youth, he had an awareness of his destiny, a desire to benefit people, and he saw the whole country as a field of activity. Gogol wanted to be a Russian writer, to say his word to all of Russia and all of humanity.
Yes, the views of the young Gogol on history were influenced by those autonomist-Cossack ideas that were in circulation among the Little Russian nobility. It happened that in historical sketches or communication, especially under the influence of personal experiences, he reproduced their common clichés. But even then it (as well as the vast majority of his fellow countrymen) never even entered his head to question the correctness of the stay of Little Russia as part of Russia. And later he completely moved away from them.
Gogol was also subjected to propaganda by the enemies of Russia. Polish nationalists tried to convert him to Catholicism, tried to instill anti-Russian myths (about the savagery and non-Slavic origin of Russians, their alienation to Ukrainians, the primitiveness of the Russian language). But these attempts were unsuccessful.
Gogol gained initial fame thanks to the Little Russian theme. In the future, Gogol began to be occupied with much more global issues, although he carried his love for his small homeland through his whole life. But love for Little Russia and hatred for Russia are things not only unrelated, but even opposite. In addition, his stories contributed to the consolidation in the Russian mind of the image of Little Russia and Little Russians as "their own." And in the Little Russian society - to strengthen the all-Russian consciousness.
The allegations about Gogol and as a person who scourged Russia are unfounded (by the way, The Inspector General and Dead Souls were well received by the public, and Nicholas I favored the writer). It is impossible to reflect real life without referring to social ulcers - spiritual and social (as their offspring). Eliminate bad qualities in a person (and in himself), and not ridicule Russia - this is how he saw his task.
Gogol is a deeply Christian writer and it is impossible to understand him outside of Christianity. “Everything that only expressed the knowledge of people and the human soul… I was interested, and on this road… I came to Christ, seeing in him the key to the human soul,” he wrote. There is no "light" and "dark" Gogol. There was a man comprehending the world, looking for answers to its main questions. And it was precisely the growing up, the gradual development of his personality, and not the transformation from the “Ukrainian Pavel” into the “Russian Saul”, as the nationalists say.
Spiritual evolution as a believer, the study of history led him to comprehend Russia. Moreover, in its fundamental, religious sense, which was lost by Westernized high society, but which was preserved in the Church and the Orthodox people. Not just as a country and state, but as its ideal - Holy Rus', as a reflection of the Kingdom of God on earth. “I don't want to leave Russia even for three months,” he writes to a respondent. - I would never leave Moscow, which I love so much. And in general, Russia is getting closer and closer to me; in addition to the property of the motherland, there is something in it even higher than the motherland, as if it were the land from where it is closer to the heavenly homeland.
The Orthodox world outlook forced Gogol to think in a new way about the fate of Little Russia, as well as about national self-awareness. “... I don’t know myself what kind of soul I have, Khokhlatskaya or Russian,” he wrote to A. Smirnova. - I only know that I would in no way give an advantage to either a Little Russian over a Russian, or a Russian over a Little Russian. Both natures are too generously endowed by God and, as if on purpose, each of them separately contains what is not in the other - a clear sign that they must complete one another. For this, the very stories of their past life are given to them, unlike one another, so that the various forces of their characters are brought up separately, so that later, merging together, they constitute something most perfect in humanity.
Gogol's attitude to the Russian language is also indicative. He is for him - not just native, deep and beautiful. It is the language of faith and knowledge of God. What a "pleasure ... to catch his wonderful laws, in which ... the eternal father was reflected and on which the universe should thunder with his praise," he wrote to K. Aksakov. “We, Little Russians and Russians, need one poetry, calm and strong,” Gogol convinced fellow countrymen, “the imperishable poetry of truth, goodness and beauty ... Now everyone who writes should not think about hatred, he must first of all put himself in the face of the one who gave us the eternal human word.
Is it possible to refuse such a language, and even for the sake of inventing some kind of “national Ukrainian”, what did the Ukrainophiles do?
So, both parts of Rus', by the very course of history and God's will, must follow the path of not only political, but also cultural and national unity. Why?
The all-Russian path, according to Gogol, most fully corresponded to the destination of both Great and Little Rus', which together make up Russia. Only by merging into an inseparable unity, by constituting “something most perfect in humanity” - the Russian man - could they rise to that spiritual state that would allow them to fulfill the task entrusted to them - to convey to mankind the testimony of God on earth.
Thus, Gogol reacted negatively to the emerging Ukrainian idea, the essence of which was precisely their maximum cultural, national and political division. It is for this choice that Ukrainian nationalists do not like Gogol.
And he himself expressed his credo as follows: "my thoughts, my name, my works will belong to Russia," an inseparable part of which he saw his native Little Russia.
