The basic structure of Gogol’s greatest play is well known. A small town gets wind that a government inspector is soon to arrive. The town elites scramble to clean up their act, only to be manipulated by a St. Petersburg nobody named Khlestiakov, who takes advantage of their ignorance, though it takes some time for the main character to figure out what is happening. Eventually, once Khlestiakov skips town, the real government inspector shows up, to the shock of the population.
In the most vulgar fashion, non-historical, or even anti-historical writers describe this play as an “attack” on the corruption of Nicholaian Russia. It is no such thing, but a very complicated royalist vision, one designed to appeal to those partisans of “Old Russia” that Gogol represented in his own political writings. Nicholas I was obsessed with the moral and institutional reformation of Russian society, and, primarily, about reforming his own bureaucracy, who he accused of thwarting his most important project.
Far from being a reign of unbridled censorship, this era in Russia was her literary golden age, with writers of every conceivable political stripe producing the works that will place Russia on the literary map of the world. Rather than censoring it, Nicholas I personally financed much of it. And it all was certainly in his interest: a great Russia was a literary, as well as a military and economic, force.
The first thing to notice about Gogol’s play are that the characters, at least those who are locals, are not evil men. At worst, they are neglectful of their social duties, duties that were at the core of Nicholas’ understanding of Russian reformism.. Khlestiakov is as close to being “evil” as this play gets, and is clearly modeled after Yvgenii Onegin of Pushkin fame. The main character is vain and arrogant, matched only by his actual ignorance and low status. He manipulates the sensibilities of “Old Russia” in the provinces with the glitter of the proverbial big city, one that, as Gogol’s other work shows, is all glitter and no substance.
The local elite, however, are men and women who play by a different set of rules than the ideological mold of “New Russia,” that is, Petrine Russia. They play by informal rules that governed much of Russia prior to Peter and Catherine, and remained in place right up until the 20th century.
In Gogol’s eyes, these men and women are victims, victims of Petrine reforms that papered over reality, rather than changing it. The table of ranks did not reform the bureaucracy, it merely opened up the system to more subtle methods of manipulation, as Khlestiakov shows. All these men and women, with the possible exception of the police chief, who is a federal appointee, are identity-less creatures. They are nobility, but such nobility is a paper title with no substance. The characters, including Khlestiakov himself, are identity-less and purposeless. The examples of Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky are most telling, with the famous Petrine “chin” (i.e. rank) right within their names. They are those with some “rank” but no purpose, or those who receive the papering over of Peter, without any actual reality having been changed.
Gogol’s play is an intensely political and historical vision, but one that seems to support the reign of the great Nicholas I on the one side, and the much older idea of Russia, on the other. It is significent to mention that Nicholas himself believed himself to be the synthesis of Old Russia and Peter, a synthesis taking into itself elements of both and improving both.
In other words, there are three worlds that are colliding here. The first is that of official St. Petersburg under Nicholas: imposing, reforming, intensely moral, all of which Nicholas I definitely was. This is represented in the very idea of a government inspector, the notion of reforming local government, a major reform of Nicholas I’s reign. Unofficial St. Petersburg is represented by Khlestiakov: this is the world of Yvgenii Onegin: arrogant, useless, alienated, over-educated, superfluous and pretentious. This side of Petersburg is represented in Gogol’s powerful story (and my personal favorite) “Nevesky Prospekt.”
There is a third world, however, and one that often–if not always–gets left out of secondary treatment on this play. This third world is a fundamentally healthy one, one that is represented in the powerful and morbidly misunderstood “Old World Landowners,” an extremely powerful illustration of Old Russia, completely outside the conceptual vision of Russia scholars the world over. This is Old Russia, a Russia of community typified by informal personal contacts and a political life not dependent on institutions in the commonly used sense of the term.
Therefore, it is my contention that the characters in the Inspector are scions of Old Russia who have been forced to become part of Official Russia, with only a superficial understanding of the latter. What would have been considered normal procedure in Old Russia is brought to the level of “corruption” and “graft” in the new.
It is a common, however correct, criticism of Peter and Catherine that their reforms were locally based, based solely on noble participation, and were aimed at creating a new elite, educated, western and, most importantly, directly dependent on and loyal to the monarchy. The means whereby this idea dripped to the provinces is another matter altogether, and seems to resist systematic study. Gogol, in many important respects, takes this important issue and provides it with a comedic and literary expression. In other words, Petrine reformism dribbled to the provinces in the form of poorly digested slogans, certain modes of dress and even the occasional French phrase or word. But this is its limit. The characters in the Inspector are what is created when this limit is reached. It is, in other words, an indictment of the worst elements of Petersburgian (and, by extension, urbanism in general) society along with a strong sympathy for old and rural Russia: informal, personal and provincial in the best sense of that term.
