The “Fragment” is almost certainly the only part of it, as per this plan, ever written, and is itself probably unfinished, because the writer broke off work on it when he redesigned the history, intending now to begin with the early history of the Eastern Slavs and the founding of the Kyivan state.

This article constitutes an attempt, previously not undertaken in the critical literature, to collate all the known information concerning Nikolai Gogol′’s work in 1833-1834 on a history of Ukraine, and, based on this evidence, to formulate a reasoned conclusion as to how much of the history he might have completed beyond what purports to be the introductory chapter, initially published under the title “Fragment from a History of Little Russia” and later as “A Glance at the Composition of Little Russia.” Gogol′’s original plan was to write a history of Ukraine from the time southern Rus’ separated from the northern as a consequence of the conquest of Kyiv by the Mongols in 1240 and later the absorption of Kyivan Rus’ by Lithuania in the mid-14th century. The first part of the study focuses on the manipulation of stereotypes of the Other within the Russian nationalist imagination in the early 1830s the second part examines Gogol'’s ambivalent visual self-representation and social performance that simultaneously mimicked and menaced the colonial authority. Challenging the accepted view of Gogol' as one who internalized the colonial stereotype of a “sly” Ukrainian, this study treats Gogol'’s identity as strategic, positional, and ambivalent. Not only did Gogol'’s marginal social status and his Ukrainian ethnicity create a social hierarchy responsible for fashioning him as “an outsider within” imperial culture, Gogol' himself engaged in the colonial mimicry, trying to reverse the colonial gaze that imagined him as a “sly” Ukrainian. Gogol'’s self-fashioning is studied through his submission to the symbolic power responsible for branding him as the Other in imperial Russian culture, as well as through his deliberate strategy of mimicry. This study examines Gogol'’s complex self-fashioning during the time of the creation and reception of his Ukrainian tales Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki (1831–1832) in light of the postcolonial concept of mimicry.

Taras bulba author