| This study revises the standard view of Gogol's commitments by recovering his Ukrainian nationalism and calling into question his Russian nationalism. It departs from existing scholarship by analyzing Gogol's views on both nationalisms within a single framework, exposing interrelations and points of tension. My interpretations of Gogol's works are contextualized within modern scholarship on nationalism, Russian debates on nationality, and a comprehensive treatment of Gogol's reception.;Russian imperial reality allowed for an interplay and coexistence of allegiances. Gogol's lifelong cultural belonging to Ukraine coincided with his civic dedication to Russia. The imperial-national dynamic came to the fore in Evenings on a Farm near Dikan'ka, read here as an anticolonial text, and in the 1842 Taras Bul'ba, which promoted Gogol's vision of a greater Russian nation that would include Ukrainians.;Gogol's Ukrainian nationalism predominated until 1836. He extolled Ukraine as a Herderian nation in Evenings on a Farm and, evading the censor, in his historical writings. Gogol's Ukraine was bounded by history and an organic culture, qualities that his conflicted vision of Russia lacked. Neither the imperial capital nor the Russian heartland, which he satirized in the Petersburg stories, The Government Inspector, and Dead Souls, furnished Gogol with reasons for national glorification. In his essayistic Selected Passages of Correspondence with Friends , Gogol presented the Russian nation as a work in progress and proposed a comprehensive nationalist ideology, fashioned on the principles of Official Nationality, which was to facilitate Russia's attainment of nationhood.;This study documents Gogol's emergence as a Ukrainian author and his “promotion,” around 1835, to a Russian one. Yet the Russian public was deeply ambivalent about his images of Russia and some later attempted to “demote” Gogol to the status of an ill-intentioned Ukrainian. Gogol's civic and reform-minded approach did not satisfy his audience, which craved uplifting fictions based on ethnic Russians and their world. His attempt to meet this demand in a sequel to Dead Souls remained unfinished. Gogol's literary treatment of nationalism, both Ukrainian and Russian, features complexities that involve contemporary cultural politics, the critical reception Gogol received, and numerous tensions with official ideologies. |
