LITTLE RUSSIA AND GREAT RUSSIA IN SATIRE BY NIKOLAI GOGOL

Abstract

The article first discusses the problem of the correlation in the work of Nikolai Gogol as satirist or critic of the “Little Russian” and “Great Russian” types of Russian nobility. The influence of Nikolai Gogol’s Ukraine impressions on the creation of a number of his works of an all-Russia nature is emphasised: short story “The Nose”, the comedy “The Inspector General”, and the poem “Dead Souls”. Based on a comprehensive analysis, numerous facts and various testimonies of contemporaries, a conclusion is drawn about the deep imperial consciousness of the writer, who did not distinguish representatives of the Ukraine and Great Russia in his religious, pastoral criticism. The writer always thought of the Ukraine as part of Rus’ – Russia – the Russian Empire. In contrast to the ideologists of a narrow “small-town” “patriotism”, Nikolai Gogol, being a state thinker, considered the inhabitants of Northern and Southern Russia as subjects of a single Russian power and in his convictions of unworthy employees, “malignant” people of miscellaneous ranks and of the nobility was equally strict and demanding to his countrymen as well as to the Great Russians.