Nikolay Gogol (1809-52) was less than ten years younger than Pushkin (1799-1837), but the historical - no less than the social and geographical - circumstances of his world differed greatly from those of his older contemporary (whom he knew personally). Pushkin grew up and became a mature writer in the age of Alexander I (reigned 1801 - late 1825), with its memories of the victorious events of 1812, its sense that Russian culture had "come of age" in European terms, its hope that Russian enlightenment and progress had not yet run their course. Gogol by contrast lived all his working life in the age of Nicholas I (reigned 1825-1855), an authoritarian figure nicknamed "the Gendarme of Europe"; after the traumatic "Decembrist" revolt at the start of his reign he never trusted intellectuals (several of whose leaders exiled themselves from Russia), and though Russia to some extent economically modernised itself during this period, the country made no socio-political progress, and a strengthened (though inefficient) police force did all it could to keep disaffection and plotting in check. Nicholas I's reign ended with another trauma, that of the unsuccessful so-called "Crimean War" (1853-1856).
Pushkin was from an ancient aristocratic family (even if down on its luck), had an élite education and was at home in Moscow and Petersburg society. Gogol, though also from the land-owning class, was a country boy, whose provincialism of upbringing and mindset was made brutally apparent when he moved to St. Petersburg and took a civil service job at 19. He immediately launched into his early stories (of which "May Night" is one) collected as Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, that brought him instant fame. They capitalise on, reflect and distort the Ukrainian countryside of his boyhood. Features such as Ukrainian folklore, quaint social customs, convoluted and colloquial devices of storytelling and above all humour (whether facetious, crude, grotesque or subtle) were picturesque and beguiling to a sophisticated readership. Pushkin, enthusiast for Gogol, spotted that his gaiety was "at once naive and cunning". Soon Gogol was to launch into his more evidently ambiguous and disturbing "Petersburg stories".
Gogol's early stories, dependent as they are on their Ukrainian background, scarcely reflect the political actuality of the history of Ukraine (save for the deeply-flawed, naively chauvinistic Taras Bulba). Who could have guessed that just as they were being written and prepared for publication the great Polish rebellion of 1830, in many ways concerned with the destiny of Ukraine, was breaking out? Ukraine - still officially known by its medieval (Byzantine) name of "Little Russia," later considered pejorative - was in a frustrating position in the early 19th century. In the mid 17th century much of Ukraine had broken away from Polish domination, had adhered to Muscovy, and Ukrainians had for some time constituted a highly influential element in Russian political and intellectual life. During the 18th century - as Russian armies and colonists slowly pushed south towards the Black Sea, and as the free Cossack hordes declined in influence - Ukraine turned into a provincial backwater of the Russian Empire. At the same time, however, an ethnic awareness centred on the Ukrainian language (closely related to Russian, but developing its own characteristics and literature), impelled many educated Ukrainians into an affirmation of their separate destiny. The great poet who crystallised the Ukrainian sense of identity, Taras Shevchenko, was only five years younger than Gogol.
But the concept of a distinctive Ukraine faced plenty of problems, some still unresolved to the present. Western Ukraine (roughly, west of the River Dnieper) had for centuries been controlled by a Polish and Roman Catholic élite, while the Uniat Church (subject to Papal authority, though retaining Orthodox features) was strong.
In Eastern Ukraine, from which Gogol (born at Sorochintsy, midway between Kiev and Kharkov) originated, Orthodox Christianity dominated, and the Ukrainian language was still regarded as a colloquial and countrified dialect, with Russian the language of culture and education.
Slowly Ukraine as a whole became assimilated into the general structures of the Russian Empire, and serfdom in particular became widespread. Nicholas I's "penchant for centralisation and standardisation" (Riasanovsky) hastened these processes. As for Gogol, having been at first misunderstood as a voice of the underdogs of society, he emerged in the 1840's as a champion of autocracy and naively-mystical Orthodox religiosity.
Meanwhile, the general European processes that defined the complex movements within politics and ideas that we call "Nationalism" were having their effect in the Russian Empire as elsewhere. The theory known as "Official Nationality" - based on the principles of Orthodoxy, autocracy and national quality (narodnost) - was formulated in 1833. In Ukraine a subtler formulation of nationality than one based only on language allowed nationalists to hail Gogol's Ukrainian national spirit despite his all-Russian centralism of political outlook. In Russia itself an anguished debate on the national destiny was particularly stimulated in the 1830's by P. Chaadayev's First Philosophical Letter; during the 1840's the movement - or complex of ideas - that we call "Slavophilism" (roughly, a counterweight to the perceived loss of Russian and Slavic special destiny through the growth of international "Westernization") was in fall swing. But in the late 1840's - when revolutions swept Europe - Nicholas I suppressed the nationalistic Ukrainian "Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius" with harsh punitive measures. What Gogol thought of this we do not know. He did not live into the age of the great reforms (1860's), having starved himself to death for quasi-religious reasons, after burning unpublished parts of his great novel Dead Souls, in 1852.