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The first Russian intellectual to publicly preach the economic theories of Karl Marx Belinsky accused Gogol of betraying his readership by defending the status quo. Early life
Gogol was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire present-day Ukraine. He saw the outer world romantically metamorphosed a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories A Terrible Vengeance and A Bewitched Place.

The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842) along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman" "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" "The Portrait" and "The Carriage" round out the tally of his best-known works. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque ("The Nose" "Viy" "The Overcoat" "Nevsky Prospekt"). 19 March] 1809 – 4 March [O.