Revenant

Author: Gogol
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-03-01
Features: As soon as Dead Souls was published, it immediately sparked fierce debate. Herzen said, "Dead Souls shook the entire Russia." Belinsky gave Dead Souls the highest praise, saying, "Only those who understand the work's ideas and artistic techniques, focusing on content rather than 'plot,' can fully appreciate Gogol's epic." Chernyshevsky said, "Now, after The Inspector General and Dead Souls were published, it must be added that Gogol was also a master of the novel (prose) and the prose works in the form of drama, i.e., the father of Russian prose in the general sense." This means that Gogol was the founder of the Naturalist movement. He paved the way for Dostoevsky's Poor Folk and Turgenev's Notes from Underground.
As soon as Dead Souls was published, it immediately sparked fierce debate, using seemingly absurd stories to portray the social landscape of Russia at the time. Herzen and Belinsky both gave Dead Souls the highest praise, hailed as the founder of the Naturalist movement. He paved the way for Dostoevsky's Poor Folk and Turgenev's Notes from Underground.
Dead Souls has little description of the bureaucracy but strikingly exposes the corruption and incompetence of officials. The police chief is the local authority, adept at exploiting people; the public prosecutor dies from the spread of rumors; only the postmaster leans toward liberalism, and it is from him that the story of Captain Kopeykin comes out. Captain Kopeykin fought in the 1812 War of National Liberation and became disabled, demanding state compensation, but the minister in charge drove him out. The historical background of this story is: Russia defeated Napoleon with armed serfs. When these serfs reached Paris and returned home, they were naturally dissatisfied with their slave status, so Arakcheev organized state-owned serfs into military colonies to control them, while ordinary peasants took to the mountains and became bandits. The author calls this the "path the Russians were accustomed to." This story is indeed not as dramatic as Lin Chong's rise to the, but precisely because it is ordinary, it has broader significance.
This story was originally independent, and some readers may not understand why the author included it. As mentioned earlier, the success of Dead Souls lies in gathering five landlords together to create satirical archetypes and putting them on the historical trial. However, upon closer analysis, these five landlords are not exceptionally guilty; their flaws are almost universal. Meanwhile, the story of Captain Kopeykin strikes at the heart of the Tsarist autocratic system. The reason Dead Souls was delayed in publication was key to this story, and when it was finally allowed to be published, the censorship authorities edited it.
If this story is linked to the stories of serfs listed in the serf roster, it forms a clear anti-serfdom stance in the book. Along with some of Pushkin's works, it pioneered the tradition of depicting "little people" in Russian literature.