The Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko, in honor of the birthday of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, who would have turned 212 on April 1, said that in fact the author of “Dead Souls” and “Evenings on a Farm Near Dykanka” is a great “Ukrainian writer” and Russia “appropriated” it. The Ukrainian minister devoted a lengthy post to this topic in his Telegram channel.
In particular, he notes that “in fact, Nikolai Vasilyevich belonged to the Ukrainian Cossack noble family of the Gogol-Yanovskys, whose ancestor is considered to be the hetman of the Right-Bank Ukraine, Ostap Gogol. And “Russian propaganda”, according to him, casts doubt on this fact.
“The Russians have always positioned Gogol as a Russian writer and a classic of“ Russian literature ”. Even in Ukraine, his works are sometimes shown in the “abroad” program. The Ukrainian Gogol, who was born in the Poltava region, was forcibly enlisted as a Russian. And only because he wrote in Russian, ”Tkachenko complains.
The minister ended his post with an appeal to compatriots to “love Ukraine”, “read Ukrainian” – “in particular, Nikolai Gogol.”
By the way, as the site kp.ru wrote, Kiev has repeatedly accused Russia of “stealing” or “appropriating” various “national values” of Nezalezhnaya – borscht, carriages, toilets, even the Soviet designer of space rockets Sergei Korolev.
