Editing Nikolai Gogol (section)

==Politics==
[[File:Gogol moscow.jpg|thumb|upright|The first Gogol memorial in Russia (an impressionistic statue by [[Nikolay Andreyev (sculptor)|Nikolay Andreyev]], 1909)]]
[[Image:Monumento di Nikolay Gogol (Villa Borghese, Roma, Italia).jpg|thumb|A more conventional statue of Gogol at the [[Villa Borghese gardens]], Rome]]
[[Image:Gogol by Repin.jpg|thumb|''Gogol burning the manuscript of the second part of ''Dead Souls, by [[Ilya Repin]]]]
[[File:Russia-Stamp-2009-NGogol.jpg|thumb|upright|Postage stamp, Russia, 2009]]

It stunned Gogol when some critics interpreted ''[[The Government Inspector]]'' as an indictment of [[Tsarism]] despite Nicholas I's patronage of the play. Gogol himself, an adherent of the [[Slavophile]] movement, believed in a divinely inspired mission for both the [[House of Romanov]] and the [[Russian Orthodox Church]]. Like [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]], Gogol sharply disagreed with those Russians who preached [[constitutional monarchy]] and the disestablishment of the Orthodox Church. Gogol saw his work as a critique that would change Russia for the better.<ref>{{cite web|title=Очень нервный вечер. Как Николай I и Гоголь постановку «Ревизора» смотрели|url=https://aif.ru/culture/theater/ochen_nervnyy_vecher_kak_nikolay_i_i_gogol_postanovku_revizora_smotreli|publisher=[[Argumenty i Fakty]]|date=1 May 2016|lang=ru}}</ref>

After defending [[autocracy]], [[serfdom]], and the Orthodox Church in his book ''Selected Passages from Correspondence with his Friends'' (1847), Gogol came under attack from his former patron [[Vissarion Belinsky]]. The first Russian intellectual to publicly preach the economic theories of [[Karl Marx]], Belinsky accused Gogol of betraying his readership by defending the ''status quo''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/belinsky/gogol.htm |title=Letter to N.V. Gogol |publisher=marxists.org |date=February 2008 |access-date=12 December 2017}}</ref>