Among Ukrainian nationalists, there are two different opinions about Gogol, both unjustified. In one, Gogol is treated as a traitor to the interests of Ukraine, where he was born. In another - as a secret Ukrainophile in Russian culture. As you know, Gogol wrote only in Russian.
Among Ukrainian nationalists, there are two different opinions about Gogol, both unjustified. In one, Gogol is treated as a traitor to the interests of Ukraine, where he was born. In another - as a secret Ukrainophile in Russian culture. As you know, Gogol wrote only in Russian. Translating his story "Taras Bulba" into Ukrainian, the current translator allows himself to Ukrainize the text, while significantly distorting the meaning. For example, such fundamental, significant words as "Russian land" are replaced by the words "Ukrainian land". Thus, the great narrows down to the small. The national consciousness of the Cossacks is shrinking, and this is no longer Gogol. At the same time, the great Russian writer always treated the Ukrainian people and everything related to his small homeland with love.
Gogol did not need to find out whether he was a Little Russian or a Russian - his friends dragged him into disputes about this. In 1844, he answered the request of Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova in the following way: “I’ll tell you one word about what kind of soul I have, Khokhlatskaya or Russian, because, as I see from your letter, this was at one time the subject of your reasoning and disputes with others "To this I'll tell you that I myself don't know what kind of soul I have, Khokhlack or Russian. I only know that I would in no way give an advantage to either a Little Russian over a Russian, or a Russian over a Little Russian. Both natures are too generously endowed by God, and as if on purpose each of them separately contains what is not in the other - a clear sign that they must complete one another.For this, the very stories of their past life are given to them, unlike one another, so that various forces of their character are brought up separately, so that later, having merged into one, to compose something most perfect in humanity. In Gogol's notebook of 1846-1851 we find the following remark: "Hug both halves of the Russian people, northern and southern, the treasure of their spirit and character." This idea, perhaps, is the program of some unknown work, where the writer intended to describe, to cover the whole life of the Russian people.
There was a time when Gogol wanted to settle in Kyiv, the ancient Russian capital. In December 1833, he wrote to his friend Mikhail Maksimovich from St. Petersburg: “Thank you for everything: for the letter, for the thoughts in it, for the news, and so on. Kiev! It's ours, it's not theirs, isn't it? The deeds of our antiquity were going on there or around it." Maksimovich, apparently, suggested that Gogol seek a chair of world history at the then newly opened Kiev University of St. Vladimir (it was opened after the closure of the university in Vilna in order to counter Polish and Ukrainian separatism). In the words "he is ours" and "not theirs" Gogol meant not Ukrainians and Russians, but Slavs and "Germans", "Westerners". The latter strenuously sought to take places at Kiev University. “They say,” Gogol noted in the same letter to Maksimovich, “a lot of some Germans have already been appointed there, this is also not so pleasant. At least for St. Vladimir there are more Slavs. truly enlightened and as pure and kind in soul as we are with you."
The period of Gogol's passion for moving to Kyiv was short-lived. The Minister of Public Education, Count Sergiy Semyonovich Uvarov, offered him a professorship in the Department of World History at St. Petersburg University, and Gogol stayed in St. Petersburg, and did not leave for Kyiv. Like Maksimovich, who was one of the first to publicly support the program of Sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich in the field of public education, Gogol was an adherent of the government course "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality" and became an active employee of the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education. Later, in a conversation with his fellow countryman Osip Maksimovich Bodyansky, a famous Slavist, professor at Moscow University, Gogol said: “I know and love Shevchenko as a fellow countryman and a gifted artist: But our wise men ruined him, pushing him into works that are alien to true talent. They all European, long-discarded chewing gums are still chewing. The Russian and the Little Russian are twin souls, replenishing one another, native and equally strong. It is impossible to give preference to one at the expense of the other." At the same time, Gogol said: “We, Osip Maksimovich, need to write in Russian: we must strive to support and strengthen one, sovereign language for all our native tribes. The dominant for Russians, Czechs, Ukrainians and Serbs should be a single shrine - the language of Pushkin, what is the gospel for all Christians" (Historical Bulletin, 1881, No. 12, p. 479).
