“I know that after me, my name will be happier than I, and the descendants of those same fellow countrymen, maybe with their eyes wet from tears, will annunciate reconciliation with my shadow,” wrote the ingenious writer Mykola Gogol not long before his death. However, the discussions still continue regarding which writer he was – a Russian or a Ukrainian? Is Gogol a Ukrainian writer who wrote in Russian or a Russian writer who was born in Ukraine?

Gogol is the most known writer from Ukraine in Europe. His works have been translated into many languages and they are studied in schools in different countries. Admirers of Gogol’s oeuvre belong to different generations and live on different continents. UNESCO announced 2009 to be the Year of Gogol. Festivals named after him take place in European countries.

Gogol was born in 1809 in a town called Sorochintsi near Poltava on the territory of Ukraine which at that time was part of the Russian Empire, and he died in Moscow, Russia in 1852.

It is considered that his novel “Dead Souls” and the short story “The Overcoat” laid the basis for the great realistic direction in the literature of the 19-th century. Fyodor Dostoevsky said that all Russian realists “were raised on Gogol’s “Overcoat”.

As indicated in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, among world-known writers, Gogol is considered among the most controversial and most interesting researchers of people’s souls. The complex fate of his works and the author himself enlivens people’s interest in Gogol’s oeuvre. And that interest does not diminish with the years.

As it is known, the language in which all of Gogol’s works were written is Russian. He lived a great part of his life in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. That’s why some Ukrainian literary scholars call him a “prodigal son of his nation”. But they don’t take into account that at that time Ukraine was a colony of the Russian Empire, and to rise on the literary Olympus, he had to write in Russian.

At the same time, some people in Russia do not consider Gogol a Russian writer. Quite a few of his contemporaries – readers and critics – disparaged him for his adherence to Little Russia – Malorosiya, as Ukraine was called – during the times of the Russian Empire. But he made them take off their hats in respect to his genius. It is true that while reading his works we see that he never parted with his Motherland. The Ukrainian village with its colorful residents, Cossack traditions and people’s folklore became the basis for many of his works. In 1846, when Gogol was in Carlsbad, he wrote in a guestbook: “Gogol, a Ukrainian who resides in Moscow.”

After all, it does not matter what people say about the great mystic Gogol. His name has already been carved in gold in world literature. Thus, the disputes are meaningless: Gogol is a phenomenon that belongs to whole of humanity.