ABSTRACT
The Russian prose of the thirties and early forties would have lagged far behind the prose works of Pushkin and Lermontov but for the writings of Nikolai Vasilyevitch Gogol, whose activities inaugurated the great era of Russian fiction. Gogol first came to grips with reality in Petersburg. A perfect specimen of Gogol's prose is A Cruel Vengeance, which rolls on like a transposed folk ballad of the most gruesome type. Gogol's realism vibrates with rancor. Mistaking Gogol's method for realism pure and simple, the critic Belinsky proclaimed it as the cornerstone of the natural school of fiction which began to develop in the forties. People know, however, that Gogol's realism had grown out of his romantic urge to take revenge upon life which had failed to come up to his expectations. The account of Gogol's personality and work was necessary in order to elucidate the part played by him, in the evolution of the Russian novel.