It is known that Gogol was very fond of Moscow. "Moscow is my homeland," he wrote to Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov in 1841. While in Kyiv, Gogol said to Fyodor Chizhov: "Whoever is strongly accustomed to Roman life, after Rome, only Moscow can be liked." According to the conviction made by Ivan Zolotarev from living together with Gogol in Rome, “Gogol was a purely Russian person, and not a Little Russian, as they want to present him: the writer passionately loved Russia, and not only Little Russia. His favorite literature was Russian literature: the most beloved : Zhukovsky and Pushkin were writers" (Historical Bulletin. 1893. No. 1. P. 38). Work on " Dead souls"as if she opened to Gogol not only the spaces, but also the spirituality of Russia. In the autumn of 1850, he wrote to Alexander Skarlatovich Sturdze from Vasilyevka: "I will tell you frankly that I do not want to leave Russia even for three months. I would never leave Moscow, which I love so much. And in general, Russia is getting closer and closer to me. In addition to the property of the homeland, there is something in it even higher than the homeland, just as if it were the land from where it is closer to the heavenly homeland.
As for Gogol's historical story "Taras Bulba", it is a confirmation of the writer's ideas about the integrity of the Russian Empire, sealed by the Orthodox faith. In the article "A Look at the Compilation of Little Russia" (1835), Gogol characterizes the Cossacks as follows: "Most of this society consisted of: primitive, indigenous inhabitants southern Russia. The proof is in the language, which, despite the adoption of many Tatar and Polish words, always had a purely Slavic southern physiognomy, bringing it closer to the then Russian, and in the faith, which was always Greek.
The heroes of the Zaporozhian Sich have one thing in common - their selfless devotion to the Motherland. Cossacks slain in battle, dying, glorify the Russian land. The words of Taras come true: "Let them all know what partnership means in the Russian land. If it comes to that, to die, then none of them will ever die like that! .." Here the mortally wounded daring ataman Mosiy Shilo staggered, put his hand on his wound and said: "Farewell, pan-brothers, comrades! let the Orthodox Russian land stand for eternity and be honored forever!" The good Cossack Stepan Huska, raised on four spears, only managed to exclaim: "Let all enemies perish and the Russian land rejoice forever!" Old Kasyan Bovdyug fell, hit by a bullet in the very heart, but, having collected last strength, said: “It’s not a pity to part with the world! God forbid everyone has such a death! May the Russian land be famous until the end of the century! "
It is important for Gogol to show that the Cossacks fight and die for the Orthodox faith. "And Bovdyug's soul rushed to the heights to tell the long-departed elders how they know how to fight on the Russian land and, even better, how they know how to die in it for the holy faith." Here fell, pierced by a spear, the smoking ataman Kukubenko, best color Cossack army. He moved his eyes around him and said: “Thank God that I happened to die before your eyes, comrades! The author admires his hero: “And a young soul flew out. The angels lifted it under their arms and carried it to heaven; it will be good for him there. “Sit down, Kukubenko, at my right hand! Christ will tell him. “You have not betrayed fellowship, you have not done a dishonorable deed, you have not betrayed a person in trouble, you have preserved and preserved My Church.”
Reading "Taras Bulba", you understand that there is no crime in the world more terrible and shameful than treason. Younger son Tarasa, having despised the sacred duty, was carried away by a beautiful Polish woman and went over to the side of the enemies of the Sich. Andriy perceives his last meeting with his father as a terrible retribution. To Taras's question: "What, son! Did your Poles help you?" - Andriy "was unresponsive." "So sell? sell faith? sell yours?" Taras does not feel pity for his son-traitor. Without hesitation, he administers his judgment: "I gave birth to you, I will kill you!" Andriy humbly accepts his father's sentence, realizing that he has no and cannot have an excuse. He is not only a traitor, but also a God-fighter, because, renouncing his homeland (“Who said that my homeland is Ukraine? Who gave it to me in my homeland?”), He renounces God’s establishment: only He indicates to everyone the place of his birth, and A person must love the Motherland given to him by God.
And after this, the eldest son of Taras Ostap is captured. At the risk of his life, his father sneaks into the camp of enemies to support him at the moment of painful execution. Soon, Taras himself courageously dies in the fire, crucified on a tree. In the last minutes of his life, he thinks not about himself, but about his comrades, about his homeland. ": Already the Cossacks were on the canoes and rowed with oars; bullets rained down on them from above, but did not reach them. And the joyful eyes of the old ataman flashed. "Farewell, comrades! he shouted at them from above. “Remember me and come here again next spring and have a good walk!” What did you get, damn Poles? Do you think there is anything in the world that a Cossack would be afraid of? Wait, the time will come, the time will come, you will know what the Orthodox Russian faith is! "
Gogol was firmly convinced that as long as faith is alive among the people, the people themselves will also be alive. As the Russian historian Nikolai Talberg wrote, "the vast mass of the Little Russian people was with Gogol, and not with those renegades who, like Tarasov's son Andriy, renounced millennial Russia."
Vladimir Voropaev
http://gogol.niv.ru/gogol/bio/ukrainskij-vopros. htm
Russian Civilization
