Abstract
The fundamental, plot-forming theme for Nikolai Gogol’s comedy «The Gamblers” (1842) is investigated, the idea that ignoring a secularised society of spiritual ideals, focusing only on «technical» improvement leads to the exhaustion of a credit of trust between people, without which the existence of any social institution is impossible. The originality of Nikolai Gogol’s plan lies in the fact that he managed to put an ordinary card game on a par with numerous phenomena of public life, in which, since the time of Peter I and Catherine II, «imaginative» values based on conditional recognition of their validity began to play a much bigger role, than in pre-Petrine Russia. The play is considered in the context of all the writer’s work; a connection is established between its content and «The Government Inspector” (1836), «Dead Souls» (1842), the book «Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends» (1847), and other works by Nikolai Gogol.
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