Editing Nikolai Gogol (section)

== National identity ==
{{undue section|reason=Only one viewpoint is presented, large passages devoted to a single Ukrainian author|date=January 2025}}
Gogol was born in the [[Zaporozhian Cossacks|Ukrainian Cossack]] town of [[Velyki Sorochyntsi|Sorochyntsi]]. According to [[Edyta Bojanowska]], Gogol's images of [[Ukraine]] are in-depth, distinguished by description of [[Ukrainian folklore|folklore]] and [[History of Ukraine|history]]. In his [[Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka|Evenings on a Farm]], Gogol pictures Ukraine as a "nation ... united by organic [[Ukrainian Culture|culture]], historical memory, and [[Ukrainian language|language]]". His image of [[Russia]] lacks this depth and is always based in the present, particularly focused on Russia's bureaucracy and corruption. ''[[Dead Souls]]'', according to Bojanowska, "presents Russian uniqueness as a catalog of faults and vices."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Bojanowska |first=Edyta M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m6JiAAAAMAAJ |title=Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism |date=2007-02-28 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-02291-1 |pages=370, 371 |language=en |quote=The strength of Gogol’s commitment to Ukraine before 1836 is also reflected in his plans to move to Kiev in order to devote himself to ethnographic and historic research on Ukraine. Only when these plans fell through did Gogol decide to become a Russian writer, a role that he understood as concomitant to serving Russian nationalism.}}</ref> The duality of Gogol’s national identity is frequently expressed as a view that "in the aesthetic, psychological, and existential senses Gogol is inscribed ... into Ukrainian culture", while "in historical and cultural terms he is part of Russian literature and culture".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ilchuk |first=Yuliya |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ArImEAAAQBAJ&dq=Polish+writers+in+the+database,+which+reinforces+my+argument+of+his&pg=PA169 |title=Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity |date=2021-02-26 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1-4875-0825-8 |pages=3-18,167-172 |language=en}}</ref> Slavicist [[Edyta Bojanowska]] writes that Gogol, after arriving in St. Petersburg, was surprised to find that he was perceived as a Ukrainian, and even as a [[Oseledets#Khokhol|''khokhol'']] (hick). Bojanowska argues that it was this experience that "made him into a ''self-conscious Ukrainian''". According to Ilchuk, dual national identities were typical at that time as a "compromise with the [[Russian Empire|empire]]'s demand for national homogenization".<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ueland |first1=Carol |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SmFkEAAAQBAJ&dq=gogol+russian+ukrainian+colonial&pg=PA96 |title=Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia: Biography for the Masses |last2=Trigos |first2=Ludmilla A. |date=2022-03-14 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-7936-1830-6 |pages=95,96 |language=en}}</ref>

Professor of Russian literature Kathleen Scollins notes the tendency to politicize Gogol's identity, and comments on the erasure of Gogol's Ukrainianness by the Russian literary establishment, which she argues "reveals the insecurity of many Russians about their own imperial identity". According to Scollins, Gogol's narrative [[Dialogue_(Bakhtin)#Double-voiced_discourse|double-voicedness]] in both ''[[Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka|Evenings]]'' and ''[[Taras Bulba]]'' and "pidginized Russian" of the [[Zaporozhian Cossacks|Zaporizhian Cossacks]] in "[[Christmas Eve (Gogol)|The Night before Christmas]] represents a "strateg[y] of resistance, self-assertion, and divergence"".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Scollins |first=Kathleen |date=2022 |title=Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity by Yuliya Ilchuk (review) |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/28/article/903273 |journal=Pushkin Review |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=97–101 |doi=10.1353/pnr.2022.a903273 |issn=2165-0683}}</ref> Linguist Daniel Green notes "the complexities of an imperial culture in which Russian and Ukrainian literatures and identities informed and shaped each other, with Gogol´ playing a key role in these processes".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Green |first=Daniel |date=2023 |title=Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity by Yuliya Ilchuk (review) |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/427/article/923986 |journal=Slavonic and East European Review |volume=101 |issue=4 |pages=784–785 |doi=10.1353/see.2023.a923986 |issn=2222-4327}}</ref>

Gogol's appreciation of Ukraine grew during his discovery of Ukrainian history, and he concluded that "Ukraine possessed exactly the kind of cultural wholeness, proud tradition, and self-awareness that Russia lacked." He rejected or was critical of many of the postulates of official Russian history about Ukrainian nationhood. His unpublished "[[Ivan Mazepa|Mazepa’s]] Meditations" presents Ukrainian history in a manner that justifies Ukraine’s "historic right to independence". Before 1836, Gogol had planned to move to Kyiv to study Ukrainian ethnography and history, and it was after these plans failed that he decided to become a Russian writer.<ref name=":0" />

Professor of literature and Gogol researcher [[:uk:Ільницький_Олег_Романович|Oleh Ilnytzkyj]] also argues against the traditional classification of Nikolai Gogol as a Russian writer, saying that he should be viewed as a Ukrainian writer operating within an imperial culture. The "Russian" view of Gogol, he contends, arises from "all-Russianness," an ideology aimed at [[All-Russian nation|assimilating the East Slavs into a singular "Russian" nation]]. Gogol was appropriated by an underdeveloped Russian literature, which downplayed his Ukrainian heritage and nationalism to bolster its own prestige. Ilnytzkyj emphasizes that Russian functioned as an imperial lingua franca rather than a marker of nationality, serving as a literary language adopted by Ukrainian society to advance a Ukrainian national agenda before Ukrainian became the preferred option. He refutes the notion that Gogol’s Ukrainian and Russian works reflect a "divided soul," portraying them instead as unified expressions of Ukrainian nationalism—rooted in a deep love for Ukraine and disdain for Russia, from which he self-exiled for twelve years. Gogol’s struggle, Ilnytzkyj argues, was not with his identity but with the demands placed on him by Russian imperial expectations.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Ilnytzkyj |first=Oleh S. |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111373263/html |title=Nikolai Gogol: Ukrainian Writer in the Empire: A Study in Identity |date=2024-07-22 |publisher=De Gruyter |isbn=978-3-11-137326-3 |language=en |doi=10.1515/9783111373263}}</ref>

In his interpretation of [[Taras Bulba|Taras Bulba (1842)]], Ilnytzkyj argues that the second edition of the novel is a profound assertion of Ukrainian nationalism, supported by a meticulous examination of Gogol’s use of terms such as russkii, Rossiia, and tsar'. According to Ilnytzkyj, Gogol deliberately linked his [[Cossacks|Ukrainian Cossack]] characters to the legacy of [[Kievan Rus'|Kyivan Rus’]], crafting a distinct [[Ruthenians|Ukrainian-Rus’ian]] identity with the term russkii—a direct challenge to the "all-Russian" narrative advanced by Russian imperial ideology. While Gogol’s legacy occupies a place in both Ukrainian and Russian literary traditions, Ilnytzkyj cautions against confusing his dual influence with a hyphenated identity, emphasizing instead Gogol’s fundamental Ukrainian identity within a transnational imperial framework. Finally, Ilnytzkyj asserts that nothing Gogol wrote after 1842 undermines his identity as a Ukrainian writer. After publishing Dead Souls and the revised Taras Bulba, Gogol ceased to function as an artist, despite attempts to sustain his earlier creative efforts. His later non-fiction, shaped by a religious crisis and pressure to revise his views on Russia, cannot negate the Ukrainian nationalist and anti-Russian achievements of his earlier fiction.<ref name=":1" />