Dead Souls

The poem "Dead Souls" is one of the great works of world literature, a vivid example of Russian realism, original and unique, just like all the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. "Gogol had no predecessors in Russian literature," claimed the famous critic V. G. Belinsky, "there were (and could not be) examples in foreign literatures. There were no hints of the kind of his poetry before it appeared."
In a letter to V. A. Zhukovsky, Gogol explained the idea behind his work: "For a long time, I have been occupied by the thought of a large composition that would present everything that is both good and bad in the Russian person, and the most prominent characteristics of our Russian nature would be revealed before us." The journey of the swindler Chichikov, a former collegial counselor pretending to be a landowner and buying "dead souls" of serf peasants, opens before the reader a picture of the dull, dismal stagnation of provincial life, the suffocating atmosphere of banality and injustice. The characters Chichikov meets on his journey leave a heavy impression - the barren dreamer Manilov, the reckless braggart Nozdryov, the pathological miser Plyushkin seem to be people whose own souls have long been irrevocably dead. The world of dead souls is contrasted with faith in the Russian people, in their inexhaustible spiritual potential. It is no coincidence that at the end of the poem, a symbolic image of a three-horse troika racing forward emerges - as a result of Gogol's many years of reflection on Russia's great destiny, and on the present and future of its people.
Illustrations by the master of book graphics Sergey Viktorovich Lyubaev reveal the characters and emphasize the spirit of the work.
Afterword by V.V. Erlichman. Comments by S.I. Mashinsky.
For middle school children.