The monograph of the famous Russian literary critic is dedicated to the St. Petersburg period in the work of the great writer, when he created the cycles “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, “Arabesques”, “Mirgorod”, the comedy “The Inspector General”... The author sees the origins of the “Petersburg text” in the views of the young a provincial through the magnifying glass of the capital on the history of his native Little Russia - the oldest, “mother” part of the Russian land, whose past formed the basis of the Slavic Empire. That is why in his works Gogol combined the pictures and problems of the past with the image and pressing problems of the capital’s “today,” which combined old and new, European and Asian, “high” sciences, art and culture with “grassroots” folk views and lubok, nativity scene, vernacular ; the beauty, luxury of palaces and the squalor of the outskirts, the greatness of the state - with the worlds of “little people”... These obvious antitheses required comprehension and explanation from the literature of that time. It was they who later determined the concept and implementation of Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls.”