One notices very soon that these provincials, represented as innocent, though occasionally incompetent, victims of modernity, confuse rank and society with competence and civility. This is a specifically Gogolian technique, represented most powerfully in both “The Nose” and “The Overcoat.” This particular technique is found throughout Russian literature, both prior to and after Gogol’s best work. It is Old Russia papered over with a veneer of Paris and London. It is a Potemkin village: a beautiful icon papered over with vulgar advertisements and chic but meaningless designs so as to make it look “modern” and “western.” For Gogol, “Old World Landowners” is Russia at its best: peaceful, placid and content with the simple pleasures of life. “The Nose” is Russia at its worst: the vulgar playacting at being something that they are not, and, making matters worse, a play-acting out of artificial conviction and based on force and threats.
This is the main reason Gogol chose the comedy venue to express these ideas. It is clear that Gogol is a monarchist and is a partisan of Old Russia, as his “Selections” prove. Therefore, it is the new Russia, both official and unofficial Petersburg, though both are treated rather differently, they are alien to the provinces, and really have no place there. The people involved, with the exception of the main character have continued their old ways of life, but just in the different context. The inspector, that is, the real inspector, is a symbol of Nicholas–always the reformer–as well as the idea of Petrine reform in general–poorly though out, sporadic and urban in orientation. The incompetence of the town officials is not a testament to their personalities, but rather a testament to the inappropriateness of Petrinism to the provinces, that is, to Russia as a cultural unit.
The point is, that when three worlds like this collide, the result is not only chaos, but comedy. St. Petersburg is represented in its best, Nicholaian, aspects, and its worst, as in the case of Khlestiakov. Partially, Gogol, to the extent he is criticizing Nicholas, is criticizing the notion of synthesizing Old and New Russia, that incommensurate ideas cannot be made commensurate without creating chaos–and comedy. Of course, such comedy is not light, and never to be taken as light entertainment. This comedy is pathetic, where otherwise decent people are forced into a mold that is highly artificial in any context, but especially when it is haphazardly imposed over a pastoral and informal Russia. The central conceptual core of the play is the distinction between appearance and reality, an idea very dear to the heart of Gogol, and is an idea central to nearly all Russian writing about St. Petersburg, whether directly or indirectly. But what is its historical significance? As with all aspects of Russian literature, only a historian can properly read it. Russian literature turn on numerous historical landmarks and institutions that are at the core of most Russian fiction–ideas in history unfortunately out of the reach fo the average academic bureaucrat. Part of this lies in the fact that the bureaucracy, both academic and political, lie at the root of Gogol’s barbs and taunts, something that makes academic interpretation of Gogol almost impossible by definition.
The fact that the elite of the town are not obviously evil characters should be the first thing that the reader notices. Corruption is normally not addressed in such a way, suggesting that Gogol is denying that they are corrupt at all, but rather acting very different roles than envisioned by moderns, whether Russian or otherwise. “Gifts” given to functionaries who receive extremely low salaries are not bribes; they have far more in common with gratuities, fees for service over and above a very low base pay. This is not corruption, but is best understood as a method of adaptation.
Dostoyevsky is fond of mocking the elite of Russian life: Francified and pretentious. The squeeze more and more out of their peasants so as to afford more and more luxury goods they do not want, but believe that they need so as to adapt to high society. The worst aspect of Petrinism is the major schism opened in Russian life, typified by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Peasants could not understand anything about the life of the upper classes, and what they could understand they held in contempt. Such pathos can be found in liberal politicians from Petersburg or Odessa showing up to the post-1905 Dumy pretending to represent the “peasants,” who they neither understood nor liked. They lived in two different worlds.
Old Russia had no hereditary elite. Most of the old boyar class were as poor as the peasants they had a formal legal “right” to. They often ate together and worked together. Their legal relationship had no reality–their practical relationship was one of equals. New Russia crated a class at Petersburg overtly contemptuous of peasant life. The worst joke played on Russian life is the populist movement–strictly urban and often foreign in orientation, pretending the commune was a “collective” institution to be manipulated by urban intellectuals at will. Without Peter, this split could have never come into existence. The purpose of the Old Ritual was to ritualize Old Russia, to protect a way of life, again, outside of the conceptual horizon of American academics and Orthodox pastors.
Gogol, as his “selections” see, to attest, see through the conceptual smokescreen of “equality befor the law.” Before one swoons before such “sacred utterances”, one must first understand that justice in Old Russia was based as much on custom as on the written law. Custom is a superior form of legal society, largely becasue it is easily accessible to peasants and other simple folk. Liberal reformers know full well that the “legal codes” they make such hay out of are completely under the control of elite powers (i.e. themselves), while custom is not. Custom was found in the peasant commune and volost courts, there each peasant knew the law prior to entering the system, and knew what to expect. Equality before the law is a subterfuge referring to the removal of custom and the replacement with urban based legalese understood only by lawyers. Equality before the law is a code for elite law not so much in what it advocates, but rather in what it destroys. (cf. This nonsense from the Antiocheans, cf. “Conciliarity in the Orthodox World View” at http://www.antiochian.org/assets/word/NOV2006WORD.pdf)
During the Renaissance, England faced a similar choice. The Puritan capitalists, needing to regularize relations among Englishmen to better manipulate laborers, needed a single law code to control all aspects of English society. The Puritans, who dominated Parliament, nearly all of whom were a part of the new capitalist economy, demanded a “jury of one’s peers,” meaning that Puritans accused of crimes will be judged only by other middle class Puritans. Otherwise, feudal law still prevailed, and therefore, peasants could not be removed from the land. A proletariat needed to be created, and such legal reform then was devised to supply alienated labor for the new economy. Those who supported the feudal order of permanent land tenure were the largely rural aristocracy, the king and the Anglican Church. The Puritans could only count on aid from Holland and other major trading powers, as well as their own considerable wealth and literacy.
Though the era differed, the choice was the same for Russia. Peter forced foreign capital to receive full equal treatment with Russians, the latter knowing little about the vice of foreign economic systems. What did liberal reform mean for the peasant? It meant that peasants can be removed from their land as easily as an aristocrat could lose his allotment from lack of service. This was a distinction well known to customary law, but because the law, in the case, was not identical for each class, it therefore was “irrational.” One can conclude that modernity, whether English, Dutch, Russian or French, meant the throwing of the rabbits in the same pen as the cheetahs, and letting the “market” decide the result. Cheetahs heretofore had been controlled by a powerful zookeeper, who, if one is a cheetah, should be the first to go.
This historical reality is not lost on monarchists of the period, whether German, French or Russian. Equality before the Law is a class affair, and should never be reduced to the vulgar level of abstraction. Nothing in history is ever abstract, but always serves some further goal of a certain class of people. When Anna of Courland (Ivannovna) confronted the wealthiest sections of Russia in 1730, she did it beside a 700 strong parliament of lower class nobility, peasants and clergy, who urged her to tear up the conditions the oligarchy had forced on her. This is the reason Anna is never given her due in Russian history texts (in spire of her many errors), she proves the class based notions of “Equality before the Law” and the subterfuge of liberal reform. Non-elite Russia knew what this “constitution” meant, it meant free reign for Russia’s oligarchs. What were these conditions? The litany is common, as it was taken both from English Puritans as well as French Protestants: Anna was to sign tax legislation only with the approval of the oligarchy, represented in the Supreme Privy Council; she could not declare war without them, nor was she able to choose a successor.
Though Anna proved herself later to be rather unpopular, she began her reign off with the manifest vote of true representatives of the lower classes to destroy the oligarchy by tearing up their constitution. Anna’s unfortunate use of Germans later on was solely based on her manifest distrust of her own Russian oligarchs, who she hounded mercilessly.
Without this understanding of Russian history, Gogol’s work can make no sense. It is this connection between the phenomenon of high-flown rhetoric common enough among “liberal reformers” and the harsh reality of liberalism’s class basis. Gogol’s famous device of appearance-reality-appearance can only be understood as the continually shape-shifting nature of liberal reformism. It might also be conjectured that peasant folk wisdom about shape shifters (usually outsiders) derives from this inarticulate truth.
For the police chief in Gogol’s play, Petersburg is represented by the colors of the various decorations. He plans to use his new found “connection” to make himself a “general.” This is clear enough: titles have no substance, medals have no substance. Innocently, the chief of police is convinced that titles, money and prestige are solely based on patronage and has no relation to ability whatsoever. But of course, that’s Gogol’s entire point, and the basic failure of Peter’s reformism. Luka Lukitch, the superintendent of schools (by the way, a specific reform program of Alexander I), says this, prior to meeting the impostor: “I confess that I was so brought up that I cannot speak to anyone even one rank higher than myself